编辑文：
A villager named Wang Bao asked me to treat his mother's lower back pain. After I gave her acupuncture and massage, the pain eased quickly. My name is Aunt Wang. She is very happy. I also gave her painkillers and told Wang Bao that his mother needed acupuncture for a couple of days. Wang Bao said it's OK. He invited me to live in his house. Wang Bao is tall and strong. He usually wears a pair of shorts in summer. He is generous; when the villagers have difficulties or needs, he will put down his work to help even if he is busy. His wife sometimes complains, but he says, "do you want to carry the coffin after you die?" Ting Wen asked me to help his wife with her stomachache. I guess her acid reflux gave her antacid. After a week, the pain eased. I also cured his mother's headache and the wound and infection on his child's foot. Ting Wen is very happy. During that time, I spent most of my time on the boat at his home. Tingwen is a sincere, intelligent and capