emories of my niang and my dia are always related to how hard they both worked. Our dia was often up before five-thirty in the morning, which meant my niang had to be up even earlier to cook him breakfast. With all the cooking, washing and sewing she had to do, she hardly had time or energy to pay each of us much attention. We all fought over her love and affection, and she was constantly exhausted. She cooked every meal, made all our clothes for every season and made all our quilts and blankets too. She carried the laundry either to the stream about twenty minutes south of our house or to a dam about half an hour away up on the Northern Hill. The stream often had little water in summer, and our big clay water-pot would be covered with ice in the winter. Yet she had no alternative for washing the dishes and clothes.

We always had to be extra careful that we didn't run out of coal for cooking and heating in the middle of winter. There was a great shortage of black coal throughout China so we never had enough, not even half-burnt coal, to heat the water for my niang's huge amounts of washing. Each family was apportioned a small quota of black coal on strict rations, but we only used it to ignite the half-burnt coal, which looked like little pieces of grey sponge. This coal had already been burnt once by factories or power stations, and if we saw some on the side of the road or in the garbage we would pick it up and take it home. Half-burnt coal was very hard to light. It needed black coal to keep it burning. Using the windbox, my niang first lit some dried grass, which was gathered and stacked during summer. Sometimes it could take up to fifteen minutes to light the fire. On windy days, the smoke from my niang's cooking would fill the house and we would all wake up in the morning coughing.

The small amount of black coal that was allocated to us we would try to keep for winter heating. The temperature in Qing-dao could go as low as minus fifteen degrees Celsius, and often the inside of our house felt colder than the outside. We'd mix the black coal with some dirt to make it last longer. Even heating up some water for the washing was a luxury for my niang. But our patched clothes were always clean. She took immense pride in making her seven sons look well cared for.

Every aspect of life was hard for my parents. We even had to sleep in the same bed. Jing Tring and I slept with them until I was eleven. All four of us, head-to-toe. I hated my brother's smelly feet right by my face and he must have hated me more since I was taller than he was. Sometimes he'd end up on my side of the kang with the quilt all to himself, and I'd have to grab the quilt back. But I loved sleeping with my parents. It felt so safe. I often wondered why my niang always looked for her hairpins on my dia's side in the mornings and imagined what they were up to while we were asleep. So often I tried to pretend that

I was asleep in order to find out their secrets, but I never managed to stay awake.

I rarely saw a smile from my niang, but when I did, my heart would blossom like a lotus flower. I would have given anything to make her smile. Occasionally, in my naïve way, I tried to cheer her up with stories. When I was only little, my second brother had done some jobs for someone in the village and he'd paid my brother with a young goat. We put all our prayers into that goat, hoping that when she grew up she might produce some milk for us which we could sell for cash. I loved that goat. I took her anywhere I could to feed her grass and I brought grass home for her every day.

As I passed our main bedroom window one day, I overheard one of my niang's friends telling her, "I heard there is a rare and special goat that will sneeze out a worm sometimes. This worm can cure some rare diseases. The government in Beijing would pay a lot of money for it!"

Not long after, as I was going to take the goat to eat some grass before sunset, my niang said, "Just look at this skinny goat! Do you think anyone in their right mind would give away a milk- producing goat?" I knew she was in despair over our shortage of food that day, and she was short-tempered. I tried to think of something that would cheer her up and suddenly remembered her friend's tale about the goat.

I put on my best innocent face. "Niang, I saw our little goat sneeze out a worm the other day."

She looked alarmed, and asked me excitedly, "What does the worm look like?"

"A whitish caterpillar about the size of my finger." I stuck out my second finger.

"What happened to the worm?" she asked eagerly.

"The goat ate it very quickly," I replied casually.

"Next time when she sneezes out the worm you must pull the goat away from it and try to capture it. This kind of worm is worth a lot of money!" She became happier then, and seemed to dream. "Maybe this is our saviour goat," she murmured to herself, and she would forget about her despair for a while.

But one day I told the same story once too often and she realised I had been making it up all along. "Get lost! Don't think you can fool me again!"

What a shame, I thought. Now I would have to think of a cleverer tale to cheer her up.

