“We will place men here and here,” stout-hearted Ching proposed. He was a courageous man of whom it was said, “He can march forty miles in a day and fight that evening.” He had a broad, resolute face, and in many of the things he did in the years following his impromptu military service he displayed great fortitude, so that although he was clearly a braggart, men did not begrudge him his title of general and listened when he predicted: “The Tartars will approach our village by this route. What other way would a sensible general choose?”
But before General Ching’s theories could be tested, an enemy far worse than the Tartars, and far more familiar, descended upon the village. The rains did not fall as required, and a hot sun blazed remorselessly in the copper sky. Seedlings withered before the middle of spring, and by midsummer even drinking water was at a prohibitive premium. Families with old people began to wonder when the ancient fathers and mothers would die, and babies whined.
Farmer Char and his wife Nyuk Moi had lived through four famines and they knew that if one practiced a rigid discipline and ate the roots of grass and chewy tendrils dug from the forest, there was always a chance that one’s family would survive. But this year the famine struck with overpowering force, and by midsummer it became apparent that most of the village families must either take to the road or die among the parched and blazing hills. Therefore, when the sun was most intense, Char and his wife fetched mud bricks from the almost vanished village stream and walled up the entrance to their home, placing a cross of black sticks where the door had been. When the house was almost sealed, Char went inside and weighed for the last time the little bag of seed grain upon which life would depend when his family returned next spring. Hefting it in his hand, he assured his miserable group: “The seed grain is now locked inside. It will wait for us.”
He then climbed out and swiftly closed the opening. When this was done, he turned his back sorrowfully upon his home and led his family out of the walled village and onto the highway. For the next seven months they would roam over the face of China, begging food, eating garbage where there was any, and trying to avoid selling their daughters to old men with food. Twice before, Char and Nyuk Moi had experienced the wandering months and had brought their brood home intact and they felt confident that they could do the same this time, for as they started on the dreadful pilgrimage Char swore hopefully, “In seven months we will be back here … all of us.” But this time Nyuk Moi was not so hopeful, and Char noticed that his wife kept her two pretty daughters close to her, day and night.
Concerning only one thing did the Chars have no fear. During their absence their house would be inviolate. Highwaymen might murder them along the road. Slave buyers in cities might try to filch their daughters. Possibly, soldiers would wipe out all the wandering families in a general massacre. And corrupt officials might trick any family into slavery. But no one in China would break into a house that had been sealed with mud and across whose door sticks had been crossed, for even an idiot knew that unless the house was there when the travelers returned, and unless the seed grain was secure, life itself—and not only that of the family in question—would perish. So while the Chars wandered across northern China, seeking almost hopelessly for food, their house stood sacrosanct.
In the autumn of 856 in a city on the northern borders of Honan, farmer Char was bitterly tempted. There the rains had been good and the crops were fine. For several weeks Char and his family went out to the harvested fields at night and crawled across them, on hands and knees, smelling out lost grains that even the insects had missed, and in this cruel way they had uncovered just enough hidden morsels to stay alive. Nyuk Moi cooked the gleanings with a kind of aerated mud, some grass, and a bird that had not been dead too long. The resulting dish was not too bad.
But when a spell of four successive days passed with no gleanings to be found and when no birds died, at least not within reach of the starving family, the servant of a rich man came to the tree where the Chars were sleeping, and he carried in a bag a bundle of freshly baked cakes, whose aroma drove the smaller Char children mad with hunger, for they were the kind of cakes Nyuk Moi had often baked, and the servant said bluntly, “My master would consider buying your oldest daughter.”
Char, at the point of starvation, found himself asking seriously, “Would he keep her for his own?”
“Perhaps for a time,” the servant said, rustling his package. “But sooner or later he sends most of the girls on to the city.”
“How much would he give us?” Char asked pitifully.
The servant grew expansive and said, “Cakes, enough grain to live on till the spring.”
“Come back in an hour,” Char said, and as the man disappeared, swinging his tempting bundle of aromatic cakes, Char assembled his family, saying frankly, “The owner of the fields has offered to buy Siu Lan.”
Nyuk Moi, who had foreseen that this must soon happen, drew her quiet child to her and, placing the girl on the ground between her bony knees, asked, “Is there no other way?”
“The gleanings are no more,” Char said despondently. “Winter comes soon. This time we’ll be lucky if we get home with any children.”
Nyuk Moi did not rail at her husband, for she knew of no alternative to propose, not even one, and the family had about agreed to sell Siu Lan, Beautiful Orchid, when they heard a whistling, and some stranger was whistling a song long familiar in their village and not known much elsewhere. “Who’s out there?” Char cried.
The stranger, recognizing his village’s accent, shouted, “General Ching!” And in a moment he hurried up, square-faced, sallow with hunger, but as ebullient as ever. “How goes the famine with you?” he asked boisterously. “With me not so good.”
Char said sadly and without explanation, “We are meeting to decide about selling our oldest daughter, Siu Lan.”
“I’d buy her!” General Ching cried, bowing gallantly to the frightened girl. “Anybody’d buy her!”
