My Life

I had some education when I was little. I could read a few simple popular books, such as The Seven Knights and The Three Kingdoms. I memorized several stories from The Ghost Stories. I can still remember some of them now, but not because I could read the original text of the book, which was written in an ancient Chinese that was too difficult for me. Instead, I read the simplified version from the local newspaper, where they translated the original into plain Chinese that I could understand. I enjoyed telling those stories to my friends, and my friends loved them. When I told these stories, I usually added some of my own jokes. It was fun.

My writing was not bad either. If you took some of the older government documents and compared them with my writings, I bet mine would not lose out in terms of the handwriting or format. I am not saying that I could write official documents for the Emperor, but I could have written the usual government documents with no problem.

With my ability to read and write, I should have gotten a government job. Although government jobs typically don’t offer a lot of money and fame, they’re very decent and make you look good. Best of all, there is always the opportunity for promotion. I’ve met quite a few people holding high positions in the government who could not even write as well as I did. Some of them couldn’t write a complete sentence. If they could be senior officials in the government, why couldn’t I have been one?

However, when I was fifteen years old, my family sent me to apprenticeship. I wasn’t picky about my future career. I thought it was okay to start as an apprentice to learn about a craft, but it was not as good as working for the government. Once a person started an apprenticeship, he could only be a craftsman. Even though some craftsmen made a fortune, they still didn’t have the status of a government official, right? But I obeyed my family. I didn’t have much choice. My parents also promised me that they would find me a wife as soon as I graduated from the apprenticeship and started making money. At the time, married life sounded appealing. So it seemed a good plan to me. All I needed to do was to work hard for a couple of years as an apprentice, and then I would be making money and could get married and start a family. Not bad at all.

The craft I learned was paper crafts. In the old days, before the war, it was a breeze to make a living off paper crafts. At that time, it wasn’t so easy if somebody died. I don’t mean that the dead person would come back as a spirit and hang around. What I mean is that the funerals were not as simple as they are now. The family of the dead usually spent a lot of money and effort to comply with tradition and look good. Let me give you an example from the shroud shop where I apprenticed. One of the traditions was to make a paper mock-up that looked like a backward- facing cart as soon as the person breathed his last. Most people don’t know about this tradition anymore. Then, on the third day after the death, the family would typically request a bunch of paper goods to burn to honor the dead. These included paper horses and carts, paper fairies, paper flags and paper flowers. If a woman died in childbirth, the tradition was to make a paper cow and a paper chicken coop to burn. On the seventh day after the death, tradition required monks to sing, and for the family to burn paper houses, paper jewelry, paper clothes, paper flowers, paper antiques, and paper furniture. When the person was buried, the paper house and frames and many other paper goods were burnt. On the thirty-fifth day after death, paper umbrellas were made and burnt. After sixty days, paper boats and paper bridges were made and burnt. Our business was usually not finished until sixty days after the death. A dozen or so rich people dying in a year would feed all of us in the shop.

Paper crafts were not only for the dead. We also helped people with their religious duties. In bygone years, people were more willing to spend money on their religion. Take General Guan, for example. On June 24th, every year, people used to make paper goods to burn to honor him, such as yellow paper banners, paper horses, and paper flags with seven stars. Now, almost no one cares about General Guan anymore. In the event of a smallpox outbreak, we would get busy honoring the goddesses of sickness. People believed those goddesses could wipe out the epidemic. Since there were nine goddesses in the religion, we were usually asked to make nine paper sedan chairs, red and yellow paper horses, one for each of the nine goddesses, as well as paper clothes and paper shoes and other accessories. Now that hospitals give people vaccine shots, the nine goddesses are being forgotten. Therefore the paper craftsmen like us who used to make paper goddesses are no longer employed. Additionally, in the old days, when people prayed to a god for good fortune, the tradition was that they should make some paper goods to burn later to honor the god’s help. However, these days, people are becoming less and less religious, so the paper business in this area is gradually disappearing too.

In addition to serving the god and the ghost, the paper business also interacted with the common people. We called these “living jobs,” and they involved making and installing wallpaper and window papers. Wall painting had not been invented back then. So when people moved to a new place, got married, or had other things to celebrate, they usually hired us to install white wallpapers from ceiling to floor in their entire house so that it looked new. Before glass windows were invented, windows were also made of paper. Some of the wealthy families would hire us to put new papers in their windows twice a year, at spring and fall. Now people seem to be getting poorer and poorer. They don’t even install wallpapers when they move. As for those rich families, they started following the Western style. Once they plaster and paint a house, it can last forever. The windows are no longer made of paper but of glass. These new houses do look good, but there is no more business for paper craftsmen. We tried to change to keep up with the times. When cars replaced sedan chairs, we made paper cars instead of paper sedan chairs. However, the whole tradition is disappearing. When people die now, very few relatives ask paper craftsmen to make paper cars. The small changes we were able to make in paper goods couldn’t survive the bigger tide of traditions changing. There is really nothing we could have done.