Inside the white marble gate

Summer days in the past were not as hot as they are now. We could still wear long sleeves in June. Winter was cold with lots of snow. If a winter went by without two to four feet snow, the elderly ones would worry about drought in the coming spring.

School was over. It was just five in the afternoon. The children, eager to go home, waited at the school gate to regroup. My group contains nine children, four boys and five girls. We would walk in a line with two boys in the front and 2 at the back. The leading boy was a 5th grade. He hold a stick in his hand to scare away dogs. The road, which was not paved, but a narrow dirt space between houses, was muddy in raining days and dusty otherwise. Almost every household had a watch dog. They were usually big and unleashed. When they bark, some of the younger ones would cry. We were taught of various techniques to survive dog attacks, but probably when that moment came, we would be lucky if our legs could run.

Our school was located outside of the town, a good half hour walk from home, for me. There was no buses to take. Some children had to walk one hour to get there. In the morning, children living in the same neighborhood would gather together and go to school. They went home the same way. One by one, the girls and boys in my group would wave goodbye and disappear into red, green or black doors. I was the last one. I would run as fast as I could to the white marble gate where my home was. Once inside the gate, I would feel safe.

The white marble gate was the west gate of the county high school. Inside the gate was a huge sports field. Past the sports field, to the north, you would see a standalone gray brick bungalow. That was where I lived. We had three rooms. The kitchen was a  hallway between two bedrooms. We had a coal burning stove. Each bedroom had a big bed made of bricks, called kang in our dialect. The special part of the bed was that it was hollow inside, with a tunnel connected to the cooking stove. In winter time the heat exhaust from cooking would warm up the bed. There was no refrigerator, so we had this little shed outside with a cellar where we stored meat and vegetables. There was a small yard in front of the house where we grew tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, sunflowers and many other seasonal greens. Our tomatoes were pink, red and yellow. They were juicy and sweet, the best I have ever had. We also raised some chickens for eggs. The hens were proudly guarded by a big white rooster.

The house was surrounded by gray brick walls. To the north side of the house there was a slope going up and down to a living area of row houses. For years the sports field was shared by a military unit training war horses. Their office was on the other side of the west wall. Many times a startled horse would run into the field. Adults would show up frantically yelling to the playing children - go hide go hide. The horse unit eventually was moved away after several injury incidents.

In my memories, the sports field was always sandy white. There were no trees and grass. The tiny stones and rocks glittered under the hot summer sun. Rainy days the field would be too wet and muddy for PE class. Along east side of the field there were a few walled households, one of which lived my childhood friend. If you look at her house you would also see the great white pagoda towering in the east. The pagoda, built about a thousand years ago, was used as a watch tower. It survived countless wars and natural disasters. Some parts of the outer layer walls had collapsed and sections of the interior staircase were exposed, displaying beautifully painted Buddhist murals.

We didn't have electricity all the time. Candles were used at home and school quite often. We also had to use umbrellas in our classroom at times since the roof leaked. Desks were simply made with wood boards on top of stone slabs. Stools and benches were brought from home. We chanted Chinese, learned to write each character in the air, practiced math on scrap paper, and sang revolutionary songs in music class.

Winter snowy days, I would come home to find freshly made sugar coated hawthorn apples and deep fried peanuts, my grandpa's best. Hot summer days, we would buy lots of water melons and strawberries. We would put them in cold water for a few hours. By the time they were eaten, they were cool and sweet.