A Fisherman’s Daughter
Sharing my mother's life story to honor Mother's Day.
I’m reposting my mother’s life story from my first book, Confucius Never Said, to honor her and the Mother’s Day.
My maternal grandfather was a fisherman who made a living by supplying the local market with all kinds of fish. My mother told me that she and her three siblings were all born on a fishing boat. Because my maternal grandmother wasn’t an able homemaker, my mother had to grow up very quickly. She learned to sew clothes and cook for her siblings at a young age.
My mother is truly a fisherman’s daughter. The way she can consume a whole fish is legendary. When she eats fish, she wastes nothing. She will eat the fish meat, fish head, fish eyeballs, and anything else except the bones. By the time she is done, all there is left on the plate is a complete fishbone set.
My mother’s childhood dream was to become an artist. She liked drawing, but her family couldn’t afford any drawing lessons for her. Since the Chinese Communist Party regarded artists as members of a bad social class, my grandfather encouraged my mother to learn some valuable skills that Communist China would need.
My mom dared not to mention her artist dream anymore. After she graduated from junior high, she enrolled in a nursing school because the school not only waived tuition but also covered students’ room and board.
My mother’s graduation from nursing school was a bittersweet moment. She didn’t have any input as to where she would live or for whom she would work. No one bothered to solicit her opinion. Instead, her school administrator told her that she had to move to a small city in Sichuan Province, a place almost a thousand miles from her hometown. Her employer would be a small clinic. Not all graduates shared the same fate as my mother. Some of her classmates were able to stay in Wuhan because they were either Communist Party members or members of a good social class with good connections.
She was afraid to say no to her school administrator. However, worrying about losing food rations forced many young people like my mother to accept employment anywhere the government assigned them.
After a long train ride, my mother arrived at the small clinic. It had only two doctors and four nurses. Most of its patients were construction workers since a nearby construction company was the largest employer in town. When my mother received her first paycheck, she discovered that the food stamps she received were enough for only 27 pounds worth of food per month. This rationing amount was about three pounds less than she had received every month as a student. She thought that the Human Resource department had made a mistake. She had been hungry with 30 pounds of monthly food rationing. How was she going to survive on only 27?
She went to talk to the staff at the Human Resource Department. One woman told her point-blank that only female students received 30-pound food rations monthly. Since my mother was no longer a student (they assumed she had stopped growing), she should eat less. No one seemed to notice that my mother was only 18. Despite this reduced allocation, my mother had to send some food stamps back home to help her young siblings. I can’t imagine how she managed it.
Even though my mother’s official job title was nurse, she had to learn to do everything because there was a shortage of doctors in the clinic. Once a month, she had to work a whole week of night shifts. The little clinic was busy because violence was prevalent. Initially, communist cadres beat up people who were designated as black classes—intellectuals, business owners, landlords, capitalism sympathizers, and any other counter-revolutionary people. Later on, the communists broke into different divisions and fought one another. My mother never expected she would be so busy, but she was fearless. Since she was a quick learner, her skills, medical knowledge, and experience surpassed those of the two doctors in just a couple of years.
My mother is a firm believer in fairness. She treated every patient the same way. It didn’t matter whether the patient was a communist, an ordinary factory worker, or a member of a despised social class. She gave them the best care she could provide. Once there was a pregnant single woman who’d contracted a sexually transmitted disease. She had an uncle who lived in Taiwan, which the nationalists occupied, so she was assigned to a bad social class. In addition, she had relationships with several men, so the rumor was that no one knew for sure who the father was. This was scandalous in a small town. People despised her and called her a “broken shoe”—a Chinese slang term for a loose woman—to her face. By the time she was ready to deliver the baby, no other doctor or nurse wanted to touch her, because they thought she was dirty and unworthy. My mother was the only one who went to assist her delivery.
When my mother realized that the baby wasn’t crying, she wiped off the baby’s mouth with a sanitized towel and performed CPR on the baby! Even the young mother was shocked. She wanted to kneel on the floor to thank my mother for saving her and her baby’s lives. However, my mother stopped her from getting out of bed. She told the young mother to get a good rest because her baby needed her. My mother told me later that all she could think of at that time was saving the baby. She didn’t stop for a second to think about any danger to herself. “Every human life is precious,” she told me.
Under normal circumstances, the clinic’s leadership would want to recruit someone like my mother to join the Communist Party. Instead, however, she was criticized for lack of class hatred toward people belonging to the unworthy social classes.
Gradually, because my mother’s technical skillsets were so solid, she became indispensable to the clinic. However, she never got a promotion or raise since she was not a Communist Party member. Even after she won first place in a citywide medical knowledge test, all she received was a certificate. She didn’t see either a promotion or a salary increase for 17 years until she finally quitted her job and moved back home.
After she retired, my mother picked up a paintbrush and started painting. I organized an exhibition of her artworks in Denver, Colorado. People loved her paintings so much that they bought almost all of her paintings.
My mother finally realized her childhood dream of being an artist, even though she had to wait for six decades.
Wish all mothers, including mine, a blessed Mother’s Day.
