Opening my eyes to the sunlight streaming into my barren room, I recalled the events of the previous day. The day our village had been ‘modernized’, when the Red Guards had ransacked our house, taking our pots and pans, destroying our photos…
I shook myself out of my sorrow. I wouldn’t think about those things for now. Today, on November 27th, 1970, I was turning twelve, and I refused to allow the Red Guards to take my happiness away, too.
Pulling on the thickest sweater I had to keep me warm from the cold mid-autumn air, I slowly walked downstairs. My grandmother peeked at me from the kitchen door. Her face brightened when she saw me. “Li Hua, the little birthday girl! What type of muffins do you want today?” she smiled, her face filling with wrinkles.
Muffins? What? I looked from her happy expression to the nearly empty kitchen behind her, and then back to her, again. “But… the Red Guards….” I stared at her.
Grandmother laughed. “Ah, Li Hua—do you really think the Red Guards took everything?” I nodded, and she squinted at me. “Well, you’re wrong. Nobody’s going to outsmart your wise old grandma anytime soon,” she said abruptly.
She opened the drawer, which had been empty just yesterday. Now, however, it had five different pans in it. Even our old oven was back.
We drew the curtains closed, fearing that someone might report us, and got out the pans. “Woah, Grandma, how’d you hide these?”
“I have my ways.”
As we got out the little flour we had, my mother and father also came downstairs groggily. Their eyes widened when they saw the pans and the oven. However, they didn’t question it, knowing it was the doing of my grandmother, and that she would never give the details of what she had done. She had made it through China’s entire conflict with the Japanese, so it wasn’t a surprise that she knew exactly what to do.
We got to work on our muffins, and I realized quickly that we only had limited supplies. But, it didn’t matter. We cracked two eggs, using our wooden chopsticks to whisk them; we dumped in our brown sugar, as our white sugar had been taken the previous day. We used a bowl to shake the flour to separate the lumps, then added it to the mixture. Everyone joined in on the effort, and our laughs and joy seemed to warm the frigid air up.
We were lucky that we had an oven; my grandma’s great-grandfather had been a good friend of an English missionary, who had given the oven to our family. It was a peculiar thing, looking like a fancy table with a drawer on its side. Although generations old, the oven looked well-off, as we had always taken great care of it.
Being in our family for such a long time, the oven gave a sense of security and hope to us. It had been through all of World War II, the Great Leap Forward, and now, the Cultural Revolution. Surely it would help us survive through this conflict too.
Our muffins slowly baked in the oven, and we all sat down by the window. “May this Revolution soon be over,” I heard my mother say as we looked out at our unusually quiet town—the Guards had persecuted all intellectuals and anyone else that might still have had traditional views.
I told myself that it would be okay, and went to check on the muffins. They were a golden brown color, and I smiled just at the sight of them. “They’re done!” I called to my family.
They all rushed over as I took them out. As I took my first bite, I realized that they were hard, and I could still see some of the flour. But, we didn’t care. The warmth from the oven added to our laughter. With everyone around, the muffins tasted wonderful.
I realized, these weren’t only my birthday muffins. They were our entire family’s muffins, and they represented our defiance. Today was the day that we all knew that we weren’t going to lose hope.
Today was the day of happiness, and the day to celebrate our dreams. The oven, giving us happiness and a sense of security, would help us cling onto hope until the end of the Revolution. Until then, it would sit in our kitchen silently, witnessing all of our difficulties, as well as the joy of our being together as a family. I would always turn to it whenever I felt scared or down.
Today, the oven seemed as if it were smiling happily. Walking upstairs to join my family, I looked back at it one more time, and heard the oven clearly in my head.
“Happy Birthday, Li Hua.”