《Legends of Yunyang》


 Preface | Chapter 1. Family Tree

    I have always wanted to write a historical fiction about my family¡¯s history. My family came from a mysterious mountain village in Yunyang, a small town by the Yangtze River Three Gorges. Remarkable stories have been passed down for generations, and many of them feature strong female leads. They have inspired me since childhood, and I hope to share their inspiration with the world.


    I did not grow up in Yunyang. I went to school in Guangzhou, a southern Cantonese city, but people there would not consider me a ¡°real Cantonese¡±. I wasn¡¯t born there, I didn¡¯t speak Cantonese, and I had a weird accent. What was worse, from time to time, my hometown dialect from Yunyang would slip out, and I would instantly see confused expressions on my schoolmates faces before they start laughing.


    ¡°Where do I actually come from¡± was a question I kept asking myself for years. Eventually, I mastered Mandarin amidst the ridicule of my schoolmates, learned Cantonese, learned English, and more. However, the more languages I learn, the less I know where I belong.


    The first time my parents took me to Yunyang was in 2008, when I was 7 years old. We crossed a creek on a path of stones, walked past a rice field fragrant in the summer breeze, and followed a small trail leading up a mountain. At the end of that trail stood a brick house, with soft curls of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney.


    ¡°That¡¯s my parents¡¯ home,¡± my father said, ¡°It is also my home, and your home. ¡±


    So Yunyang might be where I come from.


    I vividly remember that summer till this day. My grandparents spoiled me with delicious home-made food and gave me such warm smiles that melted my heart. My cousins took me to the rooftop covered with drying corn, and we laid down to gaze at the Milky Way. We caught crabs from mountain streams in the bamboo forest, picked lotus pods fresh from the lotus pond, piled the harvested potatoes into a little hill, and picked sweet sorghum sticks from the field to use as imaginary swords, pretending to fight like ancient warriors.


    When I left, I stepped across that same mountain creek. A small town lies on the other side, and we will leave for Guangzhou from there. I left behind the scent of the fragrant rice, and felt the rustling sound of bamboo leaves fading away. The creek seemed to separate the fairy world and the reality, and when I crossed it, I could no longer stay in the beautiful mountain dream any more.


    ¡°Next year, please take me back here again.¡± I said.


    ¡°We promise.¡± my parents said with a smile.


    I went back to Yunyang in 2009. This time, I had a new task. The summer homework my English teacher gave was to draw a family tree. When the new semester starts, we would present it in English to the class. The excitement when we received the homework was enormous. In China, it is not uncommon that families formally record their family trees and history in booklets, stone inscriptions, and even in ancestor shrines. Cantonese people put special emphasis on family culture heritage, and I had seen various ancestor shrines across the city. Many classmates started showing off what their family had ¨C books, ancestor altars, and more.


    I went home and asked my father what we had. He said proudly, ¡°Go tell your classmates that our Yu family also has a family tree book. It is renewed and published every 10 years. The book contains over 300 years of our family history.¡±


    That family tree book fascinated me so much that I kept counting down the days every day until summer break. When summer finally came, my parents again took me back to Yunyang, and I ran up the mountain into the brick house to greet my grandparents. The first thing I asked them was to show me the precious family tree book.


    They handed me a book thicker than I imagined. It says ¡°Yu Family¡¯s Lineage and History¡± on the cover. I started reading from the last page backwards, and quickly found my father¡¯s name. However, there was not a single name under his name.


    ¡°Where did my name go?¡± I asked, ¡°Is the book outdated?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± my relatives answered, ¡°I was renewed last year.¡±


    ¡°Did the book¡¯s editors forget to put my name because I went to school in the south, and they didn¡¯t know me?¡±


    ¡°They know you. They get informed whenever a kid is born.¡± my relatives explained, ¡°It¡¯s because you are a girl, and a daughter¡¯s name is never allowed on the family tree. That is the tradition.¡±


    ¡°But I¡­¡±


    ¡°If your father had a son, his name would be on here.¡± My relatives continued to say, ¡°Why don¡¯t you go and tell your father to have a son?¡±Stolen story; please report.


    I was on the verge of tears, and asked in disappointment, ¡°How do I get my name on here?¡±


    My relatives bent down and comforted me in a soft voice, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, when you grow up and get married, your name will appear in your husband¡¯s family tree.¡±


    That made me so upset, I started crying. However, all the elders around me started laughing. No girls who grew up in the village would question so much, and they genuinely found my questions amusing. Eight-year-old me encountered gender discrimination for the first time in my life. This poor child had no idea that she would face endless gender discrimination later in life and witness countless women enduring the same.


    My last name is Yu, but my extended family never formally recognized my existence. My name was erased despite me doing nothing wrong. Yet some other people, who did nothing at all, could have their names remembered for generations.


