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Although Xindong Village was small in size, while was along a major road in ancient times.It was located in Xinchang County, the pass to three other counties — Xinchang, Shengzhou and Weishan.As a result, there were many visitors.It was an ideal destination for merchants, and a place where commodities were collected and distributed.There were farmers/merchants in the village in old times, which was the case in my grandfather’s time.
I heard that my grandfather had five brothers.As a rich and influential family, they had dozens of housing properties as well as many acres of land.They had grocery and wine stores.But in 1922, Dongyang was hit by a massive flood that swept away their homes, shops, and wine stores.After more than a decade of hard work, they recovered a little bit.In 1934, when my father left home, he was given 11 acres of land and three houses.If my family hadn’t declined, our family might have been rich peasants during the land reform.However, the fields and houses had been sold by my father, so our family became poor peasants when the land reform came.My uncle had been farming, but he was kind and didn’t do malevolent things, so he was levelled as an upper middle peasant, not classified as a rich peasant.
At that time, natural and man-made disasters came one after another.There was a cattle plague in Dongyang for several years.Three out of every four cows died in my family.At that time, one cow was equivalent to three or five men in terms of labor, so the economic losses were great.My father, Xu Shuangfu, had only studied at a private school for a few years, but he was very smart and had a good understanding of things.He learned everything from his parents.He was especially good at accounting, and was also successful in business.At the same time, he was very good at making friends, and was very loyal, but he fell into the bad habit of gambling.The family started to go down, doing less and less business, and eventually he ended up as a peddler going from door to door.
By the time I was born, in March 1935, the life of my family was getting harder and harder.There were five mouths for my parents to feed: my three elder sisters and one elder brother; I’m the fifth child.The whole family depended on my father’s small business.In the years of war and chaos, there was no stable income, and we didn’t know where the next meal would come from.That worried my mom.