Raising My Baby in 1960s China (2)
Huang Yueliang
translated by: Xi Fan
There were many strange government policies during that strange time, one of which was, “A child’s Hukou must follow the mother’s”.( “Hu Kou”, the resident registry, determined where a person could live legally in the country, where one could work and travel, and what rations one could get, that included basic food rations.)
The rationale behind this policy was probably to prevent this possible scenario from happening — any girl from the rural area could marry someone in the city, and their child could get a hukou in the city, to get better rations and resources provided by the state, and thus increasing the burden on the government.
Therefore, although my daughter was born in the city of Guiyang, she was considered as part of rural population by default because of my resident status, and her hukou must follow me to the People’s Commune to register.
In February of 1969, after Lan Lan turned one month old, her father took the opportunity of coming to Guiyang to see an exhibition (officially sanctioned trip) to see us and rushed back to work right after.
Lan Lan, under the care of me and her grandparents, ate the eggs brought by her father from Xingyi and the rations squeezed out by everyone in the family, grew up day by day without knowing the worries.
When the autumn came, it was the season when my “production team” to distribute food for the year. After many discussions at home, I decided to ask my mother to ask a day off from work to look after Lanlan, and ask my brother who just came back from Moon Hill to borrow a bicycle to take me (on the back of the bike) to Dongfeng Commune, which is more than ten kilometers away from home, so I could register Hukou for Lanlan, and get the food ration from the production team for Lanlan and myself. It was an era when stamps were required to get either food or clothing. Without hukou, a baby can’t even get food to survive, let alone go to school later.
My brother and I started out early in the morning on a cool day. At that time, the road to Udang was steep and rough. Wherever there was a steep uphill, I came down the bike and pushed the bike with my brother; when we were going downhill, it was very dangerous as it was very bumpy with all the rocks and gravels, my brother could only keep squeezing the brakes to stay in control. We had many stops and walks along the way, and finally arrived at the commune (Udang) at noon, sweating and exhausted.
I found Secretary Lu, who was on shift that day. With a most humble tone, I begged him to let my daughter register her Hukou. The commune secretary, who we thought had a little sympathy for us, the “educated youth” (high school students from the city, sent to rural areas to do physical labor by the government), scratched his head and said: There is no policy about this, I don’t know what to do. You go back to the production unit to get a official letter first, stating that they agree to let your daughter register here, then we could go from there.
In fact, that was just an excuse to turn me away, but at that time I was naive, and trusted what he said. So my brother and I skipped lunch and hurried to the production team of Zhaojiazhuang, 2 kilometers away.
We first found the captain of the production team. His answer made me feel that this was a foregone conclusion that they had already discussed and decided. Unexpectedly, the villagers who we thought had sympathy for us, who helped us, and we got to know pretty well, objected letting my daughter getting Hukou here.
Their answer was pretty straightforward, it’s not because there was no policy on this matter from above, it was because the girl’s father did not work in this production team to produce food, if she got Hukou here, she could get a share of the food. They believed that was neither fair nor reasonable, they would not approve it. Then they said to make it up for me, they would help me to get the food stamps and other stamps issued by the government for my daughter, which was thought to be a big favor to me.
I realized it’s not possible to get Hukou for my daughter, so I argued and begged them to promise me to give me the standard food ration for the year as usual. As I went back to the city for a year without working there, I felt I wasn’t entitled to get food from them.
A week later, I went back there again, got my share of millet. I asked a male classmate to help me to carry them to Wudang Street to have them processed to rice. I gave the rice husks to Shao, a peasant who was very friendly to us educated youth. Then I carried the rice, hitched a ride on a peasant’s ox cart to Xintian Village, and then took a bus ride back to home in Guiyang. Now looking back, if it were not for the youth at the time, there would be no way I could manage that long-distance transport of a load of rice with that kind of hard labor.
In short, the result of that trip was that my daughter couldn’t get her hukou there, but she could get the government-issued stamps. My daughter and I could only get the food ration for one person, about 200 pounds of millet (unprocessed rice) a year, reason being that my husband didn’t work at the same production team.
Therefore, Lan Lan became an illegal resident in her own country without hukou. This continued for almost three years, until I moved to Xingyi where her dad was, and became a factory worker.
