The Diary of Ma Yan (7 page)

I ask my mother if I can go out. She says I may. I change my clothes and put on my shoes.

I go off with Huahua. We walk behind the coffin of an old village woman we barely know. We walk for a long time, and I start to feel I have had enough. But since we've already come a long way, there's no point in turning back. When we get to the end of the procession, in the middle of the fields we hear the weeping of the dead woman's daughters and daughters-in-law. And I start crying too, despite myself.

Monday, December 18
Fine weather

This morning after gym our Chinese teacher advised us to study the first part of our book. “There may very well be a test. Those who work well will be rewarded.”

Once again my heart all but stopped beating. I was so anxious, I could barely get a word out.

The best pupils study with a smile on their lips, confidence written on their faces. I and a few comrades, who are perhaps the worst in the class, watch the others study with fear in our hearts. I'm afraid I'm going to stay frozen like this, like the last time, because I have so little faith in myself.

I lower my head. Then I remember that the teacher said that if we studied well, we would certainly do well on the test.

Tuesday, December 19

After school the comrades go out to get their meal. I stay behind in class all alone and write. Today, I'm fasting. There are only a few days left until Ramadan is over, and I want to hold out until the end.

When I go back to the dorm, the comrades are busy eating. They discuss things while they chew. I sit down beside them and listen.

Wednesday, December 20

After classes I go back to the dorm to sweep up. I have barely got through half of the room when the head of the dorm, Ma Jing, comes in and starts sweeping as well. I ask her why she's going to this trouble, and she replies that it's to help me.

When we've finished, we sit down on the bed to rest. Ma Xiaohong and my cousin come into the dorm. They're going to wash their hair, they announce. They boil a pot of water and get started. I go out onto the porch to write in my diary. I can hear them talking. They criticize my attitude.

I feel like going in and telling them I can hear what they're saying. But since we've been friends for so many years, I don't.

Why is it that for some time now the people closest to me have been saying bad things about me? What is the answer to this mystery?

Saturday, December 23

This afternoon we have a history test. Our history teacher comes in holding the copies of the test. I haven't yet had time to read my course book and I'm very worried. I fear I'll fail. But when I learn we can use the book in the exam, I'm thrilled.

At this moment I remember a little saying of Mother's and I decide not to open the book. I have to count on my true abilities to cross this hurdle.

After the exam I check my answers against others'. I can hardly believe that mine are exactly the same as theirs.

You have to count on your own strengths truly to succeed.

Tuesday, December 26

This morning Mother prepares dinner and cleans the house. She boils up a pot of water for me so that I can wash my clothes. I pour the water into a tin basin and start my washing. I've only washed two things when a lot of people arrive, among them my grandmother. They talk and laugh so noisily that it feels as if the roof is going to fall in.

I carry on washing my school clothes, and think that it really is at home that things are happiest and that we forget our misfortunes.

More pages from Ma Yan's diary

Ma Yan's diary starts again on July 3, 2001, after an interruption of six months during which it looked as if she might never return to school. During these six months, she carried on writing in her diary, but it literally went up in smoke. Her father had developed the habit of using his children's old notebooks for cigarette paper. Without knowing that's what he was doing, he had used his daughter's diaries.

At the beginning of July, Ma Yan was preparing to return to her village for the summer break, after having taken the entrance exam for the best school in her area, the girls' senior school in the city of Tongxin.

 

Tuesday, July 3
A fine day

Yesterday I came back from Tongxin, the largest city in the district. It was the first time I'd been there. If it wasn't for this exam, I might never in my life have had the opportunity of going there and seeing the outside world.

Last night I slept next to my best friends, Ma Zhonghong and Ma Xiaohong. I woke up very early this morning to go to the market to find a tractor from my village. People assured me that a tractor had arrived, but I couldn't find it. So I sat down at the entrance to the market and waited for my father. The vehicle didn't come. Nor did my father. Tears in my eyes, I went back to school to get my bag. I looked for Teacher Chen so that he could open the dorm for me, but unfortunately he wasn't around. I had to get in through the window. I know it's a bad habit, but I had no choice.

By the time I found my bag, the tears were flowing all the way down to my clothes. Other children, too, are leaving for vacation, but their parents are here to carry their things for them. I had to get my luggage out through the window, which is hard enough in itself.

On the street, the sun burns. It's hard to open my eyes. My back is running with sweat, as if it had been drenched with a bucket of water. I don't know whether it's because of the burning sun or because I'm carrying too much luggage.

