Make sure to read the previous posts: here is the first, the second and the third post. These three posts will give the background necessary to understand this sad post, the final in the series of post at Lily’s house in Drink Horse One Army.

On our first evening in the village, Lily’s father took us around to introduce us to the neighbors and help us get our bearings. A small clutch of villagers circled around us as Galen began to film them. Of the group, one woman in her forties, her hair drawn back in a short pony-tail, seemed most interested in us as foreigners. She was Lily’s family’s next-door neighbor. They shared a wall with us.

Lee, the neighbor and Lily’s Father

One of the first things she asked us was, “Do you have government-enforced family planning in your country?” Behind us, on one of the village’s walls, was a propaganda sign reminding people about the government mandated one-child policy, suggesting it would make them happy.

Family Planning

“No,” I responded, “we don’t have any family planning from the government. You can have as many children as you want.” As an example, I mentioned some of my Mormon friends and their litters of children.

Nearby, her only daughter stood silently watching us. The girl had a quarter size scab beneath her left eye. She was wearing a school uniform, a blue and white wind suit. The scab looked as though it had been healing for almost a week.

You can just barely see the daughter’s bruise here.

The mother was unhappy with her lot in life, but it was not immediately clear why. Many women in the countryside have tough lives. Rural China is a hard place to be a woman.

She complained about how expensive school was. When she was growing up, school only cost a few dollars. Now, they were charging more than a thousand dollars, she said. She asked how it was in the U.S. I told her, everything before college was free.

As we talked, two men came up to us, one of them the husband of the unhappy woman. It was clear from their rabble-rousing that they were drunk. It was almost two hours before sunset, still early. It was one of their birthdays, the men said. They were celebrating.

The husband said little to me. Instead, he stumbled around our little circle, staring at his wife as we talked. Moving closer to her, he popped her on the back of the head. I had trouble telling if it was playful or threatening. She popped him right back. He wheeled around more and grabbed his daughter by the chin, examining the wound beneath her eye before pushing her away.

The drunk husband began to argue with his wife. I had trouble understanding what he said, but I gathered that he did not like her taking an interest in us, and she did not like him constantly wasting their money boozing and gambling.

“Well, why don’t you go find yourself some more foreigners to talk with?” he said.

“”Where would I find them around here? I’d have to go to Dunhuang. That is three hours away.”

Guard Dog

As things got more heated, Lily’s father urged us away, so as not to inadvertently cause more trouble. We walked around the village more, looking at the mud plastered houses, the stalls enclosing sheep and goats, the guard dogs on short chain metal leashes leaping at us as we passed. The men were drunks, the father explained. Whenever they got money, they would drink and eat and gamble and smoke, but they didn’t get all that much money, since they spent too much time drinking and not enough working. Each month, the government gave them two hundred r.m.b. per person, six hundred for the family, almost one hundred dollars. With this money, the family scraped by.

That night, after dinner, we talked more with Lily’s parents. At around ten, we turned in. The guest bedroom shared a wall with the neighbors’ house. Through the wall separating us, we could hear the high-pitched scream and the dull sound of thuds. I could not tell if the drunk man was beating his wife or his daughter. Screams alternated strangely as they echoed through the wall; he might have been hitting them both. At times, it sounded like the wife was hitting back. We waited, trying to think if we could do anything. There was nothing. For ten or fifteen minutes, the screams continued. Then they suddenly stopped.

Night Sky above Drink Horse One Army Village as the beatings were occurring

Make sure to check out Part I and Part II before reading this post.

Lily’s mother was waiting for us in the basketball court as Mr. Gao’s van pulled up. She was well dressed for a middle-aged village woman, wearing tight pants, high heels and pearls. I greeted her warmly, and she welcomed us into her house.

At first, our meeting was awkward. Our conversation was stilted, not unlike when strangers who have little to say are forced to mingle. Lily was not there to formally introduce us.

