The Chronicles of My Grandmother: Rabbit furs and Cicada pupa

One night, I was video-calling my Grandma while she was peeling peanuts. We were catching up on each other lives, and when we got to Grandma, she said with an excited tone: “I’ve finally grown the chicken to eight pounds! Your Grandma Xiang gave me two baskets of strawberries and she said she would leave you more when you come. I can’t wait for you to come home!” It has been four years since I last returned to my hometown, a mountain village in Weihai, Shang Dong, for the Spring Festival Union. 

My grandma went to Beijing to take care of me when I was born, and she stayed there for the following fifteen years. When our family decided to leave for Hong Kong, we tried to persuade her to come with us. 

“Well, I am not particularly interested in adapting to a new busy city. I want to go back because your uncle and cousin are there. My sisters and brothers are there as well. Plus, I own a piece of land there.” She shook her head, “But I will visit you sometime.” 

So she went back to the land where she had been living for sixty years. We have weekly calls with each other where we catch up on our lives. But this time was different, as I was interviewing her life stories, making her taken aback.

“My life story? Haha, let’s see what I can say about my life. I am already seventy-three years old but I feel like I’m fifty. My life isn’t special. I just work and work and I enjoy working. One of the proudest things in my life is sending your father to university. That was a big thing in our village in 1990s.” She smiles and straightens her back. “It was much harder back then.” 

Supporting a child into university was, and still is, a struggle for peasant families. After years of starvation and relentless agricultural work, my grandparents earned their first pot of gold in 1980s, when the Reform and Open Policy was implemented in China, thus allowing the Chinese people to finally open their own businesses. 

My grandparents started to buy rabbit fur from the villagers and sell it to the merchants in a nearby town. At the same time, they needed to take care of the crops in the field, planting cabbages, corn, wheat, sweet potatoes, chives, and eggplants one after another. Waking up at 4 in the morning became a normal thing for my grandma. She would water and fertilize the crops in two hours, then head back to make breakfast. After an hour of sleep, she would go out with my grandpa to collect rabbit furs and sell the furs on weekends. With years of blood, sweat, and tears, they finally saved enough money to buy the second television in the village. My father said all the neighbors, old or young, would crowd into their house to watch TV every evening. 

“Life is the fruit of hard work.” She gazed into the phone and said with great consideration. 

“I have been very competent in physical work since I was young. You need that strength and vitality to survive and to support your family.” 

“I have gone through horrible starvation in my childhood, though the situation was already much better in Shangdong.” My grandma was born in 1951, and she was eight when the Great Chinese Famine started. 

“I dug wild herbs daily and collected cicada pupa from trees.” Cicada pupa is a classical worm delicacy in Shandong with a juicy taste, and it is one of my best childhood memories. 

“I always led my grandma to find cicada pupa. She loved it.” She laughed and I smiled. “My grandma and I were really close, just like you and me.” 

“But the price of these delicious worms has increased dramatically, and the taste wasn’t as good as the old days.” 

My grandma has five siblings and she is the oldest sister, so starting at a young age, she was always responsible for taking care of the family. She is highly capable and loves working. When she was in Beijing, she always made our house so clean that you couldn’t find a single speck of dust on the floor. “Chopping wood, making dishes, tending to the babies, and collecting pinecones were all tasks that were up my alley. My mum appreciated my efforts, she said she couldn’t live without me. It always feels great when your family can live a better life because of your effort.” She said with pride and a beaming smile.

My grandma raised her siblings, moving onto my father and uncle, then taking care of me. She has never placed herself before others; always putting family as a priority over anything else. 

She has the traditional ideology of a Chinese peasant. Sometimes she is stingy with money or conservative with adventurous opportunities, but I admire her for building a better life for her family with diligence and sincerity. 

In the end, she said: 

“You made me realize that even though I’m a peasant, my life isn’t bland. I supported my family with all my effort and I have never violated my conscience. Most importantly, I raised two successful sons and two diligent granddaughters. And if you’re going to ask for my advice, I would say that you should be patient and hardworking, and above all, stay healthy.”