CHUNG LI-HO

(1915-1960)

It is commonly agreed that Chung Li-ho’s fiction represents the first flowering of first-generation writers after Taiwan was restored to China in 1945. Born to a farming family in Fingtung, he had, since primary school, been keenly interested in literature, particularly traditional Chinese popular novels. Failing to enter high school, he helped his father manage a lumbering business and spent the rest of his time reading the major writers of the May Fourth period. In 1934, he fell in love with Chung P’ing-mei, a farm girl several years his senior. Since marriage between members of the same surname (Chung) was regarded at that time as incest, Chung Li-ho eloped with P’ing-mei to China in 1940. They stayed in Peking throughout the war. In 1946 the couple returned to Pingtung, where Li-ho worked for some time as a substitute junior high school teacher. Soon he was attacked by tuberculosis and had to be confined in a hospital from 1941 to 1951, exhausting all their financial means. He remained virtually a cripple until his death in 1960, relying on his wife to support the whole family. The anguish of atrophied manhood and the burden of guilt as a failed husband are movingly captured in the present selection, “Together Through Thick and Thin.” The author of one novel, six novellettes, and twenty-six stories, Chung Li-ho provides a vital link in Taiwan fiction between two political eras. Whether autobiographical or impressionistic, his narratives bear intimate witness to the trials and hardship of rural Taiwan in a period of transition. In 1966 Taipei’s Yuan-hsing Press published Chung Li-ho ch’uan-chi, his complete works in eight volumes.

Together through Thick and Thin

Translated by Shiao-ling Yü

I.

After getting off the Sugar Company’s mini-train, I searched all around but did not see a trace of P’ing-mei. I felt slightly surprised. Maybe she did not receive my letter, I thought to myself, otherwise there was no reason for her not coming to meet me. She is my wife; I understand her perfectly. Another thought crossed my mind: maybe she could not make it on time. Then I would certainly meet her on the way. With this thought, I picked up my bundle and slowly made my way home.

Home was in the foothills of the mountains to the east. Not having walked for several years, and weakened by long illness, I found this walk home quite an exertion.

It had been fully three years since I had left home to be hospitalized. Other than the time when P’ing-mei visited me in the hospital during the second year of my stay there, I did not see her again. Three years, and I spent every day of these three years thinking of her and longing for her. I did not know how they managed at home during these three years. Did they live well? Or not well? Even though my medical expenses during this long period had almost depleted our family fortune, I still tried to think about the better of the two possibilities. Perhaps I was not thinking, I was merely wishing—wishing they had lived well. It had to be so, otherwise I could have no peace of mind.

This was admittedly because I loved P’ing-mei so, but besides love, there were other reasons. Our union met with violent opposition from my family and from the old society. It was after much hard struggle and at the cost of breaking relations with our families that we finally became husband and wife. We paid a high price for our life. Because of this, we shared good fortune and hardship, and loved each other without holding anything back during the more than a decade of our life together. We did not desire high position and good pay, or huge land property; we only wished to have a thatched hut surrounded by a bamboo fence, where we could live out our lives in peace and tranquility, and in loving companionship. This was all we wanted.

We spent the first five years of our married life away from home. Since my return to Taiwan in the second year after the Japanese surrender, we were rarely separated from each other even for a very brief period. Little did I expect that this illness would keep me in the hospital for three years. I could well imagine how P’ing-mei must have missed and worried about me during all this time, just as I had done about her.

A broad road stretched from the village to the east. After I went past the school and down a little slope, the road forked. The small path that led to the northeast was the shortest route to my home. As I walked down the slope, I noticed a grove of trees by the roadside, and under the shade of the trees a woman who had a child with her looked in my direction from time to time.

It was P’ing-mei! I walked over to her; she came up and took the baggage from me.

“P’ing-mei!” I could hardly suppress my agitation.

P’ing-mei lowered her head, tears rolling down her face. The child pressed tightly against his mother. He looked at me, then looked at his mother. Li-erh, who was only a baby when I left, must be four years old now, I reckoned.

As I gazed at P’ing-mei and our child, my heart was filled with mixed sadness and happiness, and a host of other emotions. P’ing-mei wiped her tears with her sleeves. I let her cry for a while. In three years, she had become much thinner.

“P’ing-mei,” I asked her after she had quieted down a little, “didn’t you receive my letter?”