And the goat? She eventually died, from starvation, the following winter.

My niang was also recognised as one of the best seamstresses in the village. Sewing was one of the most important pastimes for the ladies. My parents simply had no money to buy ready-made clothes, and my niang didn't have a sewing machine. So the older ladies would teach the younger ones, and they often gathered together as a sewing group in our small, crowded house, even though they knew we were very poor, to share their secrets, drink tea and gossip. The women of the village loved to come and share their happiness or their problems with my niang, and her sewing skill was admired by many. Her stitches looked as if they were made by a sewing machine—small and perfect. Once she was asked by a friend to redo some machine-sewn zippers because he preferred my niang's delicate stitchwork.

My niang's warm personality was well liked and respected by people of all ages in the surrounding villages. Like my dia, she always tried hard to help others. Besides that "lucky woman with seven sons", she was also known as "the live treasure". Men occasionally stopped by our gate to have a chat with her: most women would have been intimidated and embarrassed, talking to men other than their own husbands, but not our niang. For this, Na-na often fondly called her "that wild girl".

But my niang was also an open-minded person, receptive to new ideas. Mao's Cultural Revolution boasted that one of the great achievements of the Red Guards had been the establishment of evening schools. These were especially aimed at teaching the uneducated peasants Mao's communist ideas. We were all given copies of Mao's Red Book. I was six years old then and I remember two enthusiastic young Red Guards coming to teach my niang to read. She never learned to recognise individual words, but she could memorise entire paragraphs of Chairman Mao's sayings. She would practise while she was washing, cleaning, sewing and cooking: I often saw her lips moving as she silently recited passages from her book. She was considered a model student.

One day, while my niang was trying to make a fire to cook dinner, two young Red Guard girls came into our house to check on her reading progress. She was having a terrible day and couldn't get the half-burnt coal to light. Smoke filled the whole room. My niang was a sensible, fair woman: she was polite and explained that she didn't have time to talk just then and asked them to come back another time. So the girls left and she pulled all the unlit half-burnt coals out and tried again. She asked me to push the windbox for her. But just as she was going to start cooking, the two girls came back. They kept insisting on testing my niang on her understanding of Mao's Red Book. They had to report back to their group leader that evening they said.

I could see my niang's anger growing. Eventually, she told me to get up off the floor and asked one of the girls to push the wind- box. She handed the second girl her wok flipper and asked her to take over the cooking. The two girls just stood there and looked at each other, very confused. By now my niang was frustrated and at the end of her patience. She roared at them. "I could learn Chairman Mao's sayings every day, all day long, until I die, but who is going to do my cleaning, washing and cooking? Who will bath my sons, sew their clothes, provide my entire family with three meals a day, every day of the year? Who will cook things out of thin air? Do you think Chairman Mao's words will fill our stomachs? If you can come back every day to help me do all of these things, I will learn whatever you want me to learn—and more!"

The two girls left, red-faced. That night my niang told my dia what she'd said to the two girls. He just smiled. That was the end of my niang's educational adventure, and the two girls never returned to our house again.

By the time I was eight, the hard work and poverty had begun to wear down even my niang, strong as she was. She woke up one morning complaining of dizziness and a headache, and she didn't eat any breakfast. My youngest brother Jing Tring and I were home with her. She had planned to do a lot of washing that day but found the water in our storage pot frozen hard. So she packed up a heavy clay washing-basin full of clothes and, carrying a wooden washing-board under the other arm, she headed to the man-made dam on the steep Northern Hill.

I knew she didn't feel well. I begged her not to go. "I'll fetch you some water so you can do your washing at home."

"It will be slippery at the well with all the ice around it! Do you want to die in the well?" she replied impatiently. "I have to finish these clothes, or your brothers will have to wear filthy clothes to school tomorrow." She walked out the door. "If I don't get back before your dia gets home, tell him to come and help me carry the clothes back."

A couple of my friends came over to our house to play that morning. Then, around noon, a neighbour rushed to our house, shouting, "Hurry! Your niang has fainted halfway between the dam and your house!"

My dia was not yet home from work and often he had to finish his quota of lifting heavy materials for the morning before he was allowed to take his lunch hour. Most of the time he wouldn't come home for lunch, but that morning he'd said he would try to get back because he knew our niang wasn't well.

