Ahan and Dengmei couldn’t remain at home, but there was no work at the Pengs’ house. The apathy was intolerable. Dengmei finally began knotting grass for kindling. Knotted grass was essential for starting fires in their stoves, and large piles were common in every household. Ahan helped her with the task.

  “Father, what are we going to do?” asked Renjie from inside the house. “Our plan has come to nothing, as has Ahan’s job.”

  “Lower your voice,” said Renhua.

  “Everybody knows. What’s the problem? I suggest …”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest we keep Dengmei and get rid of Liu.”

  “Shut up, Renhua. If you keep talking that way, I’ll get rid of you.”

  “That’s fine. But you won’t have to get rid of me, I’ll leave myself,” said Renhua, his voice growing louder. “There’s no future in Fanzai Wood! And I’ve been wanting to leave for a long time.”

  Suddenly the room grew silent. Renjie must have taken his brother outside.

  Ahan raised his eyes to look at Dengmei. Their eyes met. Dengmei hastily lowered her head; her thin face was flushed.

  Dengmei was so small, her back so thin. Dengmei must feel as if her heart were being cut with a knife, thought Ahan. She must be overcome with panic, but she couldn’t show it. She was a pitiful purchased child; his own pitiful wife. But he didn’t want her to worry. He would never leave her, regardless of how he was mocked, cursed, or beaten. He would put up with all humiliation for her sake. And if need be, he would run away with her, steal her away. He swore to always be with her. And although he couldn’t provide her with meat to eat or silk to wear, he would never let her go hungry. He would look after her, grow old with her, share their hard life. They would never be lonely or afraid.

  That evening a strong wind blew, but around midnight it ceased and all was calm. At first it was generally thought that a typhoon was coming; later they thought that they had perhaps avoided the disaster that time. But the air was oppressively hot and everyone was sweating uncomfortably. Lying down, Ahan seemed to feel his bed sway. No, the whole house was shaking. Cries came from Aling’s room. It was an earthquake, a small one. It sounded as if Aling and his family had run outside. Dengmei remained calm, not even getting up. Nor did Ahan move. He knew what Dengmei was thinking and she certainly knew what was going through his mind—wonderful!

  Smiling to himself, he drifted off to sleep. As he dozed off, he felt a sudden prod that made him sit up with a cry. There was only Dengmei, who was smiling gently, sitting there. She was so small, but her eyes seemed so large at times. But that was just fine, it was something that he alone could enjoy.

  “What’s the matter with you? It’s light outside already.”

  He laughed loudly. “Really?”

  “I’m afraid there’s going to be a typhoon. Hurry and get up.”

  It was already quite light. The sun had not risen very high, but the air was unusually bright: the light of the sun was refracted through the moisture-laden air. The forest and the mountains seemed to lack weight and float in the air. The insects had all disappeared and the air seemed to have been washed clean.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to be a big one. Can the house take it?”

  It was true. All signs over the last two days indicated to anyone brought up in Taiwan that a huge typhoon was imminent. There would be no work that day. Nor would the stove be lit. People would have to eat raw potatoes.

  After eating, Renjie summoned them to help tie the house down by roping the roof to tree trunks and boulders. Everyone in Fanzai Wood was occupied with taking precautions against the typhoon. Since Ahan and Dengmei had been called away by Renjie, it fell to Aling and his wife to secure the house they shared.

  Just as they finished tying down the Pengs’ house, the bright sky was suddenly obscured by masses of black clouds streaked a dirty yellow. As the black clouds passed over the cliffs to the north of the village, they were shredded apart in wisps like cotton floss and then blown away to the south. The thick black clouds high above continued moving ever faster, roiling into huge masses as they rolled away to the south. The vegetation, which had been deathly still until then, began to sway. The swaying increased with the wind.

  The usually inaudible stream by the village suddenly seemed much louder than normal, as though it had been swollen by a mountain torrent. Actually, the sound was the wind through the woods. The clouds grew thicker and began to press lower, and soon the cliffs were concealed. It was as if the cotton floss of the clouds had been stopped there by a giant fist. The black clouds curled upward, arching into the sky.

