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It was the fifth day of the fourth moon, Tomb Sweeping Day, which some call the Day of Pure Brightness. It was just such a day, for the spring sky was bright blue and the fields of ripened winter wheat shone gold in the sun. All across the hills you could see villagers like ourselves making their way to their ancestors' graves.
I ran ahead on the goat path, happy to leave the village where it was all houses and people. The sweet smell of wild roses followed us up and down the hills. I loved the upness and downness of the hills. On this day I thought hills were the best idea of all.
"Chu Ju," my grandmother called, "you are like a wild dog let loose. Have a little dignity."
Nothing I did pleased my nai nai. I slowed my steps, as was proper for so solemn an occasion. We would ask of our ancestors the thing we had asked in the village of the palm reader and of the astrologer. It was the thing that was talked of in our home day and night, sometimes in whispers, sometimes in angry shouts. Often Nai Nai would look sharply at me as if it were all my fault, and often I felt it was.
We passed a small house where azalea bushes grew beside a pigpen. I took Ma Ma's hand and pointed out the pink piglets rooting among the pink blossoms. Ma Ma stood beside me smiling. The baby was due any time, and I guessed she was happy to rest for a moment.
Ba Ba paused to admire some rows of new corn. My father was a doctor, but his parents had been farmers and he had been a farmer until the government had taken their land and joined it with other farms to make a big farm. When his parents protested, they were punished and sent away to this place where we now live. Ba Ba had only been a small child then, but he remembered the farm and took great pleasure in anything that grew. That is a thing I have from Ba Ba.
"It is a good year for the corn," he said. He grinned at me. "Your little pigs will grow fat."
Below us the houses became small. The river, the Gan Jiang, curled around the village like a silver ribbon. Overhead soared a great ying, with its dark wings and white breast.
At last we came to the place where our ancestors were buried. The graveyard was small, with only three tombs. Ba Ba had planted a pear tree beside each tomb. The white pear blossoms drifted down like snowflakes, covering the graves. A little bird with an orange head peered at us from the top of one of the trees. Its song was like the gu zheng, the lyre, with its sweet sound.
During the years of war and revolution the people of China had been blown about like autumn leaves, settling now here, now there. With many tears they had left the graves of their ancestors. Few people could afford a trip of a thousand kilometers to return to those tombs. Nai Nai said it was the disgrace of all those untended graves that caused our country so much sorrow.
I had come to this resting place of our ancestors many times and knew the names on the stones by heart. I had seen the places set aside for my nai nai and my ma ma and ba ba and for a son if there should be one. I was saddened that there was no place for me. One day I would marry, and when I died I would lie with my husband in some distant place.
I was seven when Ye Ye died. I came with Ba Ba to find a suitable location for my grandfather's grave. Ba Ba brought with him his bamboo divination blocks, which would help him discover the most auspicious place, the place with the best feng shui. If your ancestors were displeased with their burial place, they could be mischievous and cause you trouble. Nai Nai had been unhappy with the site Ba Ba had chosen for her husband, but then Nai Nai was unhappy about everything.Unlike Nai Nai, who could only see that I was not a son, Ye Ye had been kind to me and would pick the bits of meat from his rice and put them in my dish. When Ye Ye became sick, my ba ba prescribed a certain kind of snake for him and Ye Ye gave me bits of that cooked snake. For days I thought I felt it slithering about in my stomach.
As a special treat Ye Ye would take me with him to fish in the river. First we would catch grasshoppers for bait. Once I caught a cricket, but Ye Ye shook his head.
"Not a cricket," he said. "At night the crickets sing away the darkness." He wove a small bamboo cage for the cricket and put it beside my bed. "Now you will have only pleasant dreams," he promised.
We sat by the river, Ye Ye with his long bamboo pole and I with my small one. Together we would watch the barges make their way down the river. "There is no end to where the river can take you and no end to the wonders it can show you," Ye Ye said. "The river is not like a road that comes to an end. It goes to the great river, the Chang Jiang, and from there to the sea, the hai, and from there to another hai."
Ye Ye became silent, and I saw that he was on the river and floating toward the hai and from one hai to the next and from one wonder to an even greater wonder.
Once we saw a dead man strapped onto a raft floating down the river. I cried out, but Ye Ye said, "It is nothing more than a death custom that some practice. It is not for me, for I must be buried in the place my son will choose, but I would not think it a bad thing to travel forever on the river."
Chu Ju's House. Copyright © by Gloria Whelan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from Chu Jus House by Gloria Whelan
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