I asked my friends to look after Jing Tring, then rushed to my fourth uncle's house to see if he was home. The door was locked.

In a panic I rushed to another neighbour's house, but realised immediately that she would not be able to help: she had tiny bound feet. It would take her all day to walk up the Northern Hill on the rough dirt road.

I ran to a couple more houses and found no one to help. Then I ran as fast as I could towards the dam. Tears streamed down my face. I was afraid that I would be too small to be of any help.

I found my niang lying on the side of the road, her clay washing- basin broken in pieces, the pile of washed clothes scattered around in the dirt. She looked so pale. I threw my body on top of hers and shook her violently. "Niang! Niang, wake up!" I shouted, panicking, fearing she was dead. When my face touched hers, I felt it burning and she lay in my arms, motionless.

A few minutes later she slowly opened her eyes and asked me, in a weak whisper, "Where is your dia?"

"He is not home yet!" I replied, frightened, but relieved she was still alive.

She sighed. "Where are your elder brothers?"

"They are not home from school yet."

She sighed again. It seemed hopeless. "Help me up," she said.

My earlier fears were correct: I was too small to be of much help. I held one of her hands to support her but it was not enough and after a few slow wobbling steps, she crashed to the ground again. I felt useless. I wished that I was big and strong enough to carry her on my back. I wept in desperation.

"I'm going to have a little rest here," she said. "Go home and see if your dia and any of your brothers are back."

I flew home. No one was there. I rushed out of our house in all directions trying to find help. Eventually I saw a middle-aged man riding his bike home. "Da… Ye! Are you in a hurry?" I stuttered, the words like bullets out of a machine gun.

"Not particularly. Why?" he replied, puzzled.

"My niang fainted on the Northern Hill and can't get home. Please help her. She is dying! Please! I beg you!" I spoke so fast and stuttered so much that he had to ask me to repeat myself, but when I tried my stutter just got worse. I wanted to show him my urgent heart inside my chest. Finally, out of desperation, I began to stamp my feet. That helped the rhythm of my speech and he eventually understood.

"Where is she?" he asked.

I pointed towards the Hill.

"Don't worry, leave it to me." He hopped onto his bike and pedalled off as fast as he could, with me running behind. He reached my niang before me and was already on the way down with her, motionless, propped on the back of his bike. I quickly went back to gather all the clothes but found nothing to carry them with. What to do? I wrapped all the long pieces of clothes around my neck, waist and arms, and carried the small pieces against my chest on the wooden washing-board. The muddy clothes were extremely heavy, and made me twice as big, but I was going downhill, and I managed to get everything home.

By the time I arrived, my fourth aunt and some other women had already begun to put cold wet towels over my niang's forehead. One of the ladies told me to get some boiled water to make a ginger drink, to help with her high fever. I took two thermal bottles and a coupon and headed for the hot-water depot. The village shared one hot-water boiler. I paid one fen for every water-bottle filled, and the old shopkeeper stamped two little red squares on our coupon.

That was the first time I ever saw my niang ill. She couldn't get out of bed for nearly a week. The "barefoot doctor" in our village gave her a dozen different kinds of medicine and she had to take a handful three times a day with warm water. We were always told to take medicine with warm water. The barefoot doctor was one of Mao's inventions, a product of the Cultural Revolution. They were supposed to live among the peasants, live like peasants. Their precious shoes wouldn't be useful in the muddy fields, so they were known as barefoot doctors. By the early 1970's, facing a severe shortage of doctors and nurses in the countryside, Mao ordered clinics and hospitals to train as many people as possible and send them to the countryside. He criticised the medical profession for avoiding the communes and refusing to share the experience of the peasants' lives. Many people were rushed through a short training course. They read The Barefoot Doctor's Manual and were declared qualified doctors.

But despite the barefoot doctor's medicine, my niang's fever wouldn't recede, and she kept having dizzy spells. Her lips became covered with white blisters, she lost weight and her eyes sank deep under her brows. I often placed my hands onto the frosted window and then onto my niang's burning forehead to help cool her down.