  As the clouds ascended once more, the sky seemed to brighten just a bit. The mountain peaks suddenly appeared in perfect clarity, as if the sky had just been washed by rain. At that moment the rain began to fall in the area around Blind Man’s Pool, where the sky was brightest. The rain looked like bamboo poles connecting the sky with the earth. It fell almost vertically and drifted southward. There was a short lull and then it began to fall even harder; the streaks of rain fell faster and closer together. Such rain was known as a “bamboo tide” and a sure indicator that a typhoon was about to strike.

  Gusts of wind following the stream swept low across the ground. The wind seemed to take life from the earth and grew stronger and more violent as it rushed the trees and the roofs. The rain was falling at a forty-five-degree angle and had lost its resemblance to bamboo poles. The raindrops took on a crystalline appearance as they fell. This type of rain was popularly referred to as “salt rain” because it resembled the salt scattered by a Daoist priest to cleanse the air. It lasted but a few minutes. The wind seemed to double in speed with each gust, giving the rain real weight and force. Whipped by the wind, the bamboo began to break and the roofs began to groan.

  The full force of the typhoon arrived around noon. It was the twenty-seventh day of the seventh lunar month in the eighteenth year of the Guangxu era (1892). It was the worst typhoon to hit Taiwan in thirty years.

  Aling and Ahan’s house, being one of the smallest and newest, looked as if it might survive the storm. Aling told Shunmei to keep the children on the bed. Shunmei was noticeably pregnant and could not lift anything heavy. He reminded her that if the house started coming down, she should get under the bed, press the children close to herself, then curl up and try to protect her head.

  “I wonder how they are doing over there.” Dengmei was worried about the Pengs.

  “Their house is a bit older,” said Aling.

  Ahan said nothing, but he was in a turmoil about what to do. He knew his house was safer than his in-laws’ and that it faced no immediate danger. He felt he ought to go over and see how they were, but when he thought of them, the bitterness rose in his heart.

  Dengmei threw him a worried glance. “Go have a look,” she said, her voice betraying her anxiety.

  The sky was dark and they had lost track of the time. Ahan sighed, told his wife to take care, and left through the kitchen door at the back of the house.

  He was caught by a violent gust and swept along for several feet, then thrown to the ground. He picked himself up only to again take a drubbing from the wind. There was no way for him to stay on his feet. Having taken his bearings, he crawled on his hands and knees toward the Pengs’ house.

  It was no good: he could scarcely breathe. He could not make his way over the rocky rise that lay between him and the house. The wind forced him back, and he knew that the longer he remained exposed, the greater his chances of being struck by a flying branch or stone. He could no longer make his way on his hands and knees, so he pressed closer to the ground and tried to move forward on his belly.

  The bamboo fence at the Pengs’ house had long since been blown away. A few feet of fence had caught on the woodpile. But the knotted grass that he and Dengmei had prepared had disappeared to heaven knew where. The newest layer of thatch, the one added just that year, had been torn away. The older part of the roof seemed intact, but it looked as if the entire roof would be lifted off and blown away.

  “Open the door! Open the door!” he shouted. But his voice couldn’t be heard over the wind. He crawled over to the side door, but it was no use. He then tried the kitchen door, again to no avail.

  He pounded on the door.

  “We can’t open the door!”

  “Open the door! Open the door!”

  “No. You must find a way yourself.” He couldn’t tell whose voice it was.

  Find a way of his own?

  In a storm of anger he left. He felt himself transformed into a violent gust of wind. He half crawled and half rolled back to his own house. Covered with mud, he burst in through the kitchen door.

  Dengmei wiped him off with her sleeves. “What happened?”

  Aling heaved a sigh as if he had witnessed the scene himself.

