Time was flying like a shuttle, elapsing imperceptibly. It entered my sixtieth year in 2005. Because I was born in February, I got ready to retire when celebrating the New Year. Father was born in 1914 and 31 years older than me and he began his 91st year. Unluckily, one heavy cold fell him down and he could not get up any more. Winter vocation began and we hurried to Nantong home, joining brothers and sisters in looking after him. Old man spent the spring festival and died on the tenth day of the first month of the lunar year (Feb 18, 2005)
The death of Father led me to have a lot of memory of him. Before the fourth year in the primary school, I regarded him as an enemy. In my mind, he was terrible. I was often blamed by him for two things, one being laziness. Small as I was, I was forced to do a lot of things. In the morning of the summer I had to get up early to lead the cattle out to pasture. In the daytime, I was asked to cut grasses for the cattle to eat. In the winter the cattle dragged the stone mill to grind the wheat into flour and I had to stand by to look after it. I was often scolded even beaten because I did not take enough care of it. My nickname was lounge lizard as I did not like physical work. The second cause I was blamed was my carelessness causing me to lose things, esp. the pen. Once a pen was missing I hid the fact until it was discovered in the end. A stream of invective was unavoidable. At that time, grinding a jin (250 grams) of wheat into flour cost 2 fen (1/50 yuan) . If a pen cost 1 yuan, it was worth the price of grinding 50 jin (25 kg) wheat. Dad was so angry as to give me a slap in the face. In those years, the pen had the symbolic value of the degrees of education. There was special place on the clothes for the pen. Having a pen on the clothes was an honorable thing. The fun was said, that one pen represented graduation from the junior primary school, two pens from the senior primary school, three pens from the junior middle school and a person with four pens was a pen seller.
As I was growing, I felt Father was getting more and more lovely. In my impression, I was never blamed since I began Year Five in the school, let alone being hit. It was not the change of dad, but my growing up that made me not being blamed by him. I became diligent and careful, never making him angry. He was determined to let me to receive higher education. Although I was not able to be enrolled and failed in the entrance examination of the junior middle school, he sent me to a private school. There being no dormitory for the students, he rent a living room close to the school and carried bed board, benches and bedclothes with a single-wood-wheel carriage to the place. In the second year of the junior middle school, a student sharing the living-room with me lost 20 yuan and the case could not be cracked. As a result, I was under suspicion and suffered the enormous pressure. I was not willing to go to school. He went on foot to find teachers for help to decrease my pressure, assisting me to go through the crisis of discontinuing my study. I was admitted to the senior middle school, but not qualified to live in the school. Again he rent a room for me in a family close to the school. He went there to repair the inner part of the cooking range in order that I could cook myself. In the following days, we often talked with each other about all kinds of things. I respected him from the bottom of the heart and he took a pride in me. Not any bicker broke out between us. When Meilan and I began to work in the Mapo Middle School there was no necessary furniture in our room, causing our life to be inconvenient. Meilan’s mother fell a tree down and wanted to give us to make something but I didn’t know how to carry it to Mapo. When Father came to Mapo to celebrate his 6oth birthday, he said that it was not so difficult as I imagined. We borrowed a cart and drew it with the trunk, walking more than 70 Chinese li (more than 35 km). He was very happy, helping us to complete such a job.
It was unreasonable to remember Father’s enmity. I should try to understand him. Parents had to bring up 6 children and it was the period of the extreme left of the Communist Party, cutting the tail of the capitalism, not any freedom in the economy. It was very difficult to feed the six children. Every day he got up early and stayed up late, never seen resting for a somewhat long time. He was diligent the whole life and did everything he could for a living: ploughing and harrowing; installing dragon waterwheel and huge wooden gear wheel drawn by the cattle to move the waterwheel. He was a carpenter, a brick layer and a skilled dressmaker. He made burning incense, bean amylum, wheat flour, noodle and etc. In order to bring us up six children, he did not touch any bad addiction. He did not smoke, drink a little and got away from gambling. Accordingly, father had no tolerance for laziness and cherished everything he gained. As time went on, Dad became more and more lovely, esp. toward grandchildren, which caused me to feel jealousy. When I brought up our two boys with Meilan, there existed no such a problem because both of us had a salary every month. The children were sure not to be blamed because of not loving to do physical work or losing something. However, my two kids were required to study hard and accumulate knowledge continuously. Occasionally, my attitude toward them was as ferocious as that of Father toward me. I estimated that two sons could not make a good evaluation of their father.
