The Chinese Dream on Earth

Entanglements of Inheritance and Family Shadows

The constant accumulation of debt and the trivialities of daily life often led my father to leave home for months at a time, claiming he was out looking for business opportunities to earn money. However, his rare returns did not improve our family's financial situation. In his absence, my grandparents helped my mother take care of me and my brother, and my grandfather also managed the farms of both our families. At that time, production was assigned per household, and each family had its designated land. Interestingly, our crops grew better when my father was away. When he was home, he often neglected timely weeding and fertilizing, leaving the crops to fend for themselves. In contrast, when he was absent, my diligent and meticulous grandfather took charge, and his hard work and conscientiousness were well known in the village. He believed that meticulous farming was a farmer's duty. Whether my father was home or not didn't greatly affect me; in fact, his absences meant fewer arguments with my mother, making our home life much quieter. I even preferred him to stay away to avoid unnecessary disputes.

As long as my grandparents were around, I felt safe and secure. Whenever I visited my grandmother's house, I could always find a variety of delicious foods like dried sweet potatoes, peanuts, apples, and pears in their basket, waiting for me to discover. Unfortunately, good times did not last long. One afternoon in 1984, after school, I went to my grandmother's house for lunch. My grandmother's younger sister was visiting from Wuhu Gully. As I rummaged through drawers looking for a pencil sharpener, my grandmother disapproved and hit my hand with a twig, causing it to swell. Upset and hungry, I ran back to school without eating. That evening, as the village screened the foreign movie "Between the Lines" at the playground, I had reserved seats for everyone. Halfway through the movie, my grandparents hadn't yet brought my brother over. My mother, engrossed in the film, urged me to fetch them. Despite my enjoyment of the movie, I had to obey her and ran quickly to my grandmother's house, eager to return and continue watching. Unexpectedly, when I arrived, I found the yard dark and my brother sitting alone at the door, crying, with a strong smell of pesticides on him. By moonlight, I saw two figures lying in the yard and suddenly realized what had happened. I grabbed my brother and ran back to the playground to inform my mother that our grandparents had taken poison. Hearing this, the relatives and my mother panicked and rushed to my grandmother's house. By the time they got back, it was too late; my grandparents had ingested a large amount of pesticide 1605, and despite being found in time, they could not be saved.

My mother could never understand why the two old people had chosen to take their lives. We only learned the reason when my grandmother's sister visited again. It turned out that before that noon, my grandparents had already been quarreling over trivial matters. In the spring, my father and grandfather had first applied ample fertilizer to my grandfather's land. By the time they got to our farm, there was little left, and my father decided to skimp. Come autumn, the crops at my grandmother's farm were significantly better than ours, leading to my grandfather's guilt and inability to withstand my grandmother's nagging, which accumulated anger in his heart. The quarrel intensified after I was hit, forcing my grandaunt to leave helplessly. These seemingly minor incidents turned out to be the last straw for them. We later learned that in his final moments, my grandfather had tried to save my brother, explaining the pesticide smell on him.

Following this tragedy, relatives came to deal with the aftermath, leaving my mother emotionally and physically shattered, spending her days in bed, crying. Although I did not cry, I frequently had the same dream: I saw my grandmother sitting in a pink palanquin, talking softly to me as I walked beside it. This dream recurred many times. After my mother's health improved slightly, I told her about the dream. She explained that they had made a pink palanquin for my grandmother's spirit, but I had been unaware of this, nor had I been allowed to visit the gravesite. I never understood why I had those dreams.

After the elderly couple passed away, the house stood vacant. The spacious yard, occasionally planted with sunflowers alongside a few grapevines, found its fruits often secretly harvested before they could fully ripen. Next door lived Grandpa's half-brother and his stepmother—who was also Grandma's maternal aunt, a typical example of intermarriage common in rural areas. Grandpa and his brother shared the same father but different mothers. His brother had two daughters living next door, and Grandpa also had a half-sister, who lived not far away in the same village with her son and daughter. It was eventually discovered that Grandpa's nephew had been climbing the wall and stealing the fruits, justifying his actions by claiming a share in the house, which also belonged to his stepmother. Around 85 years ago, this rural house was valued at just over two thousand yuan. To assert their claim, they even took the matter to court, demanding a division of Grandpa's inheritance. At that time, Grandma's mother was still alive, leading to a familial legal battle among aunts, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters. This was Mother's first involvement in a legal dispute, and she even delved into legal books to study inheritance law. Fortunately, the judge was quite fair, and the final verdict granted the stepmother eight hundred yuan, settling the dispute once and for all.

Mother's grandmother lived in the neighboring village of Dianzitou, known locally for its poverty. Mother had three uncles: the eldest had learned some martial arts and was assigned to work at the Shengli Oilfield after military service; the second uncle was an old bachelor, always alone; the youngest worked in Weihai, eventually marrying into a local family there. Mother also had two aunts, one married to a stonemason in Upper Village and another to a tiler in Wu Family Ravine. None of these relatives left a favorable impression during my childhood; all were selfish and greedy. Having lost her parents early and with strained relations with her village relatives over property issues, Mother particularly valued her maternal family. Sometimes, she would send me on foot with treats to Grandma and the second uncle, often traveling between the two villages. Once, I arrived too late; it had gotten dark and began to rain, so Grandma insisted I stay the night. That night, although I usually slept soundly, I suddenly woke up to feel a large hand groping around my body. With my eyes closed, I dared not open them or make a sound, nor let anyone nearby know I was awake. Even though I didn't look, I could tell from the heavy breathing next to me that it was Mother's second uncle. He touched my chest and my private parts alternately, his rough hands kneading them as he panted and moaned, seemingly enjoying himself. At that time, I was about ten years old and didn't understand what he intended to do next; I knew only that pretending to be asleep was the safest option. This continued for a long while until he left just before dawn. After a long time, once I heard snoring from the next room, I tiptoed into my clothes, quietly opened the door, and ran all the way home. I never dared tell my parents what had happened, and from then on, I never visited Grandma's house alone again. Even if Mother complained that I was lazy or that I had grown too independent, I didn't change my mind.

A year or two later, the son of my mother's eldest uncle had to hide in our house because he killed someone in a gang fight. Before that, our two families had no contact. Because of my mother's second uncle, I had a lot of hostility and defensiveness towards her cousin. I blamed my mother for raising a tiger to harm her, and I was even more jealous that she and her cousin were always talking and laughing, and had no time to listen to me or care about me. If there was anything delicious, she would always give it to my cousin first, saying that he was injured and needed to be supplemented, and it didn't matter if I ate less. In this way, a murderer stayed in our house for two or three years. If it weren't for what happened later, he might have lived in our house forever. At that time, I was too young to understand many things, and I didn't understand why my mother treated such a murderer better than me. One night, I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and felt that someone had entered my room. I quickly took out the scissors hidden under the pillow in the dark and shouted loudly: "Who?" I saw the figure quickly hiding beside the bed. I turned on the light and saw her cousin Wang Shubao lying on the ground like a dog. I told him to get out of my room, and he got up and walked out in disgrace. I immediately wrote down what had just happened, and also wrote down what my mother and second uncle had done to me that night. At dawn, I woke my parents up and asked them to read it first. My mother didn't say anything after reading it, but my father got angry and said, "I knew they were all bad guys." It was at the cost of a girl like me being almost destroyed that the murderer left.