Chapter Three

I had been crying at funerals for a living for about ten years. It wasn’t my choice, but there were no better jobs available. I had to find a job, as the husband and I were both out of work.

In the village, most people around my age had no jobs. They spent a lot of time in the fields allocated by the village committee, growing rice, onions, sweetcorn, potatoes and sweet potatoes. We used to have some fields, but they were confiscated by the committee on grounds of neglect. We were now amongst the very few people in the village who had to buy rice and flour. I wish I could turn back time. I would have done all the hard labour needed to keep the fields.

There were hardly any young people left in the village, as there was no future for them here. Who wanted to live in a smelly place? They had all gone to cities for education or work, including my own daughter. Some of the more ambitious young people had gone abroad.

Once young people had families, they would send their children back to live with their parents to save on childcare costs. If they earned good money, they would ask their parents to move to the cities to take care of their households. But that rarely happened. It was hard to survive in cities, unless they happened to make a fortune, which was very unlikely for the majority. Over the years, two or three grandmas in the village had been abroad to look after their grandchildren, which caused much envy at the time.

I was born in this village. It’s called xī ní hé cūn, West Mud River Village. There was enough mud in the village, but there was no river. I had asked Mum and Dad whether there was ever a river before. The answer wasno. I then asked whyriver was in the name of the village. They said nobody knew why, or cared what the village was called. But I cared. Whenever people asked me where I was from, I felt embarrassed. I hated the thought of people laughing at such an ill-fitting name.

There were two mountains that formed the backdrop of the village – one was called South Mountain and the other North Mountain. They were useless mountains. People used to bury their ancestors on South Mountain, but it wasn’t in use any more. In theory, Mum and Dad were allocated grave plots on the mountain by the village committee, but these days people would buy a plot in the graveyard instead. Then there was North Mountain. There was nothing there, apart from some rocks and maybe a handful of trees and plenty of weeds. I had never been to the mountains, and most people in the village had never been there either.

The husband wasn’t home. He had snuck out when I was in the backyard.

Mum and Dad used to keep two pigs in a pigsty in the backyard. The filthy pigsty was still there, in the corner of the backyard. There was a chicken run too. We used to have our own eggs and chicken meat. We stopped raising pigs when the husband and I got married. He said it was too dirty and smelly, and it was hard work. Mum insisted on keeping the chicken run. Three years ago, after she moved to the brother’s, we ate some chickens and sold the rest.

There was plenty of room to grow vegetables in the backyard. I mainly grew what Mum used to grow, like onions, beans, snow peas, mooli, potatoes and sweet potatoes, together with some green vegetables, since they were easy to look after. Stir-fried sweet potato leaves were the most delicious.

We had always been tight for money when I was little, so being thrifty was second nature. I used to think money wouldn’t be tight one day, but sadly it still often was. I would sit on the bench in the backyard admiring my vegetables. I couldn’t help trying to work out how much money I had saved. I wouldn’t make a fortune through growing my own vegetables, but it was a little help.

The husban