Reborn in 1983: Making a Living for the Whole Family by Hunting in the Mountains

[Reborn in a bygone era + hunting in the mountains + devoted husband and father + Northeastern folk customs + tough-as-nails farming] In the twelfth lunar month of 1983, heavy snow sealed off the Changbai Mountains. In the main room of the Chen family home, his mother was pounding the table, forcing Chen Shoushan to marry off his fourteen-year-old eldest daughter to a cripple from a neighboring village. She wanted the three hundred yuan in bride price to find a wife for her youngest son. In his previous life, he had meekly agreed. His eldest daughter had ended up jumping into an ice hole. His wife had cried herself blind and died young. In the end, his heartless relatives locked him in a drafty woodshed, where he froze to death. Given another chance at life, Chen Shoushan flipped the table with one slap and smacked the family separation agreement down in front of his mother. “I don’t want the old house, the food allowance, or the plots we farm for ourselves! I only want my wife and my three girls!” He left with nothing in the dead of winter. The whole village stood with folded arms, waiting to watch his family of five starve to death. No one knew that the “calling the mountain” craft, lost to the Chen family for three generations, had awakened in him. He could understand the sounds of the Changbai Mountains. The mountains would tell him which ravine held big game and which patch of forest was off-limits. In the depths of winter, he braved a blizzard and dug a sixty-year-old, six-leaf ginseng plant out of the ground with his bare hands. As he came down the mountain, a line of footprints appeared in the snow behind him, each one with only four toes… The rule of the mountains: Take something from them, and you must give something back. Anyone who stands in my way, whoever you are, get out of my way. In this life, Chen Shoushan hoisted his mountain-clearing axe onto his shoulder. With his old skills, he would trample the relatives who fed on his family beneath his feet, and protect his wife and three girls until theirs was the most untouchable household beneath the Changbai Mountains!