She quietly looked up. There were no more tears in her eyes, they still glistened with dampness.

“I got your letter,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you come to the station to meet me?”

“I didn’t want to,” she muttered. “There are too many people in the station.”

“You’re afraid of those people?”

This reminded me of the time when I left home on a two-week trip. P’ing-mei could not help crying when she came to the station to see me off. She cried as if I were going on a long journey and we were to be separated for many years. Her crying had made me quite depressed.

“You don’t want people to see you cry, right?”

P’ing-mei said nothing, lowering her head even more.

I was silent for a long while, then asked her, “Now that I am back, do you still feel sad?”

“Oh, I am so happy!” She raised her head. Holding the child’s chin, she said to him, “Here is Daddy, why don’t you call Daddy? You promised me at home that you would!”

Our agitation had by now gradually subsided, and there were traces of happiness on her face.

I asked her, “Did you live well at home?”

She gave me a sad smile, “I lived very well!”

I looked at her in bewilderment, and suddenly felt guilty. I took her hands and caressed them again and again. Her hands were very thick and were covered with bruises old and new; the palms were full of thick callouses. The more I looked at them, the worse I felt.

“Looks like you’ve been very hard on yourself.” I said.

P’ing-mei pulled her hands away from me. “This is nothing,” she said. After a slight pause, she added, “As long as you’re getting well, it doesn’t matter that I have to work hard.”

II.

In our home, everything looked neat and tidy. The house, inside and out, and all household articles, big and small, were sparkling clean. The house was filled with a serene, peaceful, comforting atmosphere that could only come from a woman’s thoughtful, solicitous concern. The moment I stepped inside I was enveloped by a feeling of affection, warmth, and coziness, the kind of feeling that only a person returning home after a long absence can feel, the kind of feeling that makes a wandering soul settle down.

On the other hand, I discovered what a difficult and impoverished condition we were in. I saw clearly how much of our family property had been washed away by my illness; I had almost deprived P’ing-mei and our two children of their means of livelihood. This thought greatly pained me.

“Maybe I should have saved the property for you and the children,” I said as we were going to bed that night. “With the property, you and the children will not have to worry about your living expenses in the future.”

“What are you talking about?” P’ing-mei was quite upset. “I couldn’t wait for you to get well and leave the hospital. Now that you’re home, I’m very happy. Don’t talk nonsense, you’ll only make me angry.”

Deeply moved, I drew her to me. She gave in to my pull and came to lean on my shoulder.

“They all said that you were not going to get well, and told me not to sell the land but to save it for the children and me to live on. But I didn’t believe that you would die.” After a little while she added quietly, “We’ve suffered so much, Heaven will have mercy on us. I want you to live to be a hundred so you can watch our children grow up and watch me die peacefully in front of your eyes. The lucky wives die before their husbands. I don’t want it to happen that when I die you’re no longer around; that would make me sad.”

The only property we had left was about a half acre of not very fertile land to the east of our house. During these years, P’ing-mei had mastered all the skills of a farmhand: plowing, hoeing, planting, and harvesting. When she finished working on our own land, she would work for the wealthy families nearby or for the Department of Forestry on its afforestation project. At the time I came home, she was working for a monastery—opening up mountain land for cultivation. She would finish all the household chores, then take her sickle and go to work. At noon and in the evening she would rush home to start the meals. Although she worked herself so hard, she always did everything with a smile.

One day it was already dark when she got back from the temple. Without sitting down to catch her breath, she picked up the cooking pot and went into the kitchen. Watching her bustling about, I could hardly contain myself. I asked myself: Why can’t I cook the meals?

The next day, I set to work. Fortunately, it was not too difficult to cook for a family of four. When P’ing-mei came home at noon, lunch was ready. She was at first surprised, then became worried.

“This will not tire me out.” I put on a most convincing smile and assured her that her worries were unfounded. “I want to help out a little so you don’t have to rush back and forth.”

From then on, I gradually learned the domestic duties of a housewife: cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, feeding the pigs, sewing, and looking after the children. The only thing that I did not quite master was washing clothes. Thus, without our knowing it, we had exchanged our respective roles and duties: she worked outside the home, I worked inside, as if she were a good husband, and I a good wife.

