The House by the River
17th December 2015
A look inside Communist Chinese society.
Before the communists marched in, my great-grandfather had already lost everything to gambling debts, except for a few houses left to his sons in his will, including grandpa’s. “Not too bad,” grandpa recalled. “The people in the neighboring village who won our land were later beaten to death during the Land Reforms.”
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One day, four young men came into the house when only my grandma and two of her young kids were in. They told grandma, “Give us the pans and everything made of iron. Good news, from now on, you don’t have to cook at home, we will work together, eat together, the children will study together and play together. We will take the iron to make steel.” My grandma secretly hid a pan in the haystack, and cried to her husband when he came back. She said, “I heard the children will also be shared in the People’s Commune.”
It turned out the children weren’t confiscated, but soon the People’s Commune collapsed. Half of grandpa’s possessions had already been confiscated and redistributed, and even the bark of the trees in the yard were boiled and eaten by hungry villagers Grandpa had to take down the ink painting on his wall, and put up Chairman Mao’s portrait in its place. But that was fine by him. He loved Chairman Mao.