At that time, Mohe Township only had about two hundred households, almost every family had their own separate courtyard. Most of the houses were log cabins, and there were vast vegetable gardens in front of and behind the houses. Because it bordered on the Soviet Union and the Sino-Soviet relations were tense, even though it took only fifteen minutes to walk from my grandmother's house to the boundary river, the adults didn't let us children go to the riverside alone. They said that the high-nosed Russians on the opposite bank were bad, if the patrol boat on the river came over and caught us, we would be fed to the wolves.
What puzzled me most at that time was why the sun rose from the direction where the Soviet Union was so bad? Because when looking out from the east window, nearby were private vegetable gardens, further away were the soybean fields and wheat fields of the commune, and after the wheat fields, down the next slope, was the Heilongjiang River. This side of the Heilongjiang River was Mohe Township, and on the opposite bank were the mountains of the Soviet Union. Every morning, I watched the sun rise from there.
To the east of my grandmother's house lived an old Soviet woman. She was in her seventies or eighties, living alone. She was tall, with fair skin, high nose, and deep-set eyes. She fled over here before the founding of the People's Republic of China, married a Chinese groom, and had two sons. However, later due to the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations, that man ran away, leaving her and the children behind for fear of being implicated.
I only saw one of the old Soviet woman's sons, who must have been over forty then, silent and taciturn, dark-skinned and thin, and unmarried. Under his care was a boy named Chunsheng, who was more than ten years old, handed over to him by his younger brother. Chunsheng was a mixed-blood child, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, not very smart, always doing silly things. Every couple of days, he would come to chop wood and fetch water for his grandmother. My grandfather, who had served as township head, forbade me from playing at the Soviet old woman's house, saying there were political issues with her family. I didn't understand politics; all I knew was that Chunsheng was fun to play with, and the broad beans at his grandmother's house were tempting. So whenever Chunsheng came, I would jump over the fence from our vegetable garden into theirs, and then sneak into the house. That wooden fence wasn't much taller than me, chickens could hop over it, let alone me. Her dog recognized me and wagged its tail when it saw me. I liked watching Chunsheng work, enjoyed listening to him talk, and even more so, liked going inside to eat broad beans. The Soviet old woman often wore a loose knee-length bronze-colored skirt, with a triangular scarf on her head. Whenever I came, she would pick me up and sit me on a high-backed chair, bringing broad beans for me to eat. The broad beans she stir-fried were incredibly fragrant and crispy. As I chewed them with a crunching sound, the pendulum in the clock swung back and forth, making me look like I was starving.
The Soviet old woman hardly spoke, like a mute. When I ate the broad beans, she sat beside me and watched attentively. After I finished eating, she would pick me up from the chair, take my hand, and lead me in a dance. The dance she did was basically just turning circles like a donkey grinding grain. Probably because my head was full of mush, I got dizzy after three or five turns. She held my hand tightly so I wouldn't fall, stopped, and then burst out laughing! As soon as Chunsheng heard his grandmother laugh, he would drop whatever he was doing, run over, lean on the doorframe, peek his head in, and chuckle along.