When Father went into his very old age, he was very satisfied and optimistic. He was easy for us, their sons and daughters, to attend. He thought that he was much happier than the landlord, typically “content is happiness.” He did not have any wild wishes and told us posterity that he had never thought he could live so long, and have ample food and clothing in his old age. Seeing his so many grandchildren growing up and becoming so skillful, he was wildly excited and delighted.
Father had gone and I was soon to retire. It was heard that a lot of old cadres were terrified at the retirement. The power being missing, no people came to worship them and they felt lost. My attitude toward the retirement was quite different. Old Song sniffed at the power and was dependent on the knowledge and skill in my whole life. What I thought of was how to teach and write books and become a man of learning. The power must be matched with the duty and I was not willing to be a commonplace official irresponsible. What worshippers thought of was the power you owned, rather than yourself. If his or her problem could be addressed by means of normal way, they didn’t come to worship you. Most of them had brought trouble with them. If I was not able to solve the problem and accepted his or her present, I was feeling uncomfortable. If it could be addressed easily I tended to feel ashamed if he or she insisted on giving me some presents. I had such traits and could not be an official feeling comfortable every day. The thigh bone fracture let me make an early escape from the power, which was a good thing. The retirement would make me completely free and I could do anything I liked, making up what I wanted to do and had no time to do. I used such words to describe my anxious mood to retire, “expecting from the early morning until late into the night”.
Meilan Zhang’s retirement time being half year later, she had to teach until the end of the academic year from the autumn of 2004 to the summer of 2005. I waited for her by undertaking English lessons in the College of Applied Technology of the CUMT, which was close to Fenghuayuan, where we lived. It was very convenient for me to go there by bike.
Our grandson, Wuyang Song, (later named English name Peter Song), was still by us in China and his parents were in Australia, doing pioneering work and they wanted us to bring Wuyang to Melbourne and live with them for a year. I began to think that there must be something in the English speaking country that could activate me to compile and write something.
The summer vacation began and on the 11th of July, 2005, I was examined in the hospital and the doctor would pull the three steel nails from my thigh bone, which had been there more than four years to fix the broken point. 11:15 a.m. of 12th of July, 2005 saw the last nail being pulled out, which was the most difficult one and didn’t want to come out. During the days when I lived in hospital, I thought that I had retired and had enough time for me to write. Besides writing books for publishing, I could write something about myself, leaving to our descendants. I planned to spend two or three years improving my expression ability in words and would try my best to reach the level of electrifying readers. I was determined to write something interesting, readable and of depth.
three steel nails, one being 10 cm long
When I left hospital, bad news came to us that my sister-in-law, my elder brother’s wife, was terminally ill because of cerebral haemorrhage. We hurried home and she had passed away in the hospital. The funeral ending, we went to Nanjing for the physical examination according to the appointment made before, which was a necessary procedure before getting a visa to Australia. On 12th of August we received our passports with the visa from the Consulate General of Australia in Shanghai and on 22nd, we got the air tickets Li Song bought for us. The retirement life began officially. What I worried about was old mother, who was 30 years older than me and now was 90 years old. When father was alive, they were both living happily, accompanying each other. Although seeming healthy, she lived alone and was not willing to have dinner in sons’ or daughters’ home. None of us could persuade her, which set my heart at unrest.
Sept. 6 of 2011 in Xuzhou
Proofreading on March 29 of 2012 in Chicago
The second proofreading on Dec. 29, 2018
Uploading on Aug. 8 of 2023 in Xuzhou