At the market I finally find a tractor from my village. I put all my things on it and go off once more to look for my father. I
don't find him, but I bump into my third uncle. He asks me if I've eaten. When I say no, he invites me to have something to eat a little way farther along the road. We come across two young women. Both of them suggest that we come into their restaurants. We go into one, and right away the other woman starts to swear at us.

The woman whose restaurant we're in points at me and asserts, “This girl eats here often.”

I'm very surprised to hear that. I've never eaten there this term. After the meal I feel bad. Is it because she's poor that she has to lie like this? If her business was doing better, she wouldn't have to make up such stories.

Wednesday, July 4

This afternoon my mother and I go and visit my paternal grandparents. When we arrive, my grandfather is sitting on the doorstep. He's watching over my fifth uncle's children.

We ask Grandpa where Grandmother is. He answers that she's in the big cave my uncle dug near his house. I run over there imagining that my grandmother is busy preparing a good meal. Once I'm inside, the first thing I see is her white hair, then her clothes, all soiled. She's turning the hay. I ask her what she's doing. She says the donkey has no food left and she's getting fodder for him.

I lower my head and wonder what use we are in this world. Those who have work can make a contribution toward the country. Those who don't only sleep and eat. My grandmother
came into this world some eighty years ago. Why has she never known any happiness in her life? Did she annoy the heavens in some way? Or is her fate just a bad one?

Her mother died five months after she was born. She was raised by her maternal grandmother. Then she married my grandfather and led this difficult life.

Friday, July 13
A fine day

This afternoon, after cutting the wheat, my mother washed her hands and started making the bread we would take with us into the fields tomorrow.

My father is sitting on the threshold. He's rolling cigarettes. I'm off to wash my hair. My two brothers are spreading a plastic sheet outside because it's too hot to sleep indoors. We've been spending nights in the open air.

My mother finishes steaming the bread. She calls my father to the table. I come in after him. I take a bowl of black rice and swallow it down. The bowl empty, I want to get some more, but there's none left. My brother has eaten it all. I ask my mother whether I can have one of her rolls, but she says, “No. It's for tomorrow.” She doesn't even let me nibble at a tiny one.

I go outside to sleep. I lie looking up at the stars and think,
Is it because I haven't passed the entrance exam for the girls' senior school that my mother is so angry with me?
*
I begin to resent her. She won't
even let me eat my fill before sleeping. My tears start to flow. But I also think she probably has her own reasons for being upset. Why does she take so much trouble over everything? It's always for our studies, so that we can succeed in life, have happy families of our own.

I have to study hard. Even if I haven't got through the entrance exam this time, in three years, I'll do it.

Saturday, July 14
Good weather

This afternoon, just after I've woken from my nap, someone comes to visit. It's the son of one of the village's rich men. His father is called Ma Zhanchuan. The villagers have given him the nickname of Lao Gan, or Old Prune, because he's so dry. His son has come to ask my father if we could cut their wheat for them. My father goes to see them. On his return, I ask him whether we've accepted the job. “Yes,” he says.

The whole family goes off to the fields to harvest Ma Zhanchuan's wheat. While we're working, my mother stands tall and says to us, “When we've cut the wheat, I'll give you each ten yuan. You can eat whatever you want at the market.”

I literally jump for joy, then I suddenly notice a comrade who passed the entrance exam for the school in Tongxin. My heart sinks down to my knees. I can't take my eyes off the girl. Nor can I see straight. It seems to me the hills and the sky are moving. Mother looks at me and asks what's wrong.

“Nothing,” I tell her. “Nothing.”

I bend down again. What earthly right do I have to buy good things at the market? I haven't even managed to get into a good senior school. I should be ashamed. I shall have to work really hard not to fail next time and disappoint my parents.

The entire family works in the fields.

Children take part in all the farming work when they're not at school. They help harvest grains, feed the animals, and fetch water from the wells. The Ma family, like most of the poor peasants in the region, depends on human labor, sometimes with the help of a donkey or a small ox. Harvesting is done with a scythe. Only the “rich” have tractors, which cost about six thousand yuan.

Some families supplement their income by harvesting
fa cai
, a hairy grass that grows wild on the steppes of northwest China. In addition to representing this grass, the two characters used to write
fa cai
can also mean “to make one's fortune.” “Get rich” is a greeting the Chinese use at the lunar New Year. In the 1990s, this pun lead to
fa cai
's popularity as garnish for soups and salads in China's cities. Though
fa cai
has no nutritional value, the demand for—and price of—the grass soared.

