Uncle Zhongde, Who Raised Ducks All His Life
On an after-dinner walk, I ran into Uncle Zhongde, who was herding his ducks into an abandoned greenhouse in the village. A few years earlier, on a sudden whim, the village party secretary spent village money to build two greenhouses in our village; they have been abandoned ever since. One has now become Uncle Zhongde's duck shed; the other is overgrown with weeds.For as long as I can remember, Uncle Zhongde has been raising ducks in the village. For a time my father did business in preserved century eggs and bought duck eggs from his family. Uncle Zhongde is less than twenty years older than I. In our village, most people his age now work away from home; he is the only one who still raises ducks in the village.A long bamboo pole with a few cloth strips tied to the top is his duck-herding tool. He uses it to drive the ducks from one body of water to another to forage. After the village rice is harvested, he moves the ducks from one paddy to another to eat the grains scattered on the ground. Nowadays he not only raises ducks but also keeps a hundred or two hundred chickens in the greenhouse.We greeted each other warmly from far off. Seeing me wearing a mask and keeping my distance, he teased me for being afraid of death. I told him that, having returned from elsewhere, I was at greater risk of carrying infection than they were, so I consciously wore a mask and kept my distance, not wanting to bring the plague back to the village.After listening, he said that an educated young man is reasonable and knows how to think of others. He said that some people have returned one after another to visit the village as I have, but most do not consider whether their behavior brings risk to the villagers. Actually I am being overly cautious; no one else has brought risk to the village.Most of those left in the village, like him, rarely go out, so this is a closed, acquaintance society with very little population movement; naturally no one wears a mask. But this does not mean rural people do not understand epidemic prevention. Rural people are not foolish; if the epidemic reappears locally, most will immediately take precautions. From the outbreak until now, among our village's one or two thousand people including migrant workers, not a single one has been infected. We are not far from Wuhan—only two hours by car—and Huanggang was once a hard-hit area.Uncle Zhongde does not care where I returned from and is happy to chat. He spends all day in the fields with his ducks; whenever he meets someone he strikes up a conversation to pass the time. I asked him how much income he makes in a year raising these chickens and ducks, and whether raising ducks in the village all his life is boring.He chuckled and said raising ducks is the best choice he could make. He did the math for me: annual gifts and social obligations cost about ten thousand yuan, and smoking and drinking cost some more. He also has to care for his father, now in his eighties, whose medical expenses each year cost some more. If he did not care for the old man but sent him to a nursing home, that would also cost twenty or thirty thousand a year. He has no surplus from raising chickens and ducks, but it covers his expenses. If he went out to work, he would not earn much more, but life outside is too constraining; the countryside has broad horizons and free living.Raising chickens and ducks is actually very demanding; once you start, you must care for them every day. So Uncle Zhongde has never traveled far in his life; at most he can spare half a day to go to the county town. He still cultivates a few mu of land; in the countryside one must always grow some grain to eat.He then did the math on this year's grain farming. Cotton and soybean prices have risen a bit, but rice—which accounts for the bulk of Hubei agriculture—sells for less than last year, while fertilizer and pesticide prices are much higher. So growing crops this year is not worthwhile; I expect more village land to be left fallow next year. Agriculture is always like this—good one year, bad the next. Fluctuations in the prices of agricultural inputs and products, and climate change, all affect us; having grown up in the countryside, I am no stranger to this.In the past, rural young people had no options beyond farming; now they can choose to go out and work. Most young people prefer the colorful life outside and do not like the simple, primitive life of the village, so people like Uncle Zhongde who stay in the village all their lives are few.The greatest benefit the Reform and Opening-up brought him was the freedom to raise chickens and ducks. Before the Reform and Opening-up, if he raised more than three ducks, they would be cut off as a "capitalist tail." The greatest progress in Chinese society in recent decades is that those in power have loosened one hand, giving people the freedom to choose their own way of life; so Uncle Zhongde has a life of his own.Uncle Zhongde has a scar he cannot bear to have touched: his own older brother, working away from home, failed to use proper safety protection, fell from scaffolding, and died. This was a heavy blow to the whole family. When his brother died, the children at home were still very young, and he, as their uncle, had to look after them."The outside world can all be seen on Douyin." For Uncle Zhongde, after herding the ducks to their grazing spot, pulling out his phone and scrolling through Douyin when he has nothing to do has become commonplace. The true or false information on Douyin has become the dinner-table talk of people like him.Life with Uncle Zhongde has become something completely different from what it is for those of us who work away year-round. He is not wealthy, but he is at ease. I admire his courage in resisting social trends and holding fast to the way of life he loves. As far as I know, many people do not like the lives they are now living, but they suppress themselves, enduring and tormenting themselves in life, exhausted; in severe cases, some even commit suicide out of weariness with their own lives. Why bother? To accept oneself, one must first begin by accepting a way of life.