    That summer, the lotus pond was still fragrant, the sun rays still streamed down the bamboo leaves. Nothing seemed to have changed, but my emotions towards this mountain village changed completely. I still ran barefoot with my cousins across the mountains, but the summer sun, so warm in my memories, stung me like thorns on my skin.


    When the new semester started and I went back to Guangzhou, my classmates started sharing fun things they did in their hometowns, subtly showing off at the same time. One kid said that her grandparents had a garden, and she had papayas fresh from the trees. Another kid said that his grandparents had chicken and ducks, and a garden full of flowers. I raised my voice above everyone else, and proudly said that my grandparents had a range of mountains ¨C all belonged to them. They had fish ponds, livestocks, bamboo forests and mountain creeks. My classmates listened in awe, making me even more proud of where I came from.


    My happiness did not last long. It was English class, and the teacher invited students to present their family trees in front of the whole class. When my classmates pulled out booklets, printed papers, and even published books like ¡°Yu Family¡¯s Lineage and History¡±, I went silent. I couldn¡¯t even put my disappointment into a single Chinese word, let alone anything in English. I brought nothing to the class that day, and was scolded by the teacher for not completing the summer homework. I wasn¡¯t sad about being scolded, rather, I was genuinely sad that girls like me couldn¡¯t be treated equally as boys, even by people in their extended family.


    I went home sad, and asked my mother, ¡°You also come from Yunyang, is there a family tree on your side?¡±


    My mother didn¡¯t directly answer, but said, ¡°Everyone I know has left the village. They either moved downtown or to the south, like us.¡±


    ¡°Why did you move to the south?¡± I asked.


    ¡°My father, your grandfather, was a railroad worker, right? His railroad was built from the mountains to the south, so we settled down in the south.¡±


    ¡°Now that the railroad is fully in operation, why don¡¯t we move back there? We can even take the train.¡± I asked again.


    My mother didn;t say anything else. Perhaps the true family history was too much for an eight-year-old to bear.


    In middle school, someone I liked made fun of me in front of everyone, calling me an ¡°ugly monster¡±. I went home and bursted into tears. My mom then said to me, ¡°I understand how you feel, I was also laughed at by bullies at school, but now I don¡¯t see them anymore. When you travel far, they will disappear.¡±


    She then pointed to a scar on her face, ¡°Look at this scar on my face. My classmates also called me ugly. Should that stop me from being confident? No, right?¡±


    ¡°How did you get the scar?¡± I asked.


    ¡°When I was a kid, the villagers back then didn¡¯t like girls, and used to beat me up for random reasons. My parents had enough of that, so they decided to leave the village, take me with them, and live wherever the railroad goes.¡± My mother said in a calm tone, as if that was a story from another world.


    ¡°So that is why you left the village, and went to school here in the south.¡± I said in thought.


    ¡°Correct. Your grandparents also insisted that I go to university, however expensive it could be. Most villagers and railroad workers laughed at them and found it absurd, because according to them, a girl will become a wife, so money spent on a girl is money spent on her future husband.¡±


    ¡°What did their daughter do, then?¡±


    ¡°Most of them didn¡¯t go to school and got married young, and those who worked became railroad workers.¡± My mother said, ¡°That is a dangerous profession which my parents didn¡¯t want me to get into. They wanted me to leave the railroad and see the bigger world for myself. They insisted that I go to school, and go to school in a place where I wouldn¡¯t be beaten up.¡±


    So that is why I became a ¡°new Cantonese¡±. My classmates mocking my accent is way easier to endure than the punches and kicks my mom suffered from the villagers.


    ¡°Grandma and grandpa are really open-minded.¡± I said.


    ¡°Because the tradition of getting girls educated has been passed down for generations ¨C on our mothers¡¯ side, of course.¡± My mother said.


    That year, my grandmother went back to her village in Yunyang. Her mother, my great grandmother, passed away at the age of 94. I never met her in-person, but my grandmother kept telling me her stories. My great grandmother used to be a landlord, and a tough lady who lived a legendary life. She marched bravely from the old era into the new, and witnessed ups and downs of her family and her country.


    I used to treat those stories as folklore as a kid. In university, my history professor led an oral history project, which made me suddenly realize those stories¡¯ actual worth. I felt the urgent need to write them down before they fade away with the storytellers, so they can stay, and travel into eternity.


    Therefore, I am writing this fiction.


    This fiction contains four parts, each telling a story of a generation.


    The first part, The Last Landlord, tells the story of a landlord lady''s legendary life through warfire, land reform and cultural revolution.


    The second part, From Yangtze to Lingnan, tells the story of a strong woman travelling out of the mountains for freedom, education, and gender equality.


    The third part, Mountains and Cities, tells the story of an in-between culture girl travelling back and forth for education, in and out of the mountains, battling cultural and socio-economic barriers when settling down as a first-generation resident of a major city.

