Journey Without Landmarks

No one can retrieve the time past, but in writing my memoir I have relived my years gone by, tracing back my journey and meeting the people who have traveled with me. In my memoir I see myself a 14-year-old girl witnessing Father condemned as an anti-Communist Party Rightist. A year later when half a billion peasants are organized into the people's commune during the Great Leap Forward Campaign, I follow the crowds to pick up scrap metals to help with our steel production. Shortly after I see commune members happily eat their free meals, food shortage strike the whole nation, hunger hovering over our heads for three years. I remember spending much of my university years in the countryside, harvesting rice stalks with sickles or pulling peanut vines with bare hands. The Four-Cleanups-Campaign takes us to the countryside for almost a year, and that is where I meet the assistant professor who is now my husband. My journey is on a more rugged road when the Cultural Revolution starts in 1966. After my graduation from the university I am sent to a farm in Inner Mongolia for re-education. I can still feel the pain from the swellings on my shoulders caused by carrying dirt, and I can still smell the mutton fat cooked with cabbage. I will never forget the four-year-old girl who dies because of a fish bone stuck in her throat, and I will always remember the sandstorm that almost blows me away. The hardships of the past years have not totally left me with a shadow of suffering. I remember having grown up with joy, pride and contentment. My father's falling from grace has taught me to walk around pitfalls, and my mother's steps on her stony journey have enabled me to stumble on mine with courage. In my journey without landmarks I have survived because I have learned to endure; I have matured because I have learned to transcend.