Fortunate to Have Been Born a Country Boy in This Life

Before I was 18 I lived in the countryside, and those eighteen years left a deep mark on me. To be honest, aside from being a bit hard and poor, the countryside is all right; farmers also enjoy far more freedom than most city dwellers. We did not have to work nine-to-five, did not have to rush for buses or cram onto crowded metro trains, and no one ordered us about.

But for the pandemic, I would still spend part of every year in my Hubei village home. The old village has changed a great deal, yet it is still far quieter than the city—almost free of noise. At night, sitting on my own balcony or in the yard, I look up and see a sky full of stars.

I went to the village primary school and was one of the naughtiest boys of my age in the village. Country life did not impose so many rules, and so it nurtured my free, uninhibited temperament. Looking back now, this temperament is the best gift heaven has given me.

Many people ask me why I am able to live relatively freely. The only answer I can give is that my temperament has been free and uninhibited since childhood: those who love freedom attain freedom. The environment in which I grew up allowed me to be uninhibited; there is no rope on earth that can truly bind a genuinely free spirit. Once a person is used to freedom from childhood, how could the social world's red tape ever teach him to conform? If we must wait until financial freedom or until our children are grown before living a so-called free life, freedom will be forever out of reach, and what we finally get will not be high-quality freedom either.

The benefits of country life do not end there. Because I was close to nature from childhood, every trouble and unpleasant emotion could be easily healed in nature. No matter how gloomy I feel, as soon as I draw near nature, the clouds over my heart disperse in an instant. And nature is everywhere, so healing myself becomes exceedingly easy. We who live in this world cannot avoid displeasure; as long as we can easily forget all unpleasantness, we are sunny, happy people.

My mother was generous and hardworking; she had a great influence on my whole life, and I inherited her character almost completely. When I was small, at dawn Mother would shoulder the family's washing and go down to the river. On her return she cooked for the family; after breakfast she went to the fields to farm. She was a deft country woman who always kept everything in perfect order.

From childhood I followed Mother into the fields and grew used to hard work. Even now I have no habit of taking long vacations. That I can now keep writing without ceasing is also because I have been industrious since childhood. The ideal of "a day without work is a day without food" has entered my bones; I dare not indulge my laziness. If some day I do not read or work, I feel utterly uneasy.

A person comes into this world not as a guest; no one will entertain us for a lifetime. We need food and clothing, and it is most reassuring to earn all this through our own labor. In the countryside we grew all kinds of crops and knew that as long as one is willing to till, there will be a harvest. So even now I am hardworking enough and confident about life. The few things we truly need are not hard to obtain if we work at them; a child raised in the country does not easily worry about making a living.

When I entered junior high, my parents—wanting to put three children through school—went to a neighboring county town to run a small business. I was forced to live independently, and had to look after some crops my father had planted at home and help sell a batch of pine-blossom preserved eggs he made each year at home.

My father had by then learned the technique of making pine-blossom preserved eggs. He went to the neighboring county to make them, and also made some at home. Every weekend I would carry those preserved eggs to the small shops at the entrances of neighboring villages, consigning them for sale and settling the previous account. I rode a bicycle, delivering to many small shops. My parents could not bear to let the family fields go to waste, so they planted crops there; I also helped with the farm work, though of course during the busy seasons my parents would come back.

I had two uncles and one uncle (father's elder brother). My grandmother was still alive and lived with my fourth uncle; my second aunt had married into my village, and my parents left me in the care of these relatives. But I did not feel entirely at ease in their homes, so on weekends I mostly stayed in my own house. There was rice and oil at home and vegetables in the fields; I would pick them and cook for myself—far more at ease. When the relatives had meat, they would still call me over to eat, and I would go. Life in the countryside in those days was not affluent; eating meat was only occasional, and we still craved it.

My grandmother was a devout Buddhist. Though she was illiterate, she could recite sutras with great persistence. In those days the circulation of Buddhist scriptures was not as convenient as now; there were few ready-made publications. Grandmother had copies made by scribes and asked literate family members to teach her the chants. My father and his brothers knew a few characters, but for one thing they were very busy, and for another they were greatly vexed by my grandmother's Buddhism, always feeling her few coins were being cheated away by monks.

So Grandmother had to turn to her grandchildren, coaxing and begging us to teach her the chants. I was the one she sought most often—probably because I was easily coaxed: whether with a few longans or a bit of flattery, I was happy to teach her. Thus, from the time I learned to read, I was, through this connection, reciting Buddhist sutras, and I always memorized them before Grandmother did. A few years ago, when I visited Beijing's Longquan Temple to exchange ideas, some friends there were astonished that I could recite long passages of the Buddhist canon at will. Actually it was only a bit of childhood training.

Grandmother would not allow the family to kill living creatures casually. Once, when I was small, my grandfather, to please the grandchildren, caught a swallow for us to play with; Grandmother sharply scolded him, and the crestfallen old man had to release the swallow.

In rural China, religious belief is free. We cannot really make out what exactly people believe, yet religious belief is everywhere. My grandmother thought of herself as a Buddhist; the Song of a Hundred Forbearances by Master Zhang that someone copied for her, she also took for a sutra. When I was small I even taught her to memorize that song. Country people's religious belief is a blend: Grandmother was equally devout toward the Taoist pantheon and the Chinese tradition of ancestor worship; she simply classified all of that under being a Buddhist.

If you have lived in the countryside, you know that rural Chinese society is remarkably inclusive and has a rich spiritual life. People like my grandmother like worshiping Buddha; many love village opera; and of course some love gambling. More common is what Sichuan people call "spinning long tales"—in the slack farming season, groups of three or five sit together and chat.

The countryside is an intermediate social form between primitive and modern society. In the village there is no lack of the mutual aid of primitive society, nor the distribution according to work and individual freedom of modern society. Among the people of one village there are fights, but more often there is solidarity, affection and mutual help. Even those who fight mostly reconcile on their own or are talked into peace by the village's respected elders.

Now I live mostly in Beijing, immersed in libraries or in my own study. But many rural elements remain in me; if I stay too long away from the country soil, I feel restless. Fortunately I have finally found a good vegetable plot, less than ten kilometers from home, which I have rented. Going there from time to time at last satisfies this rural attachment of mine.

I am a person easily satisfied; I love walking rather than driving, and to this day I do not own a car. I am used to early to bed and early to rise; by 5:30 every morning I am washed and riding my bicycle for half an hour to my little garden to busy myself a while, then cycling home to begin the day's work, reading, playing the qin and writing. The early trip to the garden serves as my morning exercise. When I leave, the city is still quiet; when I return, few people are on the road.

I love this present life beyond words. Lowly as I am, I ask for little; my life now is real, happy and joyful. I sometimes strike the table and rise in anger over social problems, but as for my own life, I think this is already the best state I could wish for. What more could I ask?

Earlier I wanted to return to my old home and retire to woods and springs. Now that desire is less strong. I am already living a compromised version of the pastoral life. My pursuit of life is not perfectionist; "good enough" satisfies me. This is also one of the greatest gifts of country life: rural life aims at "good enough," letting nature take its course.