That week, my dia had to cook, wash, clean and get my brothers ready for school. He didn't have a minute to himself. He rose very early to cook us breakfast and rushed home to see my niang and cook us lunch. Dinner was always late since he had to finish his day's quota before he could come home. My dia's cooking was basic and often flavourless, but nobody complained. We knew how serious my niang's illness was and how hard it was for my dia. I was so frightened that my niang might die. "Look after your dia if I don't make it," she said. "Maybe I will die young, just like my mother."

Everyone in the family, all the way down to five-year-old Jing Tring, was expected to pull his weight. My niang was so worried that my dia might get sick from overworking: we would not survive if he got sick. He was the breadwinner, the rock and spine of our family. But he never showed any signs of frustration or fatigue. He spoke even fewer words than usual that week. He just worked and worked and worked.

We had no money to take my niang to the hospital, and the medicine from the barefoot doctor was cheap and ineffective. So my dia chopped huge amounts of ginger and garlic into tiny pieces, boiled them in the wok with some sugar borrowed from my fourth aunt, and gave it to my niang. She drank massive amounts of this steaming hot mixture and immediately covered herself from head to toe with layer upon layer of thick cotton quilts to make herself sweat. Then Cunfar and I were sent to the big grain grinder about five minutes away in the eastern section of our village to grind some wheat to make her some noodle soup as a treat. The grain grinder was a round platform pieced together from several thick granite stones. On top was a huge heavy stone ball with a hole in the middle and a strong bamboo stick through it. A person on each side would push the stone ball around to crush the wheat. My brother and I pushed the ball in a circle until the wheat was finely crushed, and when we returned with the bowl of cracked wheat, my dia used a fine wire sieve, which he'd made himself, to separate the flour from the cracked wheat shells. He mixed the flour with some water and rolled it into a thin pancake, then patiently folded it into many layers. Then he cut the pancake into noodles with a big cleaver. He even used a few drops of my niang's precious oil—and two eggs! But my niang noticed immediately that the colour of the soup was rather strange and after the first taste she asked my dia, "Have we run out of salt and soy sauce?" At first my dia didn't understand, then all of a sudden he realised he'd forgotten the most important ingredients. They burst into laughter. Even in sickness my niang had a sharp sense of humour, and a brilliant, contagious laugh.

It was wonderful to hear my parents laugh again. Niang called Jing Tring and me over. "Help me eat some of these noodles. Your dia has made too much." We all knew that she'd hardly eaten anything the entire week. We all knew she could have eaten twice as much as our dia had made. "Get out of here!" our dia said. "Your niang will never eat her noodles in peace while you're here." Our niang protested, but our dia gently pushed us out of the room and forced her to finish her soup.

Over the next few weeks, my niang gradually recovered, but we never found out what she'd had, though exhaustion and starvation were the likely causes. Her health was never quite the same, and she suffered from dizzy spells ever after. My dia wanted my niang to stop working in the fields, but in her usual strong way she argued back. "We can't afford for me to stay home! Your wage is not enough for all of us to survive."

"If we only have water to drink," he said to her, "it would still be better than you working yourself to death. Our family could never survive without you, either."

But the reality was that our family couldn't live on my dia's wage alone. He eventually agreed to my niang working in the fields only part time, to ensure our survival.

Every day except Sundays, my dia would ride his old bike to work in the town of Laoshan. It was a good half-hour away. He paid someone in the flea market ten yuan for that beloved second-hand bike. It needed a lot of fixing before he could ride it, but he was a resourceful handyman and could fix anything. It was so precious to him that we were never allowed even to touch it. He had to carry all kinds of heavy materials—huge grain sacks, big pieces of stone—as part of his job. He was the tallest and strongest among the crew of five, so he was called upon to carry the heaviest materials. He was also the driver's right-hand man: when the truck had to reverse he would guide the driver, sitting alongside. I was very proud of him. A truck was impressive—most transport was still done by horse and cart in the communes. His job was also considered one of the better-paid jobs in the county and many people were envious of him. He was paid thirty-five yuan per month, almost US $4.20 then! I wished that I could be a truck driver one day, but I knew at the bottom of my heart that my destiny lay in the fields as a labourer, like hundreds of millions of others.

