Memoirs of Hou's Middle Kingdom
Hou Yonglu did a vivid account of how locals celebrated the founding of New China in first days of October 1949.
"I got up early and went to the streets to see bonfire celebrations. Villagers from all directions flooded into the streets. I saw a lot of hand-made red flags fluttering at the facades of the tea houses, restaurants and residential buildings. Posters with slogans such as 'Long Live the People's Republic of China' were hung on the walls," Hou wrote.
"Later on, land boats dancers, stilts walkers, waist drummers, and the yangge dancers all came out, dancing and shouting joyously, to celebrate the coming of a new age."
Also in his diaries of the early days of 1960, Hou recorded how the natural disaster of drought the previous year hit hard local people and a considerable number of villagers were starved to death due to the lack of food.
Not only concentrating on the living conditions of himself and his own family, Hou also showed deep concern for his fellow villagers and the so-called educated youths who came to rural areas to spend some years in 1965.
For example, Hou wrote in his diary: "These lovely youths are from universities in Xi'an (capital of Shaanxi Province). It is so funny that many of them cannot identify wheat from fragrant-flowered garlic. Doing manual labor in the freezing cold winter in the fields, these young people surely suffered a lot. I learned that it is the first time they've come to rural areas and engaged in hard labor."
Hou also expressed his independent thinking about the abrupt changes in local communities in the August of 1966 when the catastrophic "cultural revolution" broke out and swept across China.
He wrote in his diaries: "On the way to a political meeting, I saw a young man beat up by his former friends. I was frightened, I could hear my heart beat jumping wildly in my chest. I was confused. So this is what people called 'cultural revolution'?"
Through the diaries, Hou shows himself as a fast learner and ready to embrace new things.
For example, he details how he managed to grasp the skills of riding a bicycle in the afternoon of March 6, 1956.
Hou also recounts how he made the hard decision to take a surgery of sterilization without telling his mother as traditionally Chinese farmers considered it a blessing to have many offspring.
In several pages of his diaries, Hou also wrote about how he taught his children to be frugal.
But "what makes my father different from his fellow villagers is that he has long cherished a hunger for knowledge and a respect for books and people who are well educated."
(China Daily 04/13/2007 page18)
