When my father died a martyr, he was 34; my mother was 28, I was 8 and my brother only 3. As an impoverished widow, my mother managed to go through all the adversities and hardships to bring up two small children. It was very hard for a young widow to remain single purely for the sake of her children. When we were small, she refused proposals of re-marriage for fear we might fall victim to an unkind stepfather. When we were older, we ourselves did not quite like the idea of having a stepfather. And when we were old enough and thought that we could accept a stepfather, her best years had already gone.

I remembered the day when she got her first job after father died. She left at noon and told me and my brother that if she was not back to cook supper, it would mean that she had got a job. We waited at the landing of the staircase. Supper time came and went, but Mother was not back. Though hungry, we comforted each other and were happy. I also remembered the Chinese New Year’s Eve when I almost failed to be with her. That was my first year in college and I felt uncomfortable about spending more money on travel. I went to a relative who knew some truck drivers taking the route to Zhangzhou. I waited for four days, but could not ferret out a single truck, nor even a tractor. On the day before the Eve, I bought a train ticket at an economy rate. It was the kind of train that would stop at every small station and would take twice as much time to cover the same distance. When I reached Zhangzhou, I had no more money left, not even the 25 fen (Chinese cents) for the bike ride that would take me to the commune three kilometers away where Mother worked. At last I found a peasant bike-rider who agreed to take me first and be paid later. It was already quite dark when we reached our destination, and the usual New Year Eve’s dinner time—the traditional time for family reunion—had passed. Mother was in tears thinking that I could not be home. So exhilarated was she to see me emerging out of the dusk that she paid the peasant rider twice as much as he had asked for.

In the famine years that followed, in order to save every liang (one tenth of Chinese jin, approximately 50 grams) of rice that was to be exchanged for rice coupons which would accompany her letters to me two or three times a month, she ate whatever edible stuff she could find: sweet potato vine, grain bran, pumpkin, and wild herbs. During my summer vacations, she would take me into the fields in the early morning when there had been a typhoon or rain during the night. There we would look in the sweet potato fields for any leftovers that became visible, and movable, after the rain. On the day I was to go back to college, she would get up at four o'clock to prepare an early breakfast. Then I would ride on a borrowed bicycle to Zhangzhou, carrying her and the heavy provisions she had prepared for me to take to college. The bicycle that was lent to us was usually not new, and demanded good riding skills, particularly when a strong wind blew head on. On one such windy morning, I tried and fell several times, unable to carry both Mother and the luggage. Fearing that I might not be able to catch the bus in time, she urged me to go by myself. She would walk, she said. Before the bus started, she did arrive. It was a full hour’s walk on an early and windy winter morning. Tiny icicles had formed on her eyebrows while sweat was steaming from her head, where, on trying to wipe sweat from it, I saw that gray hairs had begun to show. How many more gray hairs, I wondered, has she gained over the years?

• Mama
• Mom in USA

(Click image to enlarge.)

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• Mama 妈妈
• Maternal Grandma & Us 跟祖母合拍的照片
• 内祖母和外祖母 (Chinese text only)
• 海澄和海澄姨父母 (Chinese text only)
• Relatives 亲戚们
• 过农历新年的回忆 (Chinese text only)
• Hong & Sandy 2005 China trip 庄宏秀娟二○○五年中国行
• Wei & Maki 2004 home trip 庄伟麻纪子二○○四年回国行
• Li-qing's China trip 2004 二○○四年清明节期间，丽卿回乡
• Our alley 家门口的小巷