Pingping, the Left-Behind Girl

In the early 1990s, deep in the mountains of Guizhou, there was a village so poor even the mice would sigh as they moved away. Snow was due soon, and the sky was as gloomy as an upside-down gray pot lid. The cold wind sliced right through to the bone. It was just around dusk, so cold it made people shiver, when this little girl, Pingping, came into the world. As soon as Pingping was old enough to remember things, her mother loved to pour out her woes to her. “Oh, heavens above! Giving birth to you, you little debt collector, nearly peeled three layers of skin off me! Three whole days and nights! My bones were coming apart before I finally managed to squeeze you out! You were so scrawny at birth, like a blind kitten! You were sick every few days, and when you cried, you could lift the roof. You nearly drove me to my grave! I couldn’t even shut my eyes for a moment at night!” Pingping was frail and kept nursing at her mother’s breast, which we called “zaza,” until she was three. The idle women in the village would sneer and mock her whenever they saw her. “Well, well! Pingping’s three already, as tall as a stool, and still clinging to her mother for zaza. Aren’t you ashamed?” Every afternoon, Pingping would drag over her little stool and sit down beside her mother with a clatter, becoming the biggest laughingstock in the whole village. Her grandmother tried everything to wean her, smearing chili pepper on her mother’s breast, coating it with soot from the cooking pot, and every other trick she could think of, but nothing could make Pingping give up the breast.