At first they sent people out to try to buy food. Many of the big landlords had traditionally had their own private armies, which now joined up with the bands of Kuomintang soldiers. A few days after my mother reached Yibin, these forces launched a full-scale uprising in south Sichuan. Yibin was in danger of starvation.

The Communists started sending out armed teams made up of officials escorted by army guards to collect food. Almost everyone was mobilized. Government offices were empty. In the whole of the Yibin county government only two women were left behind: one was a receptionist and the other had a newborn baby.

My mother went on a number of these expeditions, which lasted many days at a time. There were thirteen people in her team: seven civilians and six soldiers. My mother's gear consisted of a bedroll, a bag of rice, and a heavy umbrella made of tung-oil-painted canvas, all of which she had to carry on her back. The team had to trek for days through wild country and over what the Chinese call 'sheep's-intestine trails' treacherous narrow mountain paths winding around steep precipices and gullies.

When they came to a village they would go to the shabbiest hovel and try to form a rapport with the very poor peasants, telling them that the Communists would give people like them their own land and a happy life, and then asking them which landowners had rice hoarded. Most of the peasants had inherited a traditional fear and suspicion of any officials. Many had only vaguely heard of the Communists, and everything they had heard was bad; but my mother, having quickly modified her northern dialect with a local accent, was highly articulate and persuasive. Explaining the new policy turned out to be her forte. If the team succeeded in getting information about the landlords, they would go and try to persuade them to sell at designated collection points, where they would be paid on delivery.

Some were scared and disgorged without much fuss.

Others informed on the team's whereabouts to one of the armed gangs. My mother and her comrades were often fired at, and spent every night on the alert, sometimes having to move from place to place to avoid attack.

At first they would stay with poor peasants. But if the bandits found out someone had helped them, they would kill the entire household. After a number of killings, the team decided they could not jeopardize innocent people's lives. So they slept in the open, or in abandoned temples.

On her third expedition, my mother started vomiting and suffering from dizzy spells. She was pregnant again.

She got back to Yibin exhausted and desperate for a rest, but her team had to set off on another expedition at once.

It had been left vague what a pregnant woman should do, and she was torn about whether to go or not. She wanted to go, and the mood at the time was very much one of self sacrifice it was considered shameful to complain about anything. But she was frightened by the memory of her miscarriage only five months before, and by the thought of having another one in the midst of the wilderness, where there were no doctors or transportation. Moreover, the expeditions involved almost daily bat ties with the bandits, and it was important to be able to run and run fast. Even walking made her dizzy.

Still, she decided to go. There was one other woman going, who was also pregnant. One afternoon the team was settling down for lunch in a deserted courtyard. They assumed the owner had fled, probably from them. The shoulder-high mud walls which ran around the weed-covered yard had collapsed in several places. The wooden gate was unlocked and was creaking in the spring breeze.

The team's rice was being prepared in the abandoned kitchen by their cook, when a middle-aged man appeared.

He had the appearance of a peasant: he was wearing straw sandals and loose trousers, with a big apronlike piece of cloth tucked up on one side into a cotton cummerbund, and he had a dirty white turban on his head. He told them that a gang of men belonging to a notorious group of bandits known as the Broadsword Brigade was headed their way and that they were especially keen to capture my mother and the other woman in the team, because they knew they were the wives of high Communist officials.

This man was not an ordinary peasant. Under the Kuomintang, he had been the chieftain of the local township, which governed a number of villages, including the one the team was in. The Broadsword Brigade had tried to win his cooperation, as they did with all former Kuomintang men and landlords. He had joined the brigade, but he wanted to keep his options open, and he was tipping off the Communists to buy insurance. He told them the best way to escape.

The team immediately jumped up and ran. But my mother and the other pregnant woman could not move very fast, so the chieftain led them out through a gap in the wall and helped them hide in a haystack nearby. The cook lingered in the kitchen to wrap up the cooked rice and pour cold water onto the wok to cool it down so that he could take it with him. The rice and the wok were too precious to be abandoned; an iron wok was hard to obtain, especially in wartime. Two of the soldiers stayed in the kitchen helping him and trying to hurry him up. At last the cook grabbed the rice and the wok and the three of them raced for the back door. But the bandits were already coming through the front door, and caught up with them after a few yards. They fell on them and knifed them to death. The gang was short of guns and did not have enough ammunition to shoot at the rest of the team, whom they could see not far away. They did not discover my mother and the other woman in the haystack.

Not long afterward the gang was captured, along with the chieftain. He was both a leader of the gang and one of the 'snakes in their old haunts," which made him eligible for execution. But he had tipped off the team and saved the lives of the two women. At the time, death sentences had to be endorsed by a three-man review board. It happened that the head of the tribunal was my father. The second member was the husband of the other pregnant woman, and the third was the local police chief.

The tribunal split two to one. The husband of the other woman voted to spare the chieftain's life. My father and the police chief voted to uphold the death sentence. My mother pleaded with the tribunal to let the man live, but my father was adamant. This was exactly what the man had been banking on, he told my mother: he had chosen this particular team to tip off precisely because he knew it contained the wives of two important officials.

"He has a lot of blood on his hands," my father said. The husband of the other woman disagreed vehemently.

"But," my father retorted, banging his fist on the table, 'we cannot be lenient, precisely because our wives are involved. If we let personal feelings influence our judgment, what would be the difference between the new China and the old?" The chieftain was executed.

My mother could not forgive my father for this. She felt that the man should not die, because he had saved so many lives, and my father, in particular, 'owed' him a life. The way she looked at it, which was how most Chinese would have seen it, my father's behavior meant he did not treasure her, unlike the husband of the other woman.

No sooner was the trial over than my mother's team was sent off to the countryside again. She was still feeling very sick from her pregnancy, vomiting a lot and exhausted all the time. She had had pains in her abdomen ever since the violent rush to the haystack. The husband of the other pregnant woman decided he was not going to let his wife go again.

"I will protect my pregnant wife," he said.

"And I will protect any wives who are pregnant. No pregnant woman should have to undergo such dangers." But he met fierce opposition from my mother's boss, Mrs. Mi, a peasant woman who had been a guerrilla. It was unthinkable for a peasant woman to take a rest if she was pregnant.