My mother's department ran a very broad field of activities, including primary education, health, entertainment, and sounding out public opinion. At the age of twenty-two, my mother was in charge of all these activities for about a quarter of a million people. She was so busy we hardly ever saw her. The government wanted to establish a monopoly (known as 'unified purchasing and marketing') over trade in the basic commodities grain, cotton, edible o'fi, and meat. The idea was to get the peasants to sell these exclusively to the government, which would then ration them out to the urban population and to parts of the countrx where they were in short supply.

When the Chinese Communist Party launched a new policy, they accompanied it with a propaganda drive to help put the new policy across. It was part of my mother's job to try to convince people that the change was for the good.

The core of the message this time was that China had a huge population and that the problem of feeding and clothing it had never been solved; now the government wanted to make sure the basic necessities were fairly distributed and that nobody starved while others hoarded grain or other essentials. My mother set about her job with gusto, rushing around on her bicycle, talking at endless meetings every day, even when she was in the last months of pregnancy with her fourth child. She enjoyed her work, and believed in it.

She only went into the hospital at the last minute to have her next child, a son, who was born on 15 September 1954.

It was a dangerous delivery again. The doctor was getting ready to go home when my mother stopped him. She was bleeding abnormally, and knew there was something wrong. She insisted on the doctor staying and giving her a checkup. A fragment of her placenta was missing. Finding it was considered a major operation, so the doctor had her placed under a general anesthetic and searched her womb again. They found the fragment, which probably saved her life.

My father was in the countryside trying to galvanize support for the state monopoly program. He had just been upgraded to Grade 10 and promoted to deputy director of the Public Affairs Department for the whole of Sichuan.

One of its major functions was to keep a running check on public opinion: How did the people feel about a particular policy? What complaints did they have? Since peasants formed the overwhelming majority of the population, he was often in the countryside finding out their views and feelings. Like my mother, he believed passionately in his work, which was to keep the Party and the government in touch with the people.

On the seventh day after my mother gave birth, one of his colleagues sent a car to the hospital to bring her home.

It was accepted that, if the husband was away, the Party organization was responsible for taking care of his wife.

My mother gratefully accepted the lift, as 'home' was half an hour's walk away. When my father came back a few days later, he reprimanded his colleague. The rules stipulated that my mother could ride in an official car only when my father was in it. Using a car when he was not there would be seen as nepotism, he said. My father's colleague said he had authorized the car because my mother had just been through a serious operation which had left her extremely weak. But a rule is a rule, replied my father. My mother found it hard to take this puritanical rigidity once again. This was the second time my father had attacked her immediately after a difficult birth. Why was he not there to take her home, she asked, so they would not have to break the rules? He had been tied up with his work, he said, which was important. My mother understood his dedication she was dedicated herself. But she was also bitterly disappointed.

Two days after he was born my new brother, Xiao-bei, developed eczema. My mother thought this was because she had not eaten any boiled green olives during the summer, when she was too busy working. The Chinese believe that olives get rid of body heat that otherwise comes out in heat bumps. For several months Xiao-her's hands had to be tied to the railings of his cot to prevent him from scratching himself. When he was six months old he was sent to a dermatology hospital. At this point my grandmother had to rush to Jinzhou as her mother was ill.

Xiao-her's nurse was a country girl from Yibin, with luxuriant long black hair and flirtatious eyes. She had accidentally killed her own baby she had been breast-feeding it lying down, had fallen asleep, and had smothered it. She had gone to see my aunt Jun-ying via a family connection and begged her to give her a recommendation to my family.

She wanted to go to a big city and have fun. My aunt gave her a reference, in spite of the opposition of some local women who said she only wanted to get to Chengdu to be rid of her husband. Jun-ying, though unmarried, was far from being jealous of other people's pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in fact, she was always delighted for them. She was full of understanding and tolerant of human foibles, and quite un-judgmental.

Within a few months the nurse was alleged to be having an affair with an undertaker in the compound. My parents considered such things private matters, and turned a blind eye.

When my brother went into the skin hospital, the wet nurse went with him. The Communists had largely eliminated venereal disease, but there were still some VD patients in one of the wards, and one day the wet-nurse was spotted in bed with a patient in that ward. The hospital told my mother and suggested it would be unsafe for the nurse to continue breast-feeding Xiao-her. My mother asked her to leave. After that, Xiao-her was cared for by my wet-nurse and the wet-nurse who looked after my other brother, Jin-ming, who had now joined us from Yibin.

At the end of 1954 Jin-ming's nurse had written to my mother saying she would like to come and live with us, as she had been having trouble with her husband, who had become a heavy drinker and was beating her up. My mother had not seen Jin-ming for eighteen months, since he was a month old. But his arrival was terribly distressing.

For a long time he would not let her touch him, and the only person he would call "Mother' was his nurse.

My father also found it difficult to strike up a close relationship with Jin-ming, but he was very close to me.

He would crawl on the floor and let me ride on his back.

Usually he put some flowers in his collar for me to smell.

If he forgot, I would point at the garden and make commanding noises, indicating that some should be brought instantly. He would often kiss me on the cheek. Once, when he had not shaved, I wrinkled up my face and complained, "Old beard, old beard!" at the top of my voice. I called him Old Beard (lao hu-zi) for months. He kissed me more gingerly after that. I loved to toddle in and out of offices and play with the officials. I used to chase after them and call them by special names I invented for them, and recite nursery rhymes to them. Before I was three I was known as "Little Diplomat."

I think my popularity was really due to the fact that the officials welcomed a break and a bit of fun, which I provided with my childish chattiness. I was very plump, too, and they all liked sitting me on their laps and pinching and squeezing me.

When I was a little over three years old my siblings and I were all sent away to different boarding nurseries. I could not understand why I was being taken away from home, and kicked and tore the ribbon in my hair in protest. In the nursery I deliberately created trouble for the teachers and used to pour my milk into my desk every day, following it with my cod-liver-oil capsules. We had to take a long siesta after lunch, during which I would tell frightening stories, which I had made up, to the other children in the big dormitory. I was soon found out and punished by being made to sit on the doorstep.