“The rich man’s servant is coming back within the hour to hear our answer,” Char added.
General Ching’s agile mind swept into military action. “Servant? Rich man?” he snapped, his hungry eyes darting about in the darkness. And in an instant he had a complete plot. “We will tell the servant that we will sell the girl. I’m your older brother. I make the decisions. Then you and I and Nyuk Moi and your older boy will deliver her. As soon as the servant gets close enough to the house so that we know where the rich old man lives, we kill him, take everything he has and send the booty back with the boy. We then enter the house, present Siu Lan, and as the rich old man steps forward to take her, we murder him. There may be a fight, so each of you, Char, Nyuk Moi and Siu Lan must be prepared to kill. Siu Lan, do you think you could kill a man?”
“Yes,” the frail girl said.
“Good,” General Ching said, rubbing his fleshless hands.
“Will the plan work?” Char asked.
“If it doesn’t, we will die of starvation anyway,” the general replied.
“If they catch us, what will they do?” the oldest boy asked.
“They will put us in cages,” General Ching explained, “and starve us to death and carry us from village to village so that other starving people will see what happens if farmers kill to get food, and at the end, when they see we are almost dead, they will take us out of the cage and cut us up into three hundred little pieces and hang our heads on the town gate. So, you understand the risks?” he asked coldly.
“Yes,” the Chars replied.
“Ssssshhhh,” General Ching whispered. “Here comes the servant.”
The man bustled up, officious and well fed, still rustling his bundle of cakes, and said, “Have you made up your minds?”
“I am the older brother,” General Ching announced. “We have discussed it and have agreed to sell.” Whereupon the servant led Siu Lan and her mother Nyuk Moi and the oldest boy and Char and the general back toward his master’s house, and when they had gone far enough so that
everyone saw clearly how the rich man’s home was laid out, and where the entrances were, the general strangled the servant and threw the cakes to the boy, who ran back with them to the starving children and the old grandmother.
“Now it takes courage,” Ching said solemnly. He led the way into the rich man’s house, presented Siu Lan, and said, “Master, we have produced the girl.”
“Where is Ping?” the man asked suspiciously.
“He is giving the cakes to the starving children,” square-faced Ching said gently. “Master, have you ever seen your own children starve?”
“No,” the man swallowed hard, trying not to look at Siu Lan, who was most temptingly beautiful.
“I have,” Ching said softly. “In this famine I have buried three of my children.”
“Oh, no!” Nyuk Moi gasped, and something in the manner by which she betrayed the fact that she did not know of General Ching’s misfortune uncovered the plot to the rich, canny old man, and he tried to pull a bell which would summon servants, but General Ching coldly intervened, grasped the man’s fat arm and bent it backwards.
“Three of my children have died,” Ching repeated slowly, “and now you will die.” With tremendous force, he closed his bony hands about the man’s throat and strangled him, but in dying the man who bought girls for the city managed to utter a cry, and a servant rushed in with a weapon, trying to slash at General Ching, but Char leaped upon the man and the weapon fell to the floor, whereupon Nyuk Moi grabbed it and killed the intruder.
When the two bodies were kicked into a corner, General Ching said, “I have buried my children, and I have lived on clay, but tonight I am going to feast.” And he ransacked the house, bringing forth all the food and wine he could find. Then he sent Siu Lan to fetch the children, and the feast lasted till midnight, with the general and Char’s old mother singing mountain songs. Then, almost drunk with wine, the general said, “All the time we have been drinking I have been wondering, ‘How can I help Char’s family escape? With six children and a grandmother?’ I’m sure I could manage for myself, but with so many in your family I don’t know what to suggest. Shall we scurry to the city and try to lose ourselves there? Or shall we hide in the hills?”
It was then that tough-minded Nyuk Moi proposed: “This is a time of war, and soldiers are everywhere. So I believe that when the authorities discover these deaths they will first cry, ‘Soldiers did this!’ So they will waste valuable time looking for soldiers, and we will march far into the hills. Later, when they change their minds and say, ‘It must have been starving farmers,’ we will be so far away it won’t be worth their while to follow us, for some new battle will engage them. Therefore we must hurry to the hills.”
“Would you feel better if I stayed with you?” General Ching asked.
“Of course,” Nyuk Moi replied. “You are now our brother.”
“But will our plan work,” the general asked, “if we have to take along the old grandmother?”
“We will take her,” Char said firmly.
The general frowned and said, “Well, anyway, I will join you, for this famine has killed my entire family.”
So the little band struggled back toward the mountains, planning their route so as to arrive home in time for spring planting, but as they approached their walled-in village scarifying news awaited them, for in their absence the Tartars had come and had broken open the inviolate seals and had stolen the seed grain. When Char stood before the sanctuary he had so carefully sealed and saw its shattered door, he experienced a bitterness he had never before known, not even in those moments when he was preparing to sell his daughter. He wanted to fight and slay, and in his anger he cried, “What kind of men are they, that they would break open a sealed house?”