  Ahan’s anger vanished as quickly as it had come. He was gladdened by the fact that he could spend the night of a typhoon with Dengmei. He had spent so many stormy nights alone and afraid in the past. But now he had a wife, a woman of his own. Even if the roof were lifted by the wind or blown away, he would not be afraid. He would fear nothing as long as Dengmei was by his side, for him to hold and protect.

  After night fell, the typhoon seemed to increase in strength, judging from the sound of the wind and rain. At daybreak, the storm reached the height of its ferocity. Then it began to slacken, and within six hours the worst had passed. There would be a period of light breezes before the storm would pick up again.

  When the lull finally came, everyone rushed outdoors, first to inspect the damage to their houses, then to see how others had fared. Peng Aqiang’s house was largely undamaged. Su Ajin and Xu Rixing had lost their roofs; Chen Afa had lost his kitchen; the foot-thick walls of Xu Shihui’s woodshed had collapsed on two sides and the roof had fallen in. All the other houses were fine. And with the exception of some losses of poultry and animals, no one had suffered any harm.

  No one could afford to remain idle. They rushed about stopping up holes and tightening ropes. About two hours later, as they finished making repairs, the rain began to pour. The typhoon was picking up again. Within an hour the rain ceased, but the wind increased. The storm could be expected to reach the same intensity, but the damage was likely to be much greater. After three or four hours the wind decreased, but a pelting rain began to fall.

  The rain was of the like seldom seen before. When it began it was like any other heavy rain as it struck the ground. But very soon the sound deepened, as if giants were treading nearby. The rain sounded like the pounding footfalls of a distant army on the march. The rain fell, flattening everything in its path, shaking the earth.

  For some reason, Ahan suddenly thought of his grandmother and father. Their graves must have been filled with water, their bodies soaking in the muddy liquid. The image of his mother also flashed through his mind: a tiny woman with a weather-beaten face; a thin and frail woman on the verge of tears. He wondered where she was and if she was safe.

  At break of day the following morning, the rain still showed no signs of letting up. Water had long since seeped into the houses and now covered their feet. The water was moving fast. Outdoors, the gray forest was shrouded in a curtain of rain. No other sound could be heard save the beating of the rain that poured mercilessly from the sky. The rain seemed to be suspended in the sky, forming torrents upon touching the ground.

  “It’s a flood! The mountain is flooding!” shouted Aling.

  Their house had been built near the stream, which was now swollen with mud and water. The foundation of the house was already under water, and the stream was still rising.

  Aling rushed into the house, snatched a child up in each arm, and, shouting, led the way to the Pengs’ house. Ahan and Dengmei were quick behind him, carrying their bedding, their trunk, and two cook pots. Aling returned for the farm tools. His wife was howling as she squatted with one child.

  “There’s no time to cry!” shouted Peng Aqiang. “Hurry up, you must get to the threshing ground.”

  A large group of people could be seen squatting on the threshing ground through the gray curtain of rain. The entire Peng family was huddled together there. The large family house was gone; all that remained was a confusion of broken bamboo mixed with mud that had once been part of the walls and roof.

  Aling’s wife stopped wailing. The scene was too much for her. The women and children squatted in silence, their heads lowered and their hands clasped behind their necks. Aling’s wife and children joined the group. Dengmei was also there. Renhua held a piece of thatch over his head, but the rain still poured over his face and body. Peng Aqiang and Renjie were standing, their arms folded. They were expressionless as the rain poured down their faces. Ahan and Aling were also standing. Aling’s eyes were fixed on his house in the rolling floodwaters below. The water had already risen two feet up the walls.

  The sky remained unchanging; the rain continued falling and turned into torrential floods that rolled down the mountain. The ravines were full and the water spilled over the banks, flooding the fields, swallowing them, sweeping away the topsoil.

  “I’m going to take a look,” said Peng Aqiang suddenly, his voice constricted and hoarse.

  “No. It’s too dangerous.” Lanmei stood up. Peng Aqiang shouldered his hoe and, with a quick glance behind him, strode away from the threshing ground. Renjie picked up another hoe and followed him. Ahan in turned followed Renjie. They passed the temple on their way to the fields below the cliff, but the water had already reached the temple. Another three feet and the gods would have to learn to swim. They looked at the expanse of yellow water that covered what was their fields. Even the weed-covered banks between the fields were under water.

