As I was leaving I realized that I had hardly got to know the peasants in our village. My only acquaintance was the village accountant who, being the most educated man around, came to see us often to claim some intellectual kinship. His home was the only one I had been in, and what I remember most were the suspicious stares on his young wife's weather-beaten face. She was cleaning the bloody intestines of a pig, and had a silent baby on her back. When I said hello, she shot me an indifferent look and did not return my greeting. I felt alien and awkward, and soon left.

In the few days I actually worked with the villagers, I had lit He spare energy and did not talk to them properly.

They seemed remote, uninterested, separated from me by the impenetrable Ningnan mountains. I knew we were supposed to make the effort to visit them, as my friends and my sister, who were in better shape, were doing in the evenings, but I was exhausted, sick, and itchy all the time.

Besides, visiting them would have meant that I was resigned to making the best of my life there. And I subconsciously refused to settle for a life as a peasant. Without spelling it out to myself, I rejected the life Mao had assigned to me.

When the time came for me to leave, I suddenly missed the extraordinary beauty of Ningnan. I had not appreciated the mountains properly when I was struggling with life there. Spring had come early, in February, and golden winter jasmines shone beside the icicles hanging from the pines. The brooks in the valleys formed one crystal-clear pool after another, dotted around which were fancifully shaped rocks. The reflections in the water were of gorgeous clouds, canopies of stately trees, and the nameless blossoms that elegantly wriggled out of the cracks in the rocks. We washed clothes in those heavenly pools, and spread them on the rocks to dry in the sunshine and the crisp air. Then we would lie down on the grass and listen to the vibration of the pine forests in the breeze. I would marvel at the slopes of distant mountains opposite us, covered with wild peach trees, and imagine the masses of pink in a few weeks' time.

When I reached Chengdu, after four interminable days of being thrown about in the back of an empty truck, with constant stomach pains and diarrhea, I went straight to the clinic attached to the compound. Injections and tablets cured me in no time. Like the canteen, the clinic was still open to my family. The Sichuan Revolutionary Committee was split and second-rate: it had not managed to organize a functioning administration. It had not even got around to issuing regulations concerning many aspects of everyday life. As a result, the system was full of holes; many of the old ways continued, and people were largely left to their own devices. The managements of the canteen and the clinic did not refuse to serve us, so we went on enjoying the facilities.

in addition to the Western injections and pills prescribed at the clinic, my grandmother said I needed Chinese medicines. One day she came home with a chicken and some roots of membranous milk vetch and Chinese angelica, which were considered very bu (healing), and made a soup for me into which she sprinkled finely chopped spring onions. These ingredients were unavailable in the shops, and she had hobbled for miles to buy them in a country black market.

My grandmother was unwell herself. Sometimes I saw her lying on her bed, which was extremely unusual for her; she had always been so energetic I had hardly ever seen her sit still for a minute. Now her eyes were shut tight and she bit her lips hard, which made me feel she must be in great pain. But when I asked her what the matter was, she would say it was nothing, and she continued collecting medicines and standing in line to get food for me.

I was soon much better. As there was no authority to order me to return to Ningnan, I began to plan a trip to see my father. But then a telegram came from Yibin saying that my aunt Jun-ying, who had been looking after my youngest brother, Xiao-fang, was seriously ill. I thought I should go and take care of them.

Aunt Jun-ying and my father's other relations in Yibin had been very kind to my family, in spite of the fact that my father had broken the deep-rooted Chinese tradition of looking after one's relatives. By tradition, it was considered the filial duty of a son to prepare for his mother a heavy wooden coffin with many layers of paint, and to provide a grand and often financially crippling- funeral.

But the government strongly encouraged cremation to save land and simpler funerals. When his mother died in 1958, my father was not told until after the funeral, because his family was worried that he would object to the burial and the elaborate service. After we moved to Chengdu his family hardly ever visited us.

However, when my father fell into trouble in the Cultural Revolution, they came to see us and offered their help. Aunt Jun-ying, who had been traveling frequently between Chengdu and Yibin, eventually took Xiao-fang under her care to relieve my grandmother of some of her burden. She shared a house with my father's youngest sister, but had also selflessly given up half of her part to the family of a distant relative who had had to abandon their own dilapidated lodgings.

When I arrived, my aunt was sitting in a wicker easy chair by the front door to the hall, which served as the sitting room. In the place of honor lay a huge coffin made of heavy, dark-red wood. This coffin, her own, was her only indulgence. The sight of my aunt overwhelmed me with sadness. She had just had a stroke, and her legs were half-paralyzed. Hospitals were working only sporadically.

With no one to repair them, facilities had broken down and the supply of medicine was erratic. The hospitals had told Aunt Jun-ying there was nothing they could do for her, so she stayed at home.

What my aunt found most traumatic were her bowel movements. After eating, she felt unbearably bloated, but she could not relieve herself without great agony. Her relatives' formulas helped sometimes, but more often failed. I massaged her stomach frequently, and once, when she felt desperate and asked me to, I even put my finger into her anus to try to scratch out the excrement. All these remedies only gave her momentary relief. As a result, she did not dare to eat much. She was terribly weak, and would sit in the wicker chair in the hall for hours, gazing at the papaya and banana trees in the back garden. She never complained. Only once did she say to me in a gentle whisper, "I'm so very hungry. I wish I could eat…"

She could no longer walk without help, and even sitting up required a great effort. To prevent her getting bedsores, I would sit beside her so she could lean on me. She said I was a good nurse and that I must be tired and bored sitting there. No matter how much I insisted, she would only sit for a brief period every day, so that I could 'go out and have some fun."

Of course, there was no fun outside. I longed for something to read. But apart from the four volumes of The Seleaed Works of Mao Zedong, all I discovered in the house was a dictionary. Everything else had been burned. I occupied myself with studying the 15,000 characters in it, learning the ones I did not know by heart.

I spent the rest of my time looking after my seven-year old brother, Xiao-fang, and took long walks with him.

Sometimes he got bored and demanded things like a toy gun or the charcoal-colored sweets that were on lonely display in the shops. But I had no money our basic allowance was small. Xiao-fang, at seven, could not understand this, and would throw himself on the dusty ground, kicking, yelling, and tearing my jacket. I would crouch and coax and eventually, at my wits' end, start crying as well.

At this, he would stop and make up with me. We would both go home exhausted.