The Four Seasons Song of the Seventies: Chi Zijian Spring: My grandmother's stove fire My grandmother said: "Cat, go get Grandma a piece of wood!" I pouted and dragged my feet towards the stack of wood in the yard. The wood was firewood, and in the seventies, every household in the Greater Khingan Range burned wood. Fresh trees could not be used as wood; they had to be fallen trees that had been dried by the wind, or standing dead trees killed by lightning. They were sawed into sections and split into pieces with an axe, thus becoming wood. There was pine wood, birch wood, and water pear wood. Pine wood usually contained resin and burned with a strong flame, golden red, emitting a strong pine fragrance; the flames of birch wood were orange-yellow, with a scent, but very faint, needing to be carefully smelled; the green-skinned water pear wood, though its flames were beautiful and emitted a white-hot light like the sun, it had no fragrance and did not burn long, turning to ash in half an hour in the stove. So when my grandmother saw someone bring back water pear wood, she would frown, as if someone had brought a sickly girl who was supposed to be her daughter-in-law. The woodpile was tall, and I was short; the woodpile was like a fat flower cow sitting there, and I was a poor ant beside its hooves. I hated hugging wood because the thorns growing on the wood would prick my arms or hands if I wasn't careful. If the thorn pricked shallowly, it could be picked out with a needle, enduring a moment of pain; if deeply, it would be hard to remove, and the flesh would feel like a poisonous snake had entered, burning and scorching, making it impossible to sleep peacefully at night! It was 1970, and I was six years old when my grandmother assigned me chores. That summer, my mother sent me to my grandmother's house in Mohe Township. Due to my young age, I didn't do any work while with my parents, only eating, sleeping, and being mischievous. But my grandmother thought that girls my age should be trained, so as soon as my mother left me, she taught me to hug wood, empty the chamber pot, wipe the table, sweep the floor, wash handkerchiefs and socks, all these small tasks she deemed important.