On the days when P’ing-mei worked on our own land, I would take a pot of hot tea to the field for her every morning so she could rest a little while drinking the tea. I thought she would welcome this refreshment after having perspired from working. As I watched her happy and contented expression when she drank the tea, I also felt happy. Since I had no choice but to let her work like a man, I could only hope that she would have beautiful smiles for me. As long as she was happy, so was I.

III

Though material comfort was not part of our lot, our devotion to each other enabled us, to a certain extent, to lead a fairly happy and satisfactory life. Our difficulties were mainly financial. Our little patch of land could hardly support a family of four and P’ing-mei could not always find other work. As a result, we always lived with uncertainties.

One evening as we were sitting in our courtyard, a dozen people carrying lumber passed by the road in front of our house; there were even a few women among the group. They were the illegal loggers often reported in the newspapers. They would steal into some remote places in the Central Mountain ranges in the morning to cut down the teak trees belonging to the Department of Forestry, and carry the wood out after sunset to sell to the merchants.

Silently we watched the people pass. Suddenly, P’ing-mei said to me that she wanted to go with these people to haul lumber the next day.

I was taken aback. “You? You haul lumber?”

With this exchange, the pitiable image of a logger came to my mind. He was dripping with sweat from head to toe, panting like a workhorse, and his face was flushed red. I felt a sharp pain in my heart, as if pricked by a needle. That was a dreadful prospect.

“P’ing-mei,” I said sternly—but I could tell that I was pleading—“there is no need for us to come to that. We can manage by watering down the gruel.”

Despite my brave words, I knew perfectly well how hard our days were. What was worse, there was no prospect of improvement. Besides, it was not always possible to stick it out by “watering down the gruel.”

The seven essentials of every household—firewood, rice, cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea—were a source of enjoyment for other people; for us every item was a burden. People could not possibly imagine how a poor family felt about such things; even I had just come to understand them myself. Problems that were hardly a matter of concern to people under normal circumstances were, for the poor, difficulties that took all their energies to solve.

From the time our children started school, their educational expenses became another problem that we had to contend with. In addition, there were medical expenses, even though I no longer had to take medicine every day. Pressures came from all sides.

Finally, the day came when P’ing-mei went to haul lumber!

Silently I watched her join those people and start toward the mountains. I felt an indescribable pain in my heart, as though I were watching my beloved being led away by jailers. I never hated myself so much for my weakness and inadequacy as I did at that particular moment. I clearly sensed an irresistible force in our midst, which cruelly controlled our actions and lives. Our will to resist had been crushed.

Shortly after sunset, P’ing-mei came home safely, shouldering a piece of wood through the back door. There was not a dry spot on her shirt, and a big patch of her pants was also soaked through. Her face was covered with sweat. Her hair, drenched in sweat, was very disheveled; some of it stuck to her face, making her look fierce. When she saw me, she parted her lips and tried to smile. But that was not a smile at all; it was twisted into a grimace by the weight of the log on her shoulders. I suddenly felt something in me, forcing me to cry out, but I turned my head away without saying a word. I could not bear to look at her. I did not dare ask her questions either.

She carried the log into the house and leaned it against the wall. It was a piece of teak wood with the bark on, about three and a half inches thick and thirteen feet long; it could fetch twenty dollars in the market. As soon as P’ing-mei came out of the room, I shut the door and did not mention anything about it all evening—I was afraid to mention the word “lumber.”

“You don’t like me hauling lumber?” P’ing-mei finally asked me. My silence seemed to have hurt her deeply.

“It is not that I like to haul lumber,” she explained, her voice choking with emotion. “We have to make a living. There is no other way!”

I could not describe my feelings in that moment. They were just too confused to be identified. There was hatred, there was sorrow, there was also fear. I hated myself for not being able to support my wife, for having to depend on her for support. I was sad because my wife had to be a lumberjack. On the other end of the lumber I saw a bottomless pit, and we were drawing closer to it with every step. And this made me frightened.

IV.

The following day, P’ing-mei went to haul lumber again. For her lunch, I prepared two rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves, tied with her kerchief. This way she could just discard the wrappings after she’d finished eating without the additional burden of a lunch box. The less she had to carry the better.

From around noon that day, I kept looking toward the mountain slopes in the east. On the one hand, I was anxious for P’ing-mei to come home; on the other hand, I wanted to see if there were any suspicious people lurking around. This precaution was very important, for on it depended the safety of the loggers.

