CHANG CHEE OF THE RICE FIELDS

Southland Times, Issue 23989, 2 December 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

CHANG CHEE OF THE RICE FIELDS

Strange happenings in the Village of Good Luck

Chang Chee and Toy Hah, his mother, went to the rice fields at dusk. They carried on their shoulders a long-handled shovel from which hung a bamboo basket in the shape of a loop. They trudged up to the little plot on the top o'f the moist sandy hill. “The rice grasses are just the colour of my baby chicks,’’ said Chang Chee, his eyes glowing with their beauty. “They are ready to transplant.” The village rice fields were divided into 10ft mud pans or squares, each one rimmed with mud walls. If only one wall broke in a flood, it wouldn’t matter very much, because the other walls would hold water. Several pans belonged to each rice field. Toy Hah owned her own rice field. It had been handed down to her by her ancestors.

“I will dig up the young plants,” said she to Chang Chee. “You are too young for this.” Chang Chee sat and watched the glittering sun sliding down behind the Forest-of-Gold mountain. He wondered if those dark trees on the mountains were pines or cypresses. He wondered if they smelled sweet. He watched the pink stain of sunset creeping over the fields and the feathers of wading storks. “Nothing is a real colour,” he thought to himself, as he perched on the crest of the little hill and watched -his mother bending over the field. “Everything catches colour. My mother is many colours in the sunlight. Her bamboo hat is gold as the golden fishes on the temple roof, her face and hands are the colour of ripe tangerines, and her silver earrings shine like the moon over the lichee tree at night, and the cloud jade drops that hang from them are the colour of water in the little caves under the stone bridge.” Until the purple shadows crept into the hollows of the Village of Good Luck and the storks called from the bamboo hedge around the village, Toy Hah transplanted the rice and Chang Chee watched. Then Toy Hah called to Chee and he ran down the slope. Toy Hah spoke. “I can smell the evening rice that grandmother is cooking for us. Come home.” They trudged home, and after he had eaten his evening rice, Chee drew a- picture of a stork on the bottom of his empty bowl with the end of his chopstick which he had dipped in soy sauce. And that was the end of that day. Two more weeks had passed, and the young rice plants were turning green and rooting in their new home. Chang Chee’s teacher let the boy off so that he could help his mother weed in the field.

A light rain was falling as Toy Hah and Chang Chee trudged down the alleys early one morning, through the gateway, and over the

stone bridge. Toy Hah wore her rain cape which was woven of palm and bamboo leaves. The bamboo kept the cape soft, for the palm alone would make it too stiff. Chang Chee was stripped to the waist because he liked to feel the cool raindrops on his bare skin. He and his mother carried no heavy burden thii time, but Chee had tied a little basket to the -flax cord around his waist. He was going to catch snails for the little ducks at home. Later other snails would be big enough for Chang Chee to eat. O-yu! A snail feast was a merry feast.

Toy Hah rolled up her pantaloons and splashed into the water among the green rice plants. She leaned far over and began moving her arms in a wide circle under the water.

“Her rain cape looks like a turtle shell when she leans ’way, over,” thought Chang Chee as he watched his mother. “It just fits her back. I will draw a picture of her tonight with a piece of charcoal. I will draw the rain in thin lines with one stroke apiece.” “This is the way to work,” said Toy Hah. “Move your arms in a wide circle and loosen the roots of the w.eeds under water. Then gather as many weeds in your hands as you can and throw them on the bank.”

Chang Chee rolled up his pantaloons and stepped into the water. Cool it felt against his bare skin. Cool the raindrops felt on his bare shoulders. He smelled the cool smell of the rice fields.'

Again and again Chang Chee and his mother swung their arms in wide circles, and the roots of the

weeds grew loose. They gathered the weeds into bundles and threw them on the bank. The boy watched all the time for snails and dropped them into his little basket. Soon the last bundle of weeds was gathered and thrown on the bank, and Chang Chee and his mother trudged home again. Chee’s little basket was full of snails. He ran into the tiny back yard and fed them to his ducks. The boy entered the kitchen and sat down with his mother and grandmother before the table in the dusky room. Savory rice, boiled green cabbage, and bean cake

scented the warm smoky air. Only a glow from a red candle in a carved candle-stick lighted the room. Shadows leaped on the walls like fierce dragons. Chang Chee was very weary, but after he had finished his meal he would draw in charcoal a picture of his mother in her turtle-shell rain cape. And to-morrow something wonderful would happen. Chang Chee had earned a copper coin by watering sunflowers for his old grandmother. To-morrow he would spend it for a bit of red crayon. Then he would draw many pictures. A red crayon would be much better than charcoal. He had wanted that red crayon for a long, long, time.

The rice in the fields was still green, but soon it would begin to turn golden brown. Soon the time for the harvest would come. A little while before the harvest, everyone looked for the ah-he-din, the blacksmith. Twice a year he came to the village of Good Luck —just before the first harvest of the year and just before New .Year. ,

At sunrise one day, while Chang Chee was gathering snails in the rice fields, he spied the blacksmith and his two helpers striding down the middle of the highway. He stared curiously at them. The blacksmith was a great strong man with good muscles and a tough chin. The frog-buttons of his coat were unfastened, showing hia tanned, great chest. A widebrimmed hat, woven with soft bamboo leaves and black waterproof paper, shaded his eyes. Over his dark cotton suit he wore a long apron of thick cloth, and thick cloth was wound around his wrists. His feet were shod with black cloth sandals.