It was often well after seven in the evening before our dia came home in those days. He would be worn out, and my niang often had to massage him at night to prepare him for the next day. As long as I could remember, he never missed one single day's work, even when he didn't feel well.

Apart from my dia's few brief days with a teacher, my parents never went to school when they were children, so they could not read to us. But night-time was still story-time, and our dia would tell us his stories and fables, always simple and basic, but we constantly begged him for them and we always listened eagerly.

My brothers also played their own version of I-spy. One of them would select a word from the newspapers glued all over the walls and ceiling, and whoever spotted this word first would have a turn to select the next. Sometimes we would not find the word for days. Later, once I'd learnt to read a little, one of my words held the record for the longest time it took to find. We always thought it was sad that our parents couldn't join in because they couldn't read.

One year, a friend of our dia's who worked in a Qingdao printing factory gave us some Deer cigarette labels. They were green and we used them as wallpaper for the ceiling. Our dia could not afford cigarettes. Instead he smoked a wooden pipe and cheap tobacco, but he often joked to his friends that he had the luxury of enjoying Deer cigarettes every day because of the labels on our ceiling.

My dia was always patient and emotionally controlled, sometimes stubborn, and always good tempered. The only time I remember him losing his temper with us was when my fourth brother's teacher came to report to our parents about his bad school marks that year. Cunsang knew his teacher's report wouldn't be good. He gathered together my fifth brother Cunfar, my youngest brother Jing Tring and me and said to us, "Let's make chaos! I hate her, and she doesn't like me either!" We thought the teacher was a disruption to our nightly playtime anyway, so we needed little encouragement. The teacher sat on one end of the kang and my niang on the other. Our dia poured them a cup of tea each. As soon as the teacher started to tell my parents of my brother's poor school progress, my fourth brother gave us the signal, and we began running from side to side on the kang and yelling at the tops of our voices.

Our dia gave us a dark look. "Be quiet," he said.

"I'm sorry about our misbehaving children," our niang apologised. "They are tired tonight."

After a few quiet seconds, Cunsang whispered in our ears. "She let out a loud fart the other day and pretended it wasn't her! It was the worst smelling bomb!" We laughed uncontrollably. "Farter, farter, smelly farter!" we shrieked.

The teacher pretended she didn't hear, but our parents were so embarrassed. As usual, our dia left all the talking to our niang. "You will be in trouble if you make any more noise!" she threatened. She turned to the teacher. "I'm very sorry. I can't wait to send these boys to school, so you can teach them proper manners, but they are too young right now."

"Not only yours," the teacher replied. "All boys are wild. I don't know how you're coping with so many of them."

A few minutes later I knocked the teacher's cup over and spilt some tea onto her clothes. We were like three wild animals. We even broke one of the supporting mud bricks on the kang because we were jumping up and down like monkeys. My parents kept warning us, and apologising to the teacher.

Eventually the teacher had had enough humiliation. "I have to go now. I have other families to visit tonight," she said, giving us a disgusted look. By now we were completely out of control and sensed victory. My parents continued apologising to the angry teacher on her way out and begged her to come back another day.

As soon as the teacher was gone, my niang turned to my dia. "Lock the door!" she screeched. "Kill these wicked boys! I can't believe how bad they are!"

Jing Tring started to cry, so she removed him from the kang. "The little one is too young to understand. It's not his fault. Just kill the big ones! See if they dare do it again!"

My dia stormed into the room with a broomstick in his hand and closed the door. I had never seen him so angry. He was tall by Chinese standards, and a scary sight. His face was frightening enough, let alone the flailing broomstick, and he shouted as he swung it at us. "See if you dare to behave like this again!" He hit us with that broomstick so hard that I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide.

My niang kept urging him on from the other side of the door. "Hit them harder, hit them harder!"

We kept screaming, "Wouldn't dare do it again! Wouldn't dare do it again! We promise!" We screamed so loud that some of our neighbours came and knocked on our door, begging for leniency, but my niang explained what had happened and our neighbours finally left the matter to our parents.