Although our local station was frequently patrolled by the police from the Department of Forestry, if no one from the office came to inspect, these policemen rarely ventured out. Even when they did, they made only routine checks. Days like this were usually safe. If their superior came to inspect, then it was another story. For the sake of safety, the lumberjacks hired a special messenger who checked on the news every day. As soon as he heard something, he would immediately go into the mountains to warn them. His intelligence was highly reliable. He often got the word even before the inspector left his office. The regrettable thing about him was that he was very fond of drinking and gambling. Once he started to drink or gamble, he would forget everything. This worried the loggers the most.

Shortly after noon, three or four people in white suddenly appeared from the south. I leaned against the window frame and watched intently for several minutes. Alas! These must be people from the Department of Forestry!

After this discovery, I paced in and out, unable to keep myself still for a moment. From time to time I would walk to the yard and look toward the mountains in the east. There were two parallel roads that turned in different directions just beyond the temple, one going east, one bearing slightly to the northeast. The eastern route passed in front of the patrol station, so the lumberjacks all preferred the other route. If the news was bad and they could take neither road, they had to climb over the mountain ridge to escape. If that happened, it would only mean trouble. I prayed that it would not be so.

I thought about the messenger—I did not know what that drunkard was doing! Still not a trace of him, that confounded scoundrel!

The sun was slanting toward the west and it was almost evening. Everything was quiet. There was no trace of the messenger, either. I was getting even more worried and nervous. The sun was now touching the top of the mountains, evening’s dark shadows were slowly spreading out, becoming deeper and darker. It was time to start the fire to cook supper again.

Suddenly I heard heavy footsteps hastily walking past the courtyard. When I looked, it was none other than that cursed drunkard. He was walking very fast, almost running.

“Is P’ing-mei gone, Ah-ho?” he shouted to me as he walked past.

“Left a long time ago. Where are they?” I asked.

“At Fang-liao.”

“You . . .”

But that drunkard was already gone.

As I attended to my household chores, I paid close attention to the mountain pass to the east. This was a crucial moment—the moment when the forest patrols set out to arrest the offenders, and the loggers tried to slip through the line of surveillance. If they bumped into the police, the fortunate ones could escape capture but had to lose their precious lumber; the unfortunante ones would be caught with their loot. Then there would be fines and a three-month prison term. Who their families would depend on for support during this period, only Heaven knew.

It was getting dark. All was quiet. Obviously something ominous was going to happen. Where were the loggers? Had the forest patrols been dispatched? Did the messenger arrive in time to give the warning? Why did he come so late? That drunkard!

It was now completely dark. A new moon appeared in the sky. I served the children supper and told the older boy to take his brother to bed. Then I rushed toward the eastern mountain pass, although I knew my action would probably be in vain.

After I walked past the temple I turned into a valley, then down a creek and up a slope until I reached a stretch of field along the creek. Just as I got to the end of the path in the rice paddies, a din of shouting suddenly erupted in front of me. Someone was hollering in a loud voice, “Don’t run away! Don’t run away!” There was another uproar made of many cries of “Wa-ya . . .” that sounded like a stampede of frightened cattle.

I ran forward with all my strength. I had gone only a few steps when I met a group of people running toward me, carrying logs on their shoulders. I dodged quickly into the shadow of the trees. I saw five or six men run past, panting heavily, with two patrolmen in hot pursuit. When they were about thirty feet from the loggers, the patrolmen yelled angrily, “Don’t run away! Don’t run away!” This was followed by a series of “pong! pong! pong!” sounds. The men must have thrown away their lumber.

I came out of the shadows and continued to run toward the interior of the mountain. Discarded logs lay by the roadside. Farther up the mountain came a series of cries, “Over there! Over there!” I saw countless shadowy figures running confusedly in the vacant field by the creek on the other side of the road. Three persons in the back were pursuing, two of them in plain clothes. Those in front did not have logs on their shoulders any more.

“Stop! Don’t run away, damn you!” a voice shouted in Mandarin with a heavy southern accent.

