Lesson 7: Remembering My Mother

Lesson 7: Remembering My Mother

Zhu De

I was saddened by the news of my mother's death. I loved my mother, especially because she worked hard all her life, and there are many things that I should always remember.

My family was a sharecropper. Our ancestors were from Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, and we moved to Ma'anchang, Yilong County, Sichuan Province, during the "Huguang-filled Sichuan" period. Generations of landlords farming, the family is poor, and our friends are also honest and poor farmers.

My mother gave birth to thirteen sons and daughters. Because of the family's poverty, she could not raise all of them, so she left behind only eight, and the next ones she had were forced to drown. What a tragic, sad and hopeless thing in a mother's heart! The mother raised her eight children single-handedly to adulthood. But most of her time was taken up by housework and farming, so she couldn't take care of her children much, so she let them crawl in the field.

My mother was a good worker. As far back as I can remember, she was always up before dawn. There were more than 20 members in the family, and the women took shifts to cook the rice for a year. After she cooked the rice, my mother had to plant, grow vegetables, feed the pigs, raise silkworms and spin cotton. Because she was tall and sturdy, she was also able to carry water and dung.

My mother worked all day long in this way. When I was four or five years old, I naturally helped her out, and by the time I was eight or nine years old, I could not only pick and carry, but also plant. I remember when I came home from private school, I often saw my mother sweating on the stove, burning rice, and I quietly put my books down and went to pick water or herd cattle. In some seasons, I studied in the morning and planted in the afternoon; when the farming season was busy, I worked in the field with my mother all day long. During this period, my mother taught me a lot about production.

The life of a tenant family was naturally hard, but thanks to my mother's intelligence and ability, we could barely get by. We used tung oil to light our lamps, ate rice with peas, vegetables, sweet potatoes, and mixed grains, and put the oil from the vegetable seeds in the rice for seasoning. This kind of food that the rich landowners didn't even look at, but my mother was able to make it so that the family could eat it with taste. When the year was good, we could sew some new clothes, and we produced them ourselves. My mother spun the thread by hand, had it woven into cloth, dyed it, and we called it "home woven cloth", which was as thick as a copper coin. The oldest set of clothes was worn by the oldest, the second and third generation continued to wear it and still can not be broken.

A hard-working family is regular and organized. My grandfather was a Chinese specimen of a farmer who had to plow the fields until he was 80 or 90 years old, and would get sick if he didn't. He was still working in the fields until shortly before he died. My grandmother was the organizer of the family, and she managed all production matters, assigning the work for the year every New Year's Eve. Every day before dawn, my mother was the first one to get up, then I heard my grandfather's voice getting up, and then everyone left their beds to feed the pigs, chop wood, and fetch water. My mother was extremely capable of doing her job in the family. She was so kind that she never scolded us, nor did she quarrel with anyone. Therefore, although in such a large family, the elders, uncles, sisters-in-law ^ get along very well. My mother sympathized with the poor - a simple class consciousness - and although she was not rich, she helped and cared for her relatives who were poorer than herself. She herself was very frugal. My father sometimes smoked a little tobacco and drank a little wine; my mother kept us under control and did not allow us to get into any of it. My mother's hard-working and frugal habits and her generous and kind attitude still leave a deep impression on my heart.

But disaster did not come to the Chinese peasants just because they were peaceful. Around 1900, Sichuan was hit by drought for many years, and many peasants were starving and bankrupt, so they had to go in groups to "eat the big household". I saw with my own eyes six or seven hundred peasants dressed in rags and their wives and children being killed and beaten by the so-called officials and soldiers, spilling blood for forty or fifty miles and crying to the heavens. In such years, my family also suffered more difficulties, just eat some small vegetable leaves, sorghum, did not eat white rice throughout the year. Especially in the year of B Wei (1895), the landlord oppressed the tenants, to increase the rent on the land rented, because it could not do, took advantage of the New Year's Eve, threatened my family to withdraw the tenancy, forcing us to move. Under the tragic circumstances, our family cried and dispersed overnight. From then on, my family was forced to live in two separate places. With fewer people and a natural disaster, our crops were not harvested, which was the most tragic experience for my family. My mother was not discouraged, but her sympathy for the poor peasants and her antipathy for those who were unkind to the rich became even stronger. My mother's sorrowful and trivial stories and the many injustices I saw with my own eyes inspired me to resist oppression and seek light in my early childhood, making me determined to find a new life.

I soon left my mother as I studied. I was the son of a sharecropper family and could not afford to study. At that time, the oppression of the gentry and landlords in the countryside, and the brutality of the magistrates forced my mother and father to scrimp and save to raise a scholar to "support the family". I went to private school, took the imperial examination in 1905, and then went further afield to study in Shunqing and Chengdu. I borrowed money from all over the world to pay for my tuition, which cost more than 200 yuan, and only paid off when I became a brigadier of the Protectorate Army.

In 1908, I came back from Chengdu to run a higher elementary school in Yilong County, and went home two or three times a year to see my mother. At that time, the old and new ideas clashed very much. We embraced the idea of science and democracy and wanted to do something in our hometown, and the old guard gentry came out against us. I was determined to leave my hometown without my mother's knowledge and go far away to Yunnan to join the New Army and the League. After I arrived in Yunnan, I learned from my family letters that my mother not only did not oppose my move, but also gave me a lot of encouragement.

From the first year of Xuan Tong (1909) to the present, I have not returned home once, except in the eighth year of the Republic of China (1919), when I took my father and mother out. But they were used to working and were uncomfortable when they left the land, so they went back home. My father died on his way home. Mother went home and continued to work until the end.

The Chinese Revolution continued to move forward, and so did my thinking. When I discovered the correct path for the Chinese Revolution, I joined the Chinese Communist Party. The Revolution failed and I was completely cut off from my family. My mother relied on the 30 acres of land to support the family independently. After the war, I was able to correspond with my family. My mother knew the cause I was working for, and she expected the success of China's national liberation. She knew the difficulties of our Party and continued to live as a hardworking peasant woman at home. In the middle of the seven years, I had sent back a few hundred yuan and a few pictures of myself to my mother. My mother is getting old, but she will always miss me as much as I will always miss her. Last year, I received a letter from my nephew saying, "My grandmother is 85 years old this year, and her spirit is not as healthy as it was yesterday, and her diet is not as good as before. However, I devoted myself to the cause of national resistance, but I was unable to repay my mother's hope.

The most important characteristic of my mother was that she never left the workforce in her life. One minute before she gave birth to me, she was still cooking rice on the stove. Even in her old age, she still loved production. Another letter from my nephew last year said, "My grandmother is not as healthy this year as she was in previous years because of her old age, but she still keeps working, especially spinning cotton."

I should thank my mother for teaching me the experience of struggling with difficulties. I had already suffered hardships in my family, which made me feel no more difficulties and not be intimidated by them in my military life and revolutionary life for more than thirty years. My mother gave me a strong body and a hard-working habit, so that I never felt strained.

I should thank my mother for teaching me the knowledge of production and the revolutionary will, and encouraging me to take the revolutionary path in the future. On this path, I realized more and more every day that only this knowledge, this will, is the most valuable property in the world.

Now my mother is gone, and I will never see her again, and this grief is irremediable. My mother was an ordinary person, just one of the millions of working people in China, but it is these millions of people who created and made the history of China. In what way can I repay my mother's deep gratitude? I will continue to be faithful to our nation and our people, to the hope of our nation and our people, the Communist Party of China, so that people who live the same way as my mother can live happy lives. This is what I can do and will do.

May my mother rest in peace on earth!