Peasants travel hundreds of miles to perform the backbreaking work of harvesting the dry black grass, which is a little like algae but as fine as hair. The amount of money they make for this exhausting labor is tiny by the standards of urban China. But it is crucial to families whose annual incomes never exceed a few hundred yuan.

Picking
fa cai
was, however, outlawed by the government in
2000 for environmental reasons. Hundreds of miles of Inner Mongolia have been turned into desert by the pulling up of
fa cai
, and this is thought to contribute to violent sandstorms that hit Beijing each spring and travel as far as Korea and Japan.

The prohibition on harvesting
fa cai
threatens to plunge the poorest peasants—who have no other means of subsistence—into total misery. Neither the threat of being stopped by the police nor the possibility of being attacked by angry Mongolian herdsmen, furious at the plight of their disappearing pastures, has halted the harvest.

As one peasant explained, “Even if we are frightened, we have no choice. We have nothing to eat.” For them,
fa cai
doesn't mean getting rich, it simply means survival.

A tractor carrying exhausted peasants who have been picking
fa cai

Sunday, July 1
Fine weather

This afternoon at four o'clock, after our rest, Mother started to prepare dinner. I helped her to make the fire. After we'd eaten, the whole family went back to the fields to cut more wheat. A little while later, my mother was tying the wheat into bales when she suddenly sat down and got very pale. She moaned softly and said her stomach pains had begun again.

There she is, sitting in the wheat, but we carry on mowing with our sickles.

Tears and the perspiration of pain run down my mother's face. Her eyes are red. Her hands are arched over her stomach. My father tells her to go home. No, she'll wait for us, she says. I lower my head and think,
Why does my mother want to do this harvesting when she is so gravely ill? Why?

For us, of course. So that we don't have to lead a life like hers.

Monday, July 16
Fine weather

This morning while we were scything the wheat in the fields, my legs suddenly began to ache horribly. I sat down for a moment.

My mother started in on me. “Really, Ma Yan. You're exaggerating!”

My little brother Ma Yiting rubs it in. “All students exaggerate. Look at our other comrade over there. It takes her half an hour just to get up!”

And my mother adds, “Even if that girl's exaggerating, she's brought honor on her family. She's succeeded in her exam. You…you disappoint me too much.”

At that moment tears I'm not even aware of start pouring down my cheeks. They won't stop. My mother is always extreme in her comments. She says things, then repeats them, then insists on them. How to bear it all?

I mustn't resent her. At heart I'm only angry at myself. If I had gotten into the girls' school, she wouldn't have spoken such hurtful words. She has her own problems. If she works hard, it's so that we can go to school.

In the village I'm good at a great many things, and few of the children can do better than me. That's why my mother counted on my getting into the best school. But I let her down. How could she not be disappointed in me? She must be very upset.

Saturday, July 28
A fine day

This afternoon around three o'clock my mother is so ill, she can't even get up. My brother and I give her some medicine to ease her pain. We rub her stomach with a cream. We haven't finished when my cousin Ma Yiwu, the son of my father's eldest brother, arrives.

This youth of twenty-five has completed a degree from a technical school, but he's having trouble finding work. He says that work in a successful business is bought with bribes and corruption.

He comes in and sits down at the edge of the bed. He looks bothered. My mother asks him if he's found work. My cousin answers, “It's easy to find work, but you have to pay for it under the table. If I had two thousand yuan, I could get into a company. The problem is money. My family has no money. In a few days I'm going off and will get any old job. When I've earned enough money, then I'll buy myself into a proper position.”

I'm sitting on the stool and I notice that his eyes have filled with tears. When I see his hair, already going white, and his tortured face, my heart breaks. Why is it that the children of two generations of soldiers can't find work? Today the grandson of a military hero has a degree, but no money, and as a result can't find a job. Are the heavens blind? Do they only know how to take care of the most wicked people? Are they mocking the lives and deaths of good people? It's all so unjust.

I don't know where my cousin went off to. I hope he'll find a good job soon. It will make me incredibly happy for him.

Monday, July 30
A fair day

This afternoon, when I want to start writing in my diary, I can't find my pen. I ask my brothers. No, they haven't seen it. I look for it in the place where I was doing my writing yesterday, and it isn't there either. I ask my mother. She says that yesterday she noticed that I had left my pen and notebook on the bed and she was worried that they'd get lost, so she put them away in the drawer. But my pen isn't there. I'm distraught.

You're probably going to start laughing. “A pen. What a little thing to get so distressed about!”