Another voice came from the little creek close by. The creek was about forty feet away, just below the road. Two figures dashed out of the shadows and into the hazy moonlight, followed by another and yet another. The third one, I noticed, was a woman, and she was less than twenty feet away from the forestry patrolman behind her. The little creek was full of craggy boulders, and the four shadowy figures staggered and tottered on the boulders with a bobbing motion. Then the woman stumbled and fell. In that instant, the shadow behind her leapt forward and dashed at her.

“Ai-ya!”

I let out a cry. At the same time I was seized by a dizzy spell and almost lost my balance. By the time I steadied myself, all had returned to quiet around me in the silvery moonlight. The struggles of a moment ago, the chasing and commotion, all seemed like a bad dream. But it was no dream. Close by my feet there were logs scattered all over the ground. I realized with intense pain that P’ing-mei had been captured!

V.

Feeling utterly helpless, I dragged myself home with two wobbly legs and an aching heart. On the little creek, I met two forest patrolmen and three plainclothesmen; they stared at me with surprise and suspicion.

After walking for I did not know how long, I finally got home. When I saw the dim yellow light that filtered out through the window I felt indescribably lonely and sad. But when I stepped into the house I thought I was dreaming again and for a moment remained frozen by the door. Ah, there was P’ing-mei sitting squarely on the chair! She had not been captured by the forestry patrolman, my beloved wife!

“P’ing-mei! P’ing-mei!”

I rushed forward and grabbed her hands, and began to caress them with abandon. I felt as if something very hot were burning in my breasts.

“Where have you been?” she asked me.

But I did not hear what she said; I only heard myself talking: “I saw you caught by the patrolman.”

“Me?” She looked at me with raised head. “No, it wasn’t me,” she continued slowly, “I was in the back. When I saw the patrol chasing people in front of me, I hid in the woods. But when I was climbing over the mountain, I slipped and fell. Right now my left shoulder and one of my ankles are hurting a little. You can rub me with some ginger later.”

I looked at her again and I discovered the bruise on her left cheek, the mud on her whole body, especially on her left shoulder, and the grass in her hair.

I took a piece of ginger, cut it open, and placed it in hot ash to warm it. Then I poured a half cup of wine and asked P’ing-mei to lie down in bed. When I unbuttoned her clothes I was greatly shocked by what I saw: the left side of her body, from shoulder to ankle, was covered with big and small bruises and cuts, some light, some quite serious. There was a bruise the size of a palm on her pelvis. A piece of skin was rubbed off her shoulder, the bloodstain still fresh. I could tell these were all new wounds. I applied penicillin to the cuts; the bruised places I rubbed back and forth with ginger dipped in wine. When I got to her pelvis, P’ing-mei groaned from time to time.

“P’ing-mei, tell me,” I said to her, “it was you who fell down in the creek, right?”

She said nothing. It was only after I questioned her repeatedly that she admitted it.

“Why did you try to hide it from me?” I said disapprovingly. “Your wounds are quite serious.”

“I was afraid you might feel bad,” she said.

That tense and frightening chase of a while ago reappeared in my mind, and the tears I had held back until now rolled down my cheeks in a steady stream.

As I rubbed her body, I reviewed in my mind our life together—from courtship, marriage, until now. The hard, bitter life that we shared for more than a decade was a record of the struggles of our two souls. Now one had fallen, and the other was trying desperately to carry on the struggle. The road ahead was full of obstacles; how could a woman do it all alone? Poor P’ing-mei!

The sadder I became the more my tears fell.

P’ing-mei sat up suddenly and asked me gently, “What’s bothering you?”

I clasped her to my bosom, letting my hot tears wet her hair.

“Please don’t feel so bad.” P’ing-mei stroked my head and said even more gently, “It doesn’t matter that I have to work hard. As soon as you get well, everything will be all right.”

Beside us our two children lay sleeping, breathing evenly and peacefully, oblivious to what was going on.

The following day I would not let P’ing-mei go to haul lumber again. I promised her that we would find another alternative.

Later I found appropriate employment in town—writing advertisements for a movie theater. The work was light. I could finish it in two hours, and still have plenty of time left; it wouldn’t interfere with my convalescence. Although the pay was low, with our thrifty lifestyle it was enough to make up the deficiencies in our income so that we could meet our living expenses. And P’ing-mei did not have to go out to work any more.

With this arrangement, I solved only half of the problem. The other half remained: my illness. I had to overcome it as soon as possible. Only then would I be able to face P’ing-mei, my beloved wife, without feeling apologetic!