Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The things I had brought with me from Capital City filled more than a dozen trunks.
Naturally, I had no shortage of umbrellas.
My little brother and sister held up their pretty little umbrellas and strutted proudly along the ridges between the fields.
Some of the village children jeered at them.
“Hahaha, look at Lin Xiaohua and Lin Daniu putting on airs!”
“Holding umbrellas, are they? Like young masters and young ladies from the city!”
“That’s hilarious!”
Xiaohua and Daniu grew uneasy under their laughter.
They hesitated, looking as if they no longer wanted to hold the umbrellas.
I glared at them. “Hold them properly!”
Otherwise, what if they got dizzy from the sun and suffered heatstroke later?
Daniu was a little boy so tanned that all you could make out was his row of white teeth.
Xiaohua was a little better-but only a little!
I refused to spend every day looking at two little black loaches!
I turned to the children making faces at us and beckoned. “No laughing! Come here. I’ll give you candy if you help us carry some things.”
They swarmed over at once.
When they were still far away, these little dark-skinned rascals had been giggling and mocking us.
But once they came closer, they actually turned shy.
They nudged one another, then each reservedly took a piece of candy from my hand.
I nodded and praised them. “Good children. Share the umbrellas with Xiaohua and Daniu.”
So they crowded together beneath the umbrellas.
One moment, they curiously touched the tassels dangling from the umbrella handles.
The next, they poked at the embroidered flowers on the canopies.
Leading this band of little radish-heads, I walked along the field ridges.
At a glance, the people busy in the fields looked like ants.
Only when I reached the thatched shed did I finally see my parents clearly.
The two of them were bent at the waist, sweat pouring down like rain.
Every drop quickly sank into the earth.
The green rice seedlings rustled as the wind swept over them.
They looked like waves of green rolling one after another.
My parents heard my little brother and sister calling out.
Carrying their hoes, they walked over, their faces a muddied color where sweat and soil had mingled.
Suddenly, I heard Xiaohua cry out in alarm, “Sister! Why are you crying?”
Mother had already come over.
She put down her hoe and raised her hand to wipe away my tears.
But when she saw that her rough hand was covered in mud, she hurriedly drew it back.
Uneasy, she asked, “Are you feeling unwell from the sun?”
Father coaxed me too. “Oh dear! Didn’t we tell you to stay home and eat eggs? There’s watermelon chilling in the well too! Did Daniu and Xiaohua upset you?”
I threw myself into Mother’s arms.
She was covered in gray dust, but she did not smell unpleasant.
Mother hesitated, then patted my back and said softly, “There, there, Yanyan. If you’ve suffered some grievance, just tell Mother.”
I had simply, all of a sudden, remembered the year I was thirteen, when the palace advocated frugality.
The Empress Dowager personally opened up a plot of land in the palace and began planting fruits and melons.
Back then, everyone in Capital City followed suit, each planting crops in their own gardens.
At the autumn banquet, everyone brought the fruits and melons they had grown and compared them with one another.
When they gathered together, they would chat about whose hoe was the prettiest, inlaid with pearls.
Or whose hat had the finest embroidery, made with lifelike Suzhou embroidery.
I had made myself a charming farmer woman’s outfit, which led countless others to rush to imitate me.
Everyone laughed and composed poems, filling their verses with the hardships of farming and sericulture.
Looking back now, those were nothing but self-indulgent complaints!
When had we ever truly seen the suffering of farmers?
Even when we imitated peasants at work, all we did was scatter a few seeds!
Occasionally, we would carry a delicate watering can and sprinkle them with water.
When had we ever truly been stained with mud?
My parents and my little brother and sister had no idea what I was crying about.
When Mother saw Xiao Tingyun come to the fields to help, she said worriedly, “Tingyun, hurry and talk to her. I don’t know what happened. Yanyan suddenly started crying, and nothing we say can stop her.”
Xiao Tingyun said indifferently, “Having fields to farm and food to eat, with no illness or disaster-that is a good life. They don’t find it bitter.”
Crying, I shouted, “It is bitter! I think it’s far too bitter! I don’t want Father and Mother and my little brother and sister to live like this!”