Futilely he looked at General Ching, then dashed about the village summoning all the outraged farmers. Pointing at his trusted friend, he cried, “General Ching has shown us how to dispose our men so that when the Tartars come back we can annihilate them. I have found that Ching is a fine military strategist, and I think we had better adopt his plan. Let us kill these damnable barbarians … all of them.”
General Ching, quivering with excitement at the prospect of military action, made a great show of assigning his troops to strategic points, but as he did so he heard Nyuk Moi’s cold rational voice asking, “What are we fighting to protect? This village? We have no seed to build this village up again.”
And as the farmers considered this fact, and as they felt hunger come upon them, even in the clement spring, they began to wonder, and at this moment a solitary outpost unit of the Tartars—two brutal men in furs and on big horses—swept into the village, rode briskly about, and reined up before Char’s house. The men were so obviously conquerors that General Ching’s bold strategies were not even attempted, and the villagers listened as the invaders shouted in barbarous Chinese, “You have three days to abandon this village. All men above the age of fifteen will join the army. Women may go where they like.” The men pulled back on their horses, wheeled madly in the dust, and rode off.
That night General Ching proposed his plan. “When I was in the army I heard of a place they call the Golden Valley. In the morning we start marching there, and everyone who can walk will accompany us. For here there is no hope.”
Char asked, “What do you mean, everyone who can walk?”
And Ching replied, “The old folks will have to stay behind. They cannot encumber us on the road.”
Families looked in apprehension at their older members and a mournful silence fell across the village, so that General Ching was forced to move from family to family, saying bluntly, like a soldier, “Old man, you cannot come with us. Old woman, you have seen your life.”
When he reached Char’s family he pointed directly at Char’s mother and said harshly, “Old woman, you were brave the night we murdered the rich man, so you will understand.”
Char remonstrated, “General, it is not within our religion to abandon a mother. Confucius is strict in this regard: ‘Honor thy parents.’ ”
“We are going on a long journey, Char. Maybe a thousand miles over mountains and rivers. The old cannot come with us.”
One of the frightened men of the village edged into the conversation and asked, “Have you ever been to what you call the Golden Valley?”
“No,” Ching replied.
“Are you sure it is where you say?” the man continued.
“No, I have only heard tales about it … while I was in the army. Good land. Gentle rivers.”
“Do you think we can get there from here?” the doubtful one asked.
General Ching grew impatient and pulled up his rags so that he looked more like a soldier. “I don’t know the pathway, or whether we will be accepted when we get there. I don’t know how long the journey will take. But by the demons of hell I know that I do not want to live any longer in a land where men break into sealed houses and where you starve three years in every ten.” Suddenly sweeping his arms to include all the village, he stormed: “I don’t know where we’re going, but Siu Lan is going with me, and the rest of you can rot in hell.”
Quickly he wheeled about and faced Siu Lan, the girl he had rescued from the old man, and he bowed before her as a proper general would, and said softly, “May the felicitations of a thousand years rest upon you.” Then he turned gravely to Char and explained: “Old friend, I am not pleased to marry your beautiful daughter in this rude and uncivil way. I would like to send you a thousand cakes and a hundred pigs and barrels of wine. I would like to dress her in brocades from Peking and send a horse for her and musicians. But, Brother Char, we are starving to death and I at least am going south. Forgive me for my rudeness.” He then faced Nyuk Moi and said gallantly, “Char’s wife, let us make believe the famine is not upon us. I shall go to my house for the last time and wait there in the darkness. Will you consent, please, to bring your daughter to me in formal style?” He bowed low and left.
Farmer Char organized the marria
ge procession, and from the low stone houses streamed out the old people who had been condemned to stay behind, and they marched behind the bride, and one man played a flute, but there were no gifts and no brocades. At the door of General Ching’s house, where there had once been many children, Char knocked twice and cried, “Awake! Awake! It is dawn, and we bring your bride!” It was nearly midnight, of course, and when the general appeared he was dressed in rags, but he had seen proper weddings and he bowed gravely to Siu Lan, and the flute played madly, and everyone pretended to exchange the customary gifts, and the general took his bride.
At dawn next morning, in the spring of 857, Char, then forty-four years old, assembled his family and said to them, “On our journey we must listen to General Ching, for he is a sensible man, and if we have any hopes of reaching a better land, it will be because of his genius. Therefore we must obey him.”
When the rude army mustered, the Chars were first in line, followed by two hundred starving men and women ready to follow General Ching on the exodus south, but when it came time to bid farewell to this parched and inhospitable combination of rock and reluctant soil, the women in the procession could not control their tears. There was the memorable rock where the farmer Moo, a man much set upon by fate, had finally killed his wife. Here was the tree where the soldiers had hanged the bandit who had stayed hidden by the village for six weeks. There was the house where babies were born. It was a lucky house, that one, perpetually filled with children. And outside the village walls stood the fields where men and women toiled. How sweet this village had been. If there was food, all shared. If there was none, all starved together, and women wept at the memory of those days, now gone forever.