1927, Yunyang, Chongqing.

  Ten-year-old Yunzhen went back to her cliff cave as usual, lay down on her side, and gazed at the starlight rising and falling in the river winding across the mountain valley. She heard from folklore that stars were pure souls who traveled into eternity, and they would occasionally come to earth and leave their shadows in the river. Every time she walked along the riverbank and reached her hand into the water full of starlight, she would startle the stars, sending them scattering in all directions.

  Yunzhen, whose name means “treasure of the clouds”, is my grandmother’s mother, from my mother’s side. In her era, foot binding still existed. Foot binding was an extremely cruel custom that originated in ancient China and lasted a thousand years. Young girls' insteps were broken and their toes were tightly bound underneath their feet. A small foot with a delicate tip was called a “3-inch golden lotus”, which was considered attractive and symbolized good wife material. Yunzhen was born after the Chinese government tried to ban the tradition in 1912. However, foot binding did not disappear until the 1950s.

  Yunzhen was lucky enough to have escaped foot binding, which was extremely rare at her time. Her family was too poor, and a pair of healthy feet was essential for labour work. During the day, Yunzhen’s father would take her and her five elder brothers to beg for food in the neighboring villages. At night, the cliff cave would be their shelter. Growing up as a beggar’s child, Yunzhen had endured countless people spitting in her face to rush her away, or yelling at her that “you’d better go to hell than wandering around, haunting our village.” When going around begging for food, she would occasionally be beaten by landlords’ servants, who, despite coming from similar poor families, would bully the weaker ones to boost their own egos. She couldn’t recall a day when her arms and legs were free from bruises or scars.

  That night, her father said to her that he was newly employed as a tenant farmer by a landlord, and they would leave the cliff cave the next day. They would start living in an actual house, free from the wind and rain, free from hunger. In Yunzhen’s memories, the starlight that night started shining much brighter than before, and she anticipated the dawn more than ever. Yunzhen had never lived in a house, and was so excited that she stayed up all night. That night, the starlight in the river was also rejoicing for her, happily dancing down the stream towards her new home far and far beyond the mountains.

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  The next day, as the morning light slowly tinged the sky from behind the mountains, Yunzhen and her family set off on their journey. Yunzhen remembered the mountain peaks reaching high above the clouds, dark against the light of dawn, looking like gigantic statues of deities solemnly witnessing the change of her destiny.

  They crossed rivers and climbed mountains, and followed winding mountain trails past some terraced crop fields. Finally they arrived at a crop field vast and fertile, surrounded by mountains. That was where the landlord lived. Yunzhen met the landlord for the first time. The landlord’s last name was Wang. Landlord Wang was an old man with a kind smile, his gray hair shining under the sunlight.

  Landlord Wang led them to a small brick house and said, “This will be your new house. If you need food or anything else, just tell me. Please make yourselves at home.”

  Yunzhen’s father immediately bent down to thank him. Landlord Wang said, “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.”

  That night, Yunzhen had the best dream of her life. She slept until the sun was already high up in the sky. Seeing the warm sunlight streaming in from the window, she realized that she was no longer lying on a cold, hard rock, but on a soft wooden bed with soft cotton tufts. Although she could no longer look up and be greeted by the vast starry sky at night, she now had a safe brick house sheltering her from wind and rain.

  Yunzhen was no longer homeless. This is the landlord’s home, and also her new home.

  Yunzhen’s five brothers helped her father with farm work in the crop fields. Her mother did laundry, sewed, and did chores. Yunzhen cooked for the landlord and all the tenant farmers. She wasn’t tall, and had to stand on a stool and reach over the stove for the lids of pots. It wasn’t easy for her to handle the stone stove either. She had to use both hands with all her strength to lift a fire tong that was half her height, and shove the firewood inside the stove. Some of the firewood was very long, and couldn’t fit entirely into the stone stove. Yunzhen learned to handle them with great care. If they had dried leaves and tiny branches attached to them, the flames inside would quickly spread along the tiny leaves and twigs, and fiercely lick out of the stove like a monster’s tongue.

  When Yunzhen was busy with cooking and sometimes forgot to push the long firewood further inside the stove, the piece would fall out and keep burning on the ground. Yunzhen would be startled and used to cry out in fear, but as time passed, when this happened again, she learned to calmly tossed them back to the stove with the fire tongs. Those fire tongs were heavy, often leaving dark red marks on her index fingers. The thick smoke often made her eyes water, and the rising steam occasionally burned her forearms, but she never once cried.

  Landlord Wang often praised Yunzhen’s hard work, saying “You're such a clever and hardworking girl. You are cooking better food with each passing day. I really appreciate it.”