Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis

The harvest for 1959 was not good in Zhaitang. The peasants had to dig up the planted seedlings to comply with the new guidelines. Her associate, Lao Shi, a rightist was seriously injured in an accident and paralyzed for several weeks and Yue Daiyun helped care for him. Later in 1976, she learned that he died trying to escape to Burma.

For a while, Yue Daiyun tended pigs. She liked this because she could roam for hours in the hills singing songs. She remembers learning the song from Lao Hong, who had wanted to marry her, but she had already met Lao Tang. He had proposed to her before she left for Moscow and Prague.

China experienced a famine in 1959 caused by a drought across the country. The Party began to relax its policies. Lao Wei had his rightist cap removed and coached...