Cross-Stitch of the Great Wall

Lily’s mother was a cross-stitcher and had made a six-foot by two-foot cross stitch hanging above the sofa which read, “May our home and the multitude of things rise up and go well.” The craftsmanship was magnificent, and I told her so. “Thank you. It took me all winter to complete,” she responded, smiling. “There is little farmwork in the winter, so I cross-stitch much of the time.” She showed me a pillowcase she was doing for Lily’s wedding, and I told her my grandmother was a crocheter, similar to cross-stitching.

The more we talked, the more Lily’s mom warmed up to us. We talked about them and how they had come to Drink Horse One Army.

Lily’s Mother Picking Lunch

They were not originally from Drink Horse One Army. They had moved to the Drink Horse One Army village from Wuwei, a Silk Road city near Huazangsi, back when Lily was only three, in 1992. Lily’s father was legally blind and the land that their family owned in Wuwei was already too small to be divided any more between him and his three brothers. At some point, they had an uncle living out in this area, and he was able to find a plot for them to farm as a way to help them out.

Lily’s Parents, Concrete Workers and Me

Lily’s father returned home, caked in the gray dirt of hard work. As with many fathers, he was taciturn. He smiled quietly most of the time, speaking only when necessary. Part of it was his demeanor, but part of it was his inability to, unlike his wife, speak standard Chinese; sometimes I had trouble understanding Lily’s father’s coarse country accent.

When Lily’s family came to Drink Horse One Army, they had spent most of their time farming. They began with a mixture of subsistence farming and some cash crops, but, soon they were able to make a living just from selling their cash crop, sunflower seeds. Summers were bustling. Spring and autumn were busy enough. Winter was dead, but, each year, they had enough put back to get them through.

But Lily’s father was enterprising. Three years ago, they took some money they had made from selling sunflowers and built a cinderblock factory. I should qualify what I mean by factory: the factory was only a hundred yards outside their village, in a small, creekside field. The factory consisted of a cement churn, a mold and a net overhead to keep the desert sun from beating down on them while they worked.

Lily’s Mother Watering Bricks

Each of the bricks sold for three r.m.b., almost half a U.S. dollar. Hired workers used a two-wheel cart to lug the cinderblocks from the cement churn to ground where they could bake in the sun. Lily’s father refilled the cement churn with another worker, while the newly made bricks were lugged back and forth. Lily’s mother, trading her high heels for plastic booties, watered some of the bricks made the day before, to make sure they did not dry out too quickly. While we were there, two men came by on rickety tractors to pull bricks. I helped them load up a hundred something blocks.

Me Loading Cinderblocks

It was on these bricks that Lily’s family built what, a few years before, would have been considered a small fortune. Their home had a computer, a nice television and a speaker system. The bricks and the hard work they put into them brought in the money for these things.

That night, we talked more at dinner, a simple and delicious dish of noodles and tomatoes. Lily’s father had grown up only eating noodles. Noodles were apparently all most people ate here in Drink Horse One Army and the surrounding province. I asked Lily’s father if he ever ate rice. “No,” he said. “I eat rice, feel full and then, an hour later, I feel hungry. So I just eat noodles.” I laughed and explained to him the American joke about Chinese food.

Worker at Cement Factory

They were hoping to expand their factory soon. If they get a bigger factory, they can have the government send workers down from the mountains, places where no one works at all. Then, Lily’s family will start bringing in a lot of money.

Some China watchers claim that the story of China over the last thirty years can be told only in numbers and statistics, the number of people migrating to the cities, the number of factories built, the number of new cities with more than a million people.

Lily’s Parents

I reject that sort of thinking. It is stories like Lily’s family that have made China’s transformation so great. It is a story that needs no numbers to tell it. People who were starving in the 1970’s, due to idiotic government policies, are now prospering through hard work.

Of course, not everyone has prospered…

Waiting for a Ride on the New Silk Road

A breakfast of doughnuts made from noodles