Our niang's head popped in and out of the room like a yo-yo. "Hit them harder! Teach them a lesson! See if they will ever dare to do it again!" I thought it was strange that her head came in and out like that. We didn't know then that she thought we looked so comical she was laughing her head off outside, but she had to at least pretend she was angry with us and was on our dia's side. What a lesson that was: we never misbehaved like that again.

I can only remember my parents fighting once, and it turned our family upside down. Our dia was invited to a relative's wedding and after a drink or two of highly alcoholic rice wine, he would open up and become a chatterbox. He stayed longer than usual that afternoon, which worried my niang. She was afraid he would lose dignity from over-drinking. She sent us to collect him several times, and he kept assuring us that he would be home soon. Finally, she sent her three youngest sons to get him. He'd clearly had too much to drink by that time and was angry when he got home. He was embarrassed by her sending us so many times and felt that he had lost face in front of his friends and neighbours. They argued quietly at first, trying to keep it to themselves. But neither of them would back down and it soon became a shouting match.

I was so scared by their raging at the tops of their voices that I ran to our na-na's house next door. She followed me back, hobbling quickly on her bound feet, and shouted at my dia, calling him by his nickname. "Jin Zhi! Jin Zhi, what do you think you are doing? Stop that! You'll bring shame to Li's name." Our na-na adored both her youngest son and daughter-in-law. My parents had enormous respect for her, and in her presence they temporarily stopped their argument. But the bickering continued all week.

That week, even though the house was small and they had to sleep on the same bed, they refused even to look at each other. I could see both of them were miserable, but nobody knew what to do. My dia got up even earlier than usual and left the house without breakfast on those days. The atmosphere was tense and all of us behaved extremely well, with the older boys looking after the younger ones. Our kind-hearted na-na was concerned about us. She came to help out. She tried to be the mediator, but to no avail. "I can't believe I have such a stubborn son and daughter-in-law!" she'd utter to herself. "It's hopeless, it's hopeless!"

During the day, little things would trigger my niang's tears and her eyes became swollen from crying. Life was hard enough for my niang, I thought, but this only added more sadness. I kept asking her what I could do for her, but she would just look at me and shake her head. "If only you could help," she said.

Once she suddenly slumped down to the ground and sobbed, and I rushed to her and hugged her as tightly as I could, and tried to wipe her tears away with my small dirty fingers. She gently brushed my hands away from her face and sat me on her lap. She hugged me, and I felt her warmth seep through my whole body. For a while there were no words spoken, just her sad sighs. I wished that our hug alone would give her enough comfort to get her through the day. "My fate was meant to be unlucky from the day I was born," she said eventually. "I was born poor and will die poorer. My life will be as short as my niang's. Promise me that you'll burn enough incense and money for me when I'm in my grave."

"Niang, stop! Please stop saying that!" I cried, and quickly put my little hand over her mouth. I cried, not only with tears, but also with my heart. I was soaked with sadness. I didn't want my niang to leave me, ever. The thought of losing her made me feel utterly wretched. The only thing I wanted was her happiness. I wished I had magical powers to grant her that happy life. But if my parents couldn't solve their differences, what could I do? I was just a little boy.

But I did think of something. Later that day, I waited at the entrance to our village for my dia's return. I waited until it was pitch black. He'd finished work late and was surprised to see me standing there by myself. Before he could ask me why, I said to him, "Niang is worried about you and she sent me here to wait for you." Of course this was not true, but I wanted him to know that she loved and cared for him. Without a word he lifted me onto the back seat of his bike and pedalled home.

My niang was already waiting anxiously by the gate. She was relieved to see us both. "Thank you for sending Jing Hao to meet me," my dia said.

My niang was surprised. She looked at him, then at me, and suddenly understood what I had done. She lifted me off the bike and hugged me so tight that I felt my bones crack. She burst into tears and laughter. "You little smart devil! You little smart devil!" she kept saying.

My dia was puzzled. "What's all this about?"

"I didn't send him to meet you!" my niang said, laughing her contagious laugh. "Who cares about you? It's all his doing!"

"I thought it was strange that you didn't send one of the older boys," my dia said with a rare smile. "I'm starving, what's for dinner?"

"North-west wind!" my niang joked.

My parents were speaking to each other again, the first time in over a week. The next morning Niang was looking for her hairpins on my dia's side of the bed again.