  Peng Aqiang heaved a sigh of resignation.

  “Let’s have a look at the fields higher up,” said Renjie gently to his father. They proceeded up to the high fields. The steep mountain path was now a conduit for swift-flowing water, and the ground all around was covered with puddles.

  Soon all the able-bodied men of Fanzai Wood had mobilized to widen the stream beds and dredge out the sand and gravel deposited by the floodwaters in hopes of quickly draining the fields to save them. But it was too late: not a trace of the fields remained; the crops had all been swept away. It would have been a different matter if it were only the banks between the fields that had been eroded, but nothing was left. The topsoil had been washed away. The rain was still falling and even the subsoil seemed in danger of being stripped off.

  Gradually and almost imperceptibly the rain began to slacken. The distance once again was streaked by falling drops. The clouds rose and the mist began to drift away, revealing the landscape. Blind Man’s Pool and the cliffs seemed to float and drift in the air. The high clouds rolled away to the south, while the even higher white wisps of vapor drifted off to the north.

  The rain had nearly ceased, and the situation at Fanzai Wood was clear to the eye. Only two houses remained largely unscathed: Xu Shihui’s five-room bamboo house and Chen Afa’s three-room thatched house. The recently constructed houses of Fan Qian and Xie Atan had lost their roofs. Aling and Ahan’s house near the stream still had its roof, but the mud walls had been damaged. The houses of the Peng, Chan, Xu, and Su families had all been destroyed.

  “It’s all over.”

  “What is all over? None of us has been hurt. How can you say that it’s all over? And stop sighing. What can you accomplish by sighing?”

  “What else can I do but sigh?”

  “Start over. Start again from scratch.”

  “Start over again for another typhoon?”

  “We have to begin again.”

  “We’ll starve. The fields have been washed away.”

  “We won’t starve if we have land.”

  “What are we going to eat, mud? The topsoil has been washed away.”

  “There are weeds, and as long as there are weeds we won’t starve.”

  By two o’clock in the afternoon, the rain had let up. A ray of golden sunlight pierced the dark clouds, striking the cliffs and fields and forests of Fanzai Wood. The dazzling sunlight seemed to revive everyone’s spirits. They heaved a sigh of frustration and inhaled a breath of courage. Wiping the mud and water from their faces, they started laying the foundations of their homes again using hoes, sticks, and even their bare hands. The first step of rebuilding had been taken.

  SEVEN

  •

  Change

  It had been the most devastating typhoon in thirty years, but the residents of Fanzai Wood did not complain, did not curse. They accepted their fate in silence. At the end of the eleventh month of the same year, snow fell in northern Taiwan. In the middle of the twelfth month, snow fell not only in the high mountains but also on the fields and villages of the coastal plains. Under several inches of snow, the land looked more like someplace in northern China. The rare and unusual snowfall killed many people and animals.

  The elderly and the very young were especially hard hit. Xu Rixing’s emaciated wife and Chen Agu’s elderly mother both died of starvation. Their hunger was apparent in their deeply furrowed lips, and their bodies looked more like those of monkeys captured but forgotten in hunters’ snares, where they ended up dried and shriveled by the sun.

  Increasingly the young people left the fields and drifted south, only to discover that hunger was as widespread there as in the north. The seasons and the weather seemed to have changed. It was as if the beautiful and fertile island of Taiwan had left its mild latitudes and shifted to a place where bitter cold was followed by unbearable heat.

  The people were affected by the weather; only their struggle for survival remained unchanged. Soon the mountains were filled with bandits who came down to prey on travelers along the highways. They were mostly after food. Under these circumstances, farmers and artisans could barely get by. Having suffered the devastation of the typhoon, the people of Fanzai Wood were now confronted with one of the greatest challenges they had faced since they undertook opening up the land.