By Zhu De

L oving M emories of M other

By Zhu De

I was deeply grieved to learn of mother's death.I love my mother. Of her hardworking life,in particular,a great many things will forever be cherished in my memory.

I come from a tenant farmer's family.My original family home was Shao Guan,GuangdongProvince,into which my ancestors had moved from another province as settlers.During the mass migration of peasants from Huguang to Sichuan Province,my ancestors moved to Ma An Chang,Yi Long County,Sichuan.From generation to generation,they tilled land for landlord only to eke out a bare subsistence.Peoplewhoassociatedwith them as friends were likewise honest impoverished peasants.Mother gave birth to thirteen children in all.But only the first eight of them survived while the next five were drowned at birth by my parents against their will because they were too poor to raise them all.How anguished,sad and helpless mother must have felt!She did manage,however,to have the eight children brought up all by herself.But she was too busily occupied with household chores and farming to look after the kids so that they were left alone crawling about in the fields.

Mother was a hardworking woman. As far as I can remember,she would always get up before daybreak.In our household of more than twenty members,all women would take turns to do cooking for oneyear.Apartfrom cooking,mother did farming,planted vegetables,fed pigs,raised silkworms and spun cotton into yarn.Tall and of strong build,she could carry two buck-ets of water or manure on a shoulder pole.

Mother worked hard from dawn till dusk.When we kids were four or five years old,we found ourselves automatically helping her with farm work.At the age of eight or nine,I could not only carry heavy loads on a shoulder pole or on my back,but also knew how to farm the land.I remember whenever I came back from school andsawmother busycookingin thekitchenwith sweatstreaming down her face,I would immediately laydownmy booksandsneak out to carry water on a shoulder pole or graze the cattle.In some seasons,I would study in the morning and work in the fields in the afternoon.During the busy season,I would spend all day working by the side of mother.It was then that she taught me a lot about the knack of farming.The life of a tenant farmer's family was of course hard,but we somehow managed to scrape along because mother was a clever and able woman.We used oil squeezed from seeds of tung trees to light our lamps. We ate rice cooked with peas,vegetables,sweet potatoes or coarse grain, andallseasonedwithrapeseed oil--food which landlords and rich people would scorn to eat.Nevertheless, mother's cooking was done so well that everybody ate with gusto.Only in good year,could we afford to have some home-made new clothes to wear. Mother would spin cottonintoyarn andthenasked somebody to have it woven into fabric and dyed.We calledit"home spunfabric".It wasasthickas coppercoinand wassodurable that after the eldest brother had grown out of the home-spun garment,it could still be used by the second and third brothers in turn without being worn out.

It was characteristic of an industrious household to be well-regulated and well-organized.My grandfather was a typical Chinese farmer.He went on doing farm work even he was an octogenarian.He would feel unwell with out doing farm labor.He was foundstill working on the farm even shortly before his death.Grandmother was the organizer of the household.She was in charge of all the farm affairs,assigning tasks to each member of the household.On each New Year's Eve, she would work out all job assignments for the coming year.Mother would be the first to get up before daybreak.Soon grandfather would be heard to rise from his bed,followed by the rest of the household.Some went about feeding pigs,some cutting firewood,and some carrying water on a shoulder pole.Mother always worked without complaint despite hardships. Amiable by nature,she never beat or scolded us,1e alone quarreled with anybody.Consequently,large as it was,the whole household,old and young,uncles and sisters-in-law,lived in perfect harmony.Out of her naive class consciousness,she showed sympathy for the poor.Despite her own straitenedcircumstances,sheoften went out of her way to help out those relatives who were even needier than herself.She lived a very frugal life. Father would occasionally smoke a long-stemmed Chinese pipe or drink some wine.To prevent us from falling into the same habit,mother kept us children under strict control.Her diligence and frugality,her generosity and kindheartedness--all have left a lasting impression on my mind.

(FromCollection of Zhu De's Essays. Translation:Huang Yan)

Photo of General Zhu De