If only you knew the trouble I had to take to get that pen. I saved up my pocket money for two weeks. Some of my comrades have two or three pens, but I had none and I couldn't resist buying one.

The difficulties I faced in getting this pen are a mirror of all my other problems. My mother had given me some money with which to buy bread. For days, I had only eaten yellow rice. I preferred going hungry and saving so that I could buy the pen. How I suffered for that pen!

Then I got another pen. I won it at the Children's Day celebrations on the first of June for being a good student. From then on, I no longer lacked pens.

But my dear old pen gave me a sense of power. It made me understand the meaning of a difficult life or a happy life. Every time I see the pen, it's as if I were seeing my mother. It's as if she was encouraging me to work hard and make it into the girls' senior school.

Now I've disappointed my mother. What am I but a useless burden? At school I lead a life that isn't worthwhile. I couldn't make it into the girls' school. What's the use of going on?

But I must think positively. I have to succeed. I will, I really will find an ideal job. And I'll be happy with it.

Saturday, August 4
A fine day

This morning Mother and Father went off to work in the fields. No one had yet taken them any bread. My brother Ma Yichao said he would go and asked me to cut the grass for the donkey. I took the basket and the scythe and went out. I walked along to my fourth uncle's house and called to my other brother, Ma Yiting, who was there, and we went off together. A few small children followed us. We all worked side by side. We each cut a bagful of grass, then went home laughing and chatting. Everyone looked very happy.

Maybe they think this is the end of their work for the day, that now it's their turn to ask for things…. Will they go on living in this ridiculous manner?

I must study hard. When I'm older I'll make sure that my children have happy days, that they're not always caught up in money problems, which is the case at home now. If they don't go to school, I'll ask them to grow grass and tend the ox and the sheep. Then what they earn in a year will be enough to support them.

But I'm already planning my future life even though I have no idea if I'll succeed. Let's hope so.

Sunday, August 5
A fine day

This afternoon, when my parents got back from their work in the fields, they fell asleep on the bed. I went out to tether the donkey and give him some grass to eat. When I came back inside, I saw that my parents were even more deeply asleep. I didn't wake them. I found a little wood for burning and some dung and brought them in. I took yesterday's ashes out of the stove and started to light the fire. But it wouldn't take. Nothing I did would make it light. I wanted to die.

At that moment I understood how painstaking Mother has to be when she prepares our food. Just getting the fire going is a struggle. I've tried it just once and it makes me want to die. How has Mother managed to keep the fire alight, let alone do all our cooking for so long?

I started helping in the kitchen at the age of seven. Many years have passed since then. I've also lit the fire in the stove on occasion, but always with the help of my brothers. Today I'm alone. But I've got to get it going.

Finally I manage and I can start cooking. When the food is ready I wake my parents so that they can eat. During the meal Mother starts to tell stories from her childhood. It's so nice to listen to her. She laughs, and her eyes seem to laugh at the same time. I want her to laugh all the time and wish she had no more worries and no reasons to be sad.

If only my wish would come true!

Thursday, August 9
A fair day

This morning my two brothers went out to cut grass for the donkey while Father was working on the threshing floor. Mother is ill. She stayed in bed.

I tried to get the fire going for the meal, but my brothers came back before it caught. I asked them why they had been so quick.

“We want to work today. When we've finished eating, Cousin She, a friend from the village, is coming to pick us up so that we can walk to Wangshanwa together and help with the harvest there. It's an hour away.”

Soon lunch is ready. Cousin She arrives. I fill two bowls for my parents and also offer one to She. But She doesn't want to eat. So I offer the bowl to my brother. We're sitting on the threshing floor, which has been tidied up, and we laugh and talk. Cousin She tells us a story.

“When we go to pick
fa cai
, we always have a great time. My fifth uncle's grandmother always sings while she's scything. And she dances. All the people at the top of the hill stop working and just watch her. She's such a spectacle. She may be old, they say, but she's got a joyous heart and wonderful character.”

I don't believe this description of the grandmother's character. I believe this woman to be sad and unhappy. How do I know? Because my mother's done the same work. So this grandmother who's been cutting grass all her life into her old age, who's never had a decent outfit of clothes, who had to earn money to find a
good wife for her son…well, now her life is so unenviable that her only joy is dancing. If she doesn't dance now, she'll never have time to dance at all.

Why are we alive? The rich die after having known all kinds of pleasures. It's a happy death. The poor live with tears in their eyes. When they die, their death is painful. And that's the truth of it.