His helpers, who were young men learning the ’blacksmith business, were dressed much the same as their master, except that they wore simple bamboo hats and wooden slippers. On a heavy bamboo pole over his shoulder the blacksmith carried his forge and bellows and anvil. One of his helpers carried on his own pole a folded palm umbrella, a basket with charcoal and soft wood shavings for fire, and a water bucket. The other helper carried two narrow benches on his pole. Chang Chee watched the three men go to the village square which faced the little market. He saw the blacksmith set down his forge and bellows and anvil. The helpers set down their burdens, too. They mopped their foreheads with their coat sleeves and fanned their faces with their bamboo hats.

Chang Chee slowly crossed the rice fields and drew nearer and nearer the square. He peeked round the corner of the schoolhouse. He saw one of the helpers carry a water bucket down the stone steps of the pond. He saw the other helper dig a hole in the hardpacked earth of the square and set up the long pole of the bamboo frame of the umbrella. He saw him tie thick, woven palm branches 'to the frame, so that the umbrella looked like a little hut. When the sun rose high in the heavens, the palm umbrella would make a circle of cool, deep shade. The boy reached in his pocket for the red crayon which always snuggled at the bottom of it now. He sharpened it on the brick wall of the schoolhouse, and then he drew a picture on the wall. He sketched the palm umbrella, the wide-brimmed palm hat, the blacksmith himself. He was just sketching the forge when he heard a step behind him. Quickly he tried to rub the picture off the wall with his sleeve, but it would not come off. The young school teacher was frowning. “We do not draw pictures on the school wall,” he said. “We draw them on rice paper in the schoolroom.” Then he stepped closer to the picture and looked at it keenly. “Come into the school,” said he in a softer voice.

Chang Chee shivered. Was that wooden stick going to whack down on his head? Beads of sweat gushed out on his forehead as he thought this awful thought.

The teacher stepped to one corner of the room. He opened the door of a little cupboard with a tiny key. He pulled out a box. He shut the door carefully again and turned the key in the lock. He brought the box to the table and sorted things over. Then he called Chang Chee to his table.

“Where did you get that red crayon?” he asked. “I bought it at the big market,” said the boy, much afraid that the teacher wouldn’t believe it. “Is that the only crayon that you have?” asked the teacher. _ “It is the only one,” said Chang Chee, looking down at the precious crayon in his fingers. The crayon was very short from much sharpening. “Have you rice paper?” asked the teacher. Chang Chee shook his head. The teacher opened a slender box inside the other box and pulled out half a dozen crayons of different colours. Chee’s eyes glistened as he spied them. The colours in the box were orange-yellow like his baby ducks, jade like the jade drops in his mother’s earring, rust red like lichee nuts, and many other shades. “Take these crayons,” said the teacher, wrapping them in a wad of bamboo paper and handing them to Chang Chee. The boy took them gently as if they were dream things handed to him in a dream. Then the teacher picked up a sheaf of rice paper. “And take this paper, too,” said he. “Use them both. When you have used them all I will give you more. I knew you had a talent for drawing, but I didn’t know you had so much. I had never seen you draw a figure before. That blacksmith was good.” Chang Chee stood silently before him, his slanting eyes resting on the floor. But his brain caught all the words and held them there as a pond holds precious drops of rain. “Draw more figures,” went on the schoolteacher in a sing-song voice. “Draw hands and feet, hands and feet. If you can draw hands and feet you can draw anything else. And now go away and do not come back until time for school. I am busy. And do not sketch on the brick wall again!” Chang Chee ran down the alleys as fast as he could go. He rushed into the kitchen. But he spoke no word of the crayons, for his mother thought picture-making a foolish pastime. “The ah-he-din, the blacksmith, has come,” he said instead, which was an exciting piece of news.

“Ah-ha!” croaked the old grandmother. "We have a knife to mend. Here it is. Take it to him.” “And here are coppers to pay for the mending,” added Toy Hah. In a few moments Chang Chee was standing in the village square, the daytime camp of the blacksmith and his helpers. Stone benches were scattered around the square. A few customers were already waiting on these benches, jars and knives and rakes between their knees. The fire in the forge was glowing. Tick, tick, tick clucked the bellows as the blacksmith blew the flames hotter and hotter. Cling, clang, cling, sang the hammer as one of the helpers hammered the plough point which a young farmer had brought. A wooden bucket of water stood on the ground near the forge for tempering the iron. Chang Chee held up his knife before the eyes of the blacksmith. “Dor-sin, Early Morning, Respected Sir,” said he in a slow polite voice. “Here is a knife to be mended.” Chang Chee watched curiously while the blacksmith burned off the old wooden handle, and one helper made a nice smooth handle with his draw shave. The other helper blew the fire hotter and hotter with his bellows. Then the blacksmith bored a hole in the new handle with a hot pick and tempered the burned shaft of the knife in the bucket of water. He hammered it into the hole in the handle and bound it tightly with a new little collar.

While the first helper was sharpening the blade on a grinding stone Chang Chee drew his crayons from his pockets and began to sketch the crew.

Quicker and quicker wiggled the crayon in Chang Chee’s busy fingers. Tick, tick, tick, clucked the bellow, and cling, clang, cling, sang the voice of the hammer.

“Is my knife ready?” Those words in Chang Chee’s ears made the boy jump. It was Toy Hah’s voice. “At it again!” she scolded. “Get my knife quick before someone else does, and pay. the ah-he-din. Then hurry off to school.” But she glanced curiously at his drawing, and her voice was not so sharp as usual.

Then Chang Chee ran off to school. And when he had seated himself he and the schoolteacher looked at each other with just a bit of a smile. • - - •