The Old Forests of the Northeast

My great-grandfather was named Zhao Chongli, and his family came from around Langfang, Hebei. In the 1870s, drought struck his hometown, making it hard to scrape together a living. The Qing government had also opened up Northeast China to migration, so in his early twenties, he joined the mass migration across the Shanhaiguan Pass and made his way alone to Songyuan, Jilin, hoping to start a small business and get by. But the locals were rather hostile to outsiders and looked down on the migrants from inside the pass. As a result, the first few months were hard for everyone who had come from the south. As the saying goes, “When people are warm and well fed, they think of pleasure; when they are cold and hungry, they think of theft.” A person has to eat to survive, doesn’t he? So my great-grandfather gathered a group of fellow villagers and took up petty theft and robbery.