>Entry 16: Spring Festival in Tianmen

>See the town and see the marble slate erect before a fresh mound of earth and see what’s written on it: his name, his ancestors, his life. A biography in chalk. See the characters on the left, see his family, see these shapely white streaks on a charcoal curtain and see the message.

Here lies a man who lived through Mao. Here lies a man who lives no more. He rests forever on his family’s property. His relatives are his neighbors. The land he owned is his grave.

The stories we write are his afterlife.

The town is Peng Shi. The city is Tianmen, a sub-prefecture-level city in Hubei Province.

Her name is June and she has brought me here to celebrate Spring Festival with her family. The Chinese New Year marks the beginning of the lunar year, which families celebrate by getting together and paying tribute to their ancestors before and after a big feast.

My hosts eschew material possessions. To them happiness is seeing their children live lives they never could. They operate a small shop and send any excess money to their two grown children in Wuhan. They greeted me when I arrived and led me down the dark streets, no streetlights, just an occasional flashlight bobbing, a distant beacon on a shrouded alien world.

Their main room is the size of a garage. A red cloth is draped over a dinner table and on a desk red candles flank a statue of Mao and behind him stands an antique radio. A collection of possessions and relics lines the far wall, and at the end is a small door.

I step outside again and at the end of this alley are the kitchen, shower, and bathroom. To my left are stairs leading to our rooms. They take me upstairs and give me enough blankets to stave off the cold.

The bitter cold. Outside it is unbearable. Inside it feels lethal and when I wake the next morning I choke up phlegm and use an entire pack of tissues.

June’s parents are already at the store, earning extra money from Spring Festival sales. We eat a lunch masquerading as breakfast. Tomato and eggs, some kind of noodles, and rice. It goes with any meal.

She cooks on a gas burner and cleans with water from a pipe outside the kitchen. The water is not hot, so she must take a small grill and light a fire. She stokes it and places a plate of water on until it is hot enough and scrapes the pans clean.

I finish eating. The blistering cold has softened a little, but I can feel it even through my coat and sweater. The bathroom is separate from the shower and I go to it, a square in the floor and four wood boards nailed together and placed around it. I loom over the hole and see hardened piles lurking in this dry pit. A liquid flows. It falls in as urine and rises as steam.

We leave and she takes me to her grandmother’s home. An old lady who lived through the Chinese Civil War, she speaks no English but is delighted to meet me all the same. June shows me the house. A stone pump for washing water. A washer and dryer lying about, lost with no outlets. She takes me to the backyard and shows me the sheet raised on steel rods. Behind it is a well that serves as a toilet. When the time comes, they will spoon its discolored contents into jugs and use it to fertilize the fields.

Spring Festival has arrived and they celebrate by putting red paper around their doors to block evil spirits. Next they burn incense and fake money while kneeling three times to their ancestors. Next they shoot off firecrackers and eat dinner, and after dinner we head to her grandmother’s grave.

Her grandmother died when her father was thirteen. Cancer took her away, and considering the timeframe, it was probably not a peaceful trip. No one knows exactly where she’s buried, so we go to the approximate location and they light candles and fake money. A silent dying prelude to the firecrackers. Once those mini-concussions have stopped we guide ourselves through the darkness back to her home.

I go to sleep and later wake up to a stream of bright concussions. Everyone sets off fireworks at midnight, and the celebration lasts well into the early morning. As I leave the next day, her father gives me a gift: 100 RMB. I can only thank him and hope he understands my gratitude.

See the larger tombstone and the larger mound. Here lies someone of importance or someone whose family can afford a bigger tombstone and here it stands, a proclamation of his status until the day comes yet sooner when it falls apart like all things in existence.