I Was “Tie Mei” Too
More than twenty years ago, when I was still living in Kunming, buying coal was hard work. Every time we bought it, the whole family was mobilized.
Early on Sunday morning, my wife and I would hurry to the coal yard at Shizui Station to line up and register. Then we loaded coal into baskets and burlap sacks. Once it was packed, the two of us carried it to the scale, had it weighed, paid, and loaded it onto a cart. One of us pulled from the front and the other pushed from behind as we moved the coal three kilometers back to the workers’ village.
When we reached our building, our thirteen-year-old daughter and six-year-old son came down to help. Our daughter carried coal in a small basket. Our son held pieces in his arms. My wife and I carried it on shoulder poles. More than half a ton of coal had to be moved up to the third floor.
By the time we finished, everyone’s face was black with coal dust. Our clothes were soaked with sweat and we were panting for breath. A rare Sunday off disappeared into exhaustion.
During the Cultural Revolution, production stagnated and transportation was disrupted. The coal yard at Shizui Station became empty.
Among the seven necessities of daily life, fuel came first. What could people do?
Some factory workers went into the hills to cut firewood. To say they “cut firewood” is too mild. In reality, it became indiscriminate cutting. More honest people collected branches. More selfish people felled full-grown trees and carried them home for fuel.
Families that followed the rules, were timid, or simply lacked labor went instead to pick through coal cinders.
Near our workers’ village was a thermal power plant. Every day it dumped more than a thousand tons of cinders. Mixed among them were fist-sized pieces of coal that had not completely burned.
As the quiet rush to collect coal cinders spread, my wife was drawn into it too.
After dark, when everything around was still, she wrapped up her hair, covered her face with a mask, put on gloves, carried a flashlight, and followed companions to the cinder dump. She would not return until late at night.
When I saw her come back with her face “colored by smoke and fire,” I teased her.
“You’ve become Little Tie Mei!”
My wife threw down her dirty gloves and answered irritably, “What else can I do? In a few days we won’t have anything left to burn.”
Tie Mei was the heroine of the model Peking opera The Red Lantern, the daughter of a poor railway worker.
To solve the fuel problem, many people went to gather cinders just as Tie Mei might have done. Before long, to reduce my wife’s burden, I stopped worrying about “face” and went to be a “Little Tie Mei” myself.
With two of us working, the time needed was shorter. But the value of the physical energy we spent, the flashlight batteries we used, the soap needed to wash our clothes, and everything else had long since exceeded the few fen that the collected coal was actually worth.
We knew perfectly well that it was absurd. But what choice did we have?
The reality before us was simple: did we want to eat or not?
After immigrating to America, whenever we cooked rice, boiled water, or stir-fried food, all we had to do was turn a switch and the gas came on. It felt wonderfully convenient.
Last year, when I returned to Kunming to visit relatives and old friends, I discovered that after reform and opening, Kunming residents too had long since abandoned coal stoves and changed to gas ranges.
When my car passed Shizui Station, I looked at the old coal yard. What was piled high there now was industrial mineral material.
That was an enormous change.
From my heart, I wished the people of Kunming lives that would become happier and happier.