 The Last Landlord | Chapter2. Yunzhen

    1927, Yunyang, Chongqing.


    Ten-year-old Yunzhen went back to her cliff cave as usual, lay down on her side, and gazed at the starlight rising and falling in the river winding across the mountain valley. She heard from folklore that stars were pure souls who traveled into eternity, and they would occasionally come to earth and leave their shadows in the river. Every time she walked along the riverbank and reached her hand into the water full of starlight, she would startle the stars, sending them scattering in all directions.


    Yunzhen is my grandmother¡¯s mother, from my mother¡¯s side. In her era, foot binding still existed. Foot binding was an extremely cruel custom that originated in ancient China and lasted a thousand years. Young girls'' insteps were broken and their toes were tightly bound underneath the feet. A small foot with a delicate tip was called a ¡°3-inch golden lotus¡±, which was considered attractive and symbolized good wife material. Yunzhen was born after the Chinese government tried to ban the tradition in 1912. However, foot binding did not disappear until the 1950s.


    Yunzhen was lucky enough to have escaped foot binding, which was extremely rare at her time. Her family was too poor, and a pair of healthy feet was essential for labour work. During the day, Yunzhen¡¯s father would take her and her five elder brothers to beg for food in the neighboring villages. At night, the cliff cave would be their shelter. Growing up as a beggar¡¯s child, Yunzhen had endured countless people spitting in her face to rush her away, or yelling at her that ¡°you¡¯d better go to hell than wandering around, haunting our village.¡± When going around begging for food, she would occasionally be beaten by landlords¡¯ servants, who, despite coming from similar poor families, would bully the weaker ones to boost their own egos. She couldn¡¯t recall a day when her arms and legs were free from bruises or scars.


    That night, her father said to her that he was newly employed as a tenant farmer by a landlord, and they would leave the cliff cave the next day. They would start living in an actual house, free from the wind and rain, free from hunger. In Yunzhen¡¯s memories, the starlight started shining much brighter than before. and she anticipated the dawn more than ever. Yunzhen had never lived in a house, and was so excited that she stayed up all night. That night, the starlight in the river was also rejoicing for her, happily dancing down the stream towards her new home far and far beyond the mountains.


    The next day, as the morning light slowly tinged the sky from behind the mountains, Yunzhen and her family set off on their journey. Yunzhen remembered the mountain peaks reaching high above the clouds, dark against the light of dawn, looking like gigantic statues of deities solemnly witnessing the change of her destiny.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    They crossed rivers and climbed mountains, and followed winding mountain trails past by terraced crop fields. Finally they arrived at a crop field vast and fertile, surrounded by mountains. That was where the landlord lived. Yunzhen met the landlord for the first time. The landlord¡¯s last name was Wang. Landlord Wang was an old man with a kind smile, his gray hair shining under the sunlight.


    Landlord Wang led them to a small brick house and said, ¡°This will be your new house. If you need food or anything else, just tell me. Please make yourselves at home.¡±


    Yunzhen¡¯s father immediately bent  down to thank him. Landlord Wang said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s not a big deal.¡±


    That night, Yunzhen had the best dream of her life. She slept until the sun was already high up in the sky. Seeing the warm sunlight streaming in from the window, she realized that she was no longer lying on a cold, hard rock, but on a soft wooden bed with soft cotton tufts. Although she could no longer look up and be greeted by the vast starry sky at night, she now had a safe, brick house sheltering her from wind and rain.


    Yunzhen was no longer homeless. This is the landlord¡¯s home, and also her new home.


    Yunzhen¡¯s five brothers helped her father with farm work in the crop fields. Her mother did laundry, sewed, and did chores. Yunzhen cooked for the landlord and all the tenant farmers. She wasn¡¯t tall, and had to stand on a stool and reach over the stove for the lids of pots. It wasn¡¯t easy for her to handle the stone stove either. She had to use both hands with all her strength to lift the fire tongs that were half her height, and shove the firewood inside the stove. Some of the firewood was very long, and couldn¡¯t fit entirely into the stone stove. Yunzhen learned to handle them with great care. If they had dried leaves and tiny branches were attached to them, the flames inside would quickly spread along the tiny leaves and twigs, and fiercely lick out of the stove like a monster¡¯s tongue.


    When Yunzhen was busy with cooking and sometimes forgot to push the long firewood further inside the stove, the piece would fall out and keep burning on the ground. Yunzhen would be startled and used to cry out in fear, but as time passed, when this happened again, she learned to calmly tossed them back to the stove with the fire tongs. Those fire tongs were heavy, often leaving dark red marks on her index fingers. The thick smoke often made her eyes water, and the rising steam occasionally burned her forearms, but she never once cried.


    Landlord Wang often praised Yunzhen¡¯s hard work, saying ¡°You''re such a clever and hardworking girl. You are cooking better food with each passing day. I really appreciate it.¡±