Among my grandparents’ six children, the one who held the family together was my second uncle.
His marriage was unhappy, but that never made him slack off. In truth, my grandfather’s household was carried on his back. Without him, the family would have fallen apart long ago.
He was also the best student among the six children. But when he was in middle school, my grandmother stopped him from continuing and kept him home to work. When she first married into the family, she had expected my grandfather’s father to provide for everyone. Instead, he died at the traditional age count of fifty-six. My grandfather had been in poor health since childhood, so she made the practical, harsh decision to keep my second uncle out of school.
That decision changed his whole life.
He was born in 1952. In those years, someone who finished middle school could be assigned to a huge military-industrial factory in our area. I once mentioned an older relative whose eldest son graduated from middle school and was assigned there; he eventually became the factory director and died of liver cancer a few years ago in his sixties. The factory itself has since shut down.
My second uncle began working for the production team at sixteen, driving animal-drawn carts. Back then, village labor depended not only on people but also on livestock. He learned how to handle draft animals and use the curved-shaft plow. In spring, the animals pulled the plow across the fields to loosen the soil and turn up the corn stalks left from the previous year so they could all be burned together.
He once told me that in those days he and other young men from the village would set out after midnight, driving carts all the way to the county seat—an area that has since been absorbed into the city districts—to haul goods back. He still remembers exactly where they ate on the road and where various incidents happened.
During the Cultural Revolution, he was considered both literate and physically capable, so he attended all kinds of struggle sessions and village meetings. Before those meetings began, people would hold up Chairman Mao’s quotations in their right hands, clench their fists, and shout in rhythm: “Long live our great leader Chairman Mao, long live, long live, long live!” Then they would add: “Wishing good health to Chairman Mao’s close comrade-in-arms, our Vice Chairman Lin, good health, good health, good health!” Only after that would the meeting or denunciation session actually start.
He also clearly remembers several people who were persecuted to death in that period. In one nearby village, a father and three of his sons—the eldest, the third, and the fourth—were beaten to death by Red Guards with heavy clubs. Only the second son survived because he happened to be away from home. The family had committed no political crime; they had simply once been landlords. There were several other atrocities as well, and he has never forgotten them.
Then came 1971, when Vice Chairman Lin fled and died in a plane crash. Once the news broke, the entire county went into lockdown. Near the explosives factory there was a powder magazine, and militiamen with loaded guns surrounded the walls. My second uncle sensed the seriousness of it and asked someone nearby what had happened. One person told him in a low voice that it was grave and must not be spread around: he had heard that Vice Chairman Lin had defected. Soon afterward, the village loudspeaker announced the news publicly. From then on, the line about “our Vice Chairman Lin” disappeared from struggle sessions and village meetings.
The countless meetings of those years—especially the denunciation meetings—left deep impressions on him. Much of what was said there stayed in his memory.
In 1976, he was admitted to the county’s May Seventh University to study veterinary medicine. He spent one year in class and two years in practical training. The study itself was compressed and intense: in a single year they had to learn the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in pigs, cattle, sheep, and horses. Teachers lectured during the day, and students stayed up late teaching themselves at night.
Meals had to be bought with grain coupons plus cash. Rural students did not have grain coupons, so they had to spend money buying extra coupons from urban workers whose allotments were more than they needed. As a result, my second uncle was often hungry, and most of the other trainees were in the same condition—thin to the bone.
He finished in 1979. Under normal circumstances, the graduates were supposed to be assigned to the veterinary station where their household registration was located, with a monthly salary of a little over forty yuan. But he had terrible luck. At that moment, the head of the veterinary station had been falsely accused, imprisoned, and badly beaten. With the station left leaderless, my second uncle was unable to take up the position he should have received. Later the case was cleared, and it was confirmed that the station head had indeed been wronged. After his release, he was assigned to serve as head of a veterinary station in another township, a place now also folded into the city districts.
After 1980, my second uncle worked as a veterinarian hired by the village brigade, earning a little over thirty yuan a month. When no one’s animals were sick, he could stay home and work the fields. When livestock fell ill, he went out to diagnose and treat them. He was genuinely skilled. Using acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, he cured many pigs, cattle, horses, and other animals.
By sheer coincidence, I later studied veterinary medicine in college. He gave me all of his old books. But my ability is nowhere near his, and I still feel ashamed when I think of that.
Around 1986, things changed again. The veterinary station was dismantled, and the village stopped employing veterinarians. Later, new animal health supervision agencies appeared, but by then access already depended on money and connections. He had no way in. So he went back to what he had always relied on: working the land.
The village where my grandfather’s family lived had a bit more arable land than the neighboring villages, but very little of it was truly good land. Most of it was poor soil—stony, broken up, and irregularly shaped. Based on a family size of eight, they were allocated eleven mu of farmland, all dry fields, not a single paddy field. Of those eleven mu, nine were poor-quality plots.
Because my second uncle had learned to use the curved-shaft plow in the production team, and because the family kept cattle, every spring he would first plow the family’s own land and then hire himself out to plow for others in the village. Back then quite a few households still kept cattle or horses, and they were hired out by the mu. Later, as fewer and fewer people kept draft animals, he actually became busier in spring. Even now the family still keeps a mule. Recently its hoof became infected, and medicine has already cost more than 400 yuan.
In my grandfather’s household, apart from the eldest uncle who had already married and set up his own home, my second uncle was the only one with truly strong physical endurance. Most of the heaviest farm work—planting, fertilizing, harvesting—fell on him. Because he knew how to work with animals and use a cart, he saved the family a great deal of labor.
Even today, because the family’s land is scattered into many tiny, badly misshapen plots, the combine harvesters common in Heilongjiang still cannot be used there. Harvesting is done by hand.
That burden kept him from leaving home to find wage work elsewhere.
At the end of 1990, a nationally prominent political figure, known for major anti-corruption achievements, pushed through a policy aimed at lowering grain prices in order to reduce the cost of living for urban residents. My mother once told me that she was holding me in her arms, watching the black-and-white television at home during the evening national news at seven, when this figure appeared and said: “Lowering the price of farmers’ grain means social stability! Social sta-bil-i-ty!”
After that policy took effect, state grain purchase prices collapsed. If farmers delivered grain to the state depot, they would lose everything. Roadblocks were also set up to stop private grain transport, so even those who wanted to send grain elsewhere to sell had no way to move it. People lost the will to harvest. Cattle and sheep were left to graze directly in the fields. After that, land was abandoned, and anyone with even a small skill went away to find work.
The blow extended to animal husbandry as well. At the time, the production cost of intensive chicken farming—excluding labor—worked out to 1.5 to 1.8 yuan per jin of eggs, with the market price around 2.0 yuan per jin. But in the cities, egg prices fell to 0.5 to 1.0 yuan per jin. Urban residents bought huge quantities to take home and pickle into salted eggs, while producers absorbed devastating losses. In one nearby village, a farmer who raised poultry was ruined by this policy. Bankrupted and furious, he hanged himself.
Today, when people mention that political figure, they always bring up the anti-corruption record. No one talks about “lowering the price of farmers’ grain for social stability.” It is a kind of selective blindness.
Even now, when this comes up, my second uncle is still filled with grief and anger.