He is not a poor man. Madame Mao doesn't tell the truth later when she wants to impress her fellow countrymen. She describes him as a proletarian. In fact he is a well-to-do businessman, the town carpenter and owner of a wood shop. He has four full-time workers. Two of them are blind. He uses them to sand wood. The family has food on the table and the girl goes to school.

I never understand why my father beats my mother. There never really is a reason. Nobody in the house interferes. All the wives hear the beating. All my stepbrothers and -sisters witness the act. Yet no one utters a word. If my father is not pleased with my mother, he comes to her room, takes off his shoe and starts hitting her. Concubines are bought slaves and bedmaids, but I wonder if my father's true anger is because my mother didn't produce a son for him.

This is how her father plants the seed of worthlessness in her. It is something she lives with. The moment she begins remembering how she was brought up, she experiences a rage that bursts at its own time and pace. Like the flood of the Yellow River, it comes and crashes in big waves. Its violence changes the landscape of her being. The rage gets worse as she ages. It becomes a kept beast. It breathes and grows underground while consuming her. Its constant presence makes her feel worthless. Her desire to fight it, to prove that it does not exist, lies behind her every action.

It is my nature to rebel against oppressors. When my mother tells me to learn to "eat a meatball made of your own tongue," and "hide your broken arm inside your sleeve," I fight without ever considering the consequences.

In frustration Mother hits me. She hits me with a broom. She is scared of my nature. She thinks that I will be killed like the young revolutionaries whose heads are hung on flagpoles on top of the town gate. They were slaughtered by the authorities.