1932: Farming families

Farmer's Family by Five Dynasties poet Yen Renyu

Before dawn, wake sons, take advantage of morning to till,
Haggard ox, no strength, gradually hard to walk;
Common people don't know the farmers' suffering,
And say, the grain of the fields grows by itself.

1932 - age 31 (continued)

All these years in Japan, I lived a simple, frugal life. Besides when I graduated and took a trip with my fellow classmates to Guandong Guanxi, I seldom traveled for pleasure. After I started at my college department, my school work has lessened and I still had government money coming in. Usually, I had more spending money. One day, I went with my YMCA friends to take a trip around Japan's famous tourist spots: Riguang, Shanggen, Rihai, Ido. I also wrote poems about these places. 

Since 1924 when I came to Japan, it had been eight years. My studies were almost done, so during the summer, I decided to go back to China. On July 20, I took a train from Tokyo to Changqi (Hiroshima). From Changqi, I took a ship. At that time between China and Japan, there was a regular shipping schedule. When my boat was close to Changjiang, and I could see Wusong, I wrote a poem and then I arrived in Shanghai and stayed at the China Arts & Literature Institute. It was built by earlier graduates Zou, Zhen, and Wang. Located in the French Concession, the building was big and wide and well managed. The rent was quite low because I was a member and I could move in right away. In the meantime, I asked the Institute to publish my articles on accounting basics. 

After I settled in at the Institute, Mr Hu Zongyuan introduced me to Miss Xu Diqing. We agreed to all go on July 24 to Trinity Church on Jioujiang Road to attend Sunday service. On that Sunday, I accompanied by Zongyuan and Diqing accompanied by Lioujie (6th sister), we all went to church. After service, we all met at the door of the church. Because of so many years in Tokyo, I usually wore the student uniform. When I came back, I changed into a Chinese outfit: inside is a long pant and outerwear is a long robe. The one I wore that day was an old robe from many years ago, of bad material and out of fashion. It was quite short for me. After we got married, Diqing often said, "The first time I saw you, your robe was a foot from the ground."

After July 24, on the 25th, we had dinner at Gong Deling's vegetarian restaurant. That finished the introduction process. From then on, we just wrote letters. On the 26th, I accompanied Zongyuan on the express railroad from Shanghai to Nanjing, and then on the 27th, we took the ship from Nanjing to Jioujiang. From Jioujiang, I visited my Yang family side uncles and cousins, and visited my grandmother's old residence to pay respects. On the 28th, I started writing letters to Diqing. I started with, "Miss Diqing, this is the first time I've written a letter, and I don't know the appropriate way to address you, please forgive my ill manners. This letter I am mailing from Jioujiang, addressed to Four Banks, 60 Sichuan Road, Shanghai. I am using the return address Jioujiang, Main Road. I discussed with the company about using the address as your mailing address." This was the first letter I wrote to Diqing. I have kept it to this day. After we were engaged and married, any time we were not together, we wrote letters. Both sides would keep the letters, now probably several hundred letters. We always think, someday, we'll have a proper time and we'll let our kids and grandchildren and relatives read these letters for fun. 

July 28th, after I wrote the first letter to Diqing, I crossed the river back to my hometown, Huangmei, which I had left for eight years. I paid respect to my parents and all my relatives. On August 3, I left home to Jioujiang and then took a boat to Hankou, then to Wuchang, and I stayed at the YMCA in Wuchang. Besides going to the Hubei provincial government to discuss the grant, I went to my middle and high schools to visit. On August 19, I took a boat from Hankou back to Jioujiang. On the afternoon of the 20th, I arrived in Huangmei and stayed for seven days. On August 27th, I took a boat from Jioujiang to Nanjing. On the morning of the 28th, I arrived at Xiaguang (a Nanjing port). I went to Zongyuan's family to visit them. On September 3, I took the express rail from Nanjing to Shanghai. I stayed at the Institute and now my important business was my engagement. 

An important thing of an engagement is to buy a diamond ring. During my studies, I didn't have much money and in everything I was thrifty. But, I thought, an engagement is a once in a lifetime thing, and a token of covenant, I cannot make it too cheap. Because even if you have more money in later days, you cannot correct it. After I discussed this in detail with Diqing, we decided to buy a more expensive diamond ring. In order to be very prudent, we went a long way to a famous and dependable jeweler called De Kangxiang. They sell jewelry and jade. After looking back and forth, finally we agreed on one. On September 20, we celebrated our engagement. I still stayed at the Institute, Diqing still worked at Four Banks Deposits Union. After work, she usually came to the Institute where we had dates. We have lots of nice warm sweet memories of those times. Sometimes we had dinner together, sometimes we went to church service together, sometimes we went to see movies together. Summer vacation over on October 3, I took a ship back to Japan. On the ship, I wrote a poem called Going East in the morning at Huangpu. On my way to Japan, I passed by Senghu (Kobe), and arrived at Dongjing (Tokyo). After I arrived in Tokyo and resumed classes. I wrote many letters to Diqing and many poems.

My friend Zhou Xianwen (the one who started nianpu writing) started a new magazine called New China Magazine and he was the Editor in Chief. He asked me to write an article for the magazine. I wrote about the finances and economics of Japan. Later on, I wrote another article about the Japanese Congress. He wanted to give me payment. I didn't think my articles were that good, so felt bad receiving money from him. He wrote me and said, "f I publish your article and don't give you money, it's not good for our accounting." He suggested that I mail the money to my home in Huangmei. He also suggested that if I wrote these articles and gave our society improvement, it would be quite meaningful. Mr Zhou actually mailed the money to Diqing. When I came back to Shanghai, she gave me all the money. 

In the early part of October, Mr Wu came to Japan to survey. The YMCA asked me to receive him. This Mr Wu was a Guangxi military person of an elite branch. He was associated with the five top people in Guangxi. Mr Wu was full of ideas to improve society and very sincerely wanted to do it. When he was discharged from the military, he established a testing facility for hydraulics in the capital of Guangxi. He wanted to improve irrigation. He came to Japan mainly to look at the Japanese agricultural advancements. As for me, I had some ideas about farming coops especially aimed at farming villages. My ideas mainly were from my hometown, the real life situation in Huangmei. In Huangmei, most farmers worked on land that was inherited from their ancestors. Most families' food had to be provided by the fields they worked on. Besides the food they ate, some farmers grew cotton and flax. These farmers, after they consumed their family needs, sold the extra for money to support their families. As for other things like salt, sugar, tobacco, wine, tea, sauce, fabric for clothing, cloth, hard goods, farming tools, all these had to bought from a shop. Before they sold any extra produce, most farmers didn't have any cash. So these shops had to let the farmers buy on credit. But most shops charged interest. When the farmers sold their extra produce, at those times, the sale price was low because everyone was selling the same thing. But the interest had been compounding since they bought things. So usually the farmers are the ones who lost out. Every time a farmer wanted to sell their produce, the big city companies and lenders would send some representative to the country. Sometimes they convinced these farmers to sell to them at a lower value because a lot of the farmers needed cash fast. Since these people were coming to buy, they sold at a low price. These brokers, after buying at a lower value, transported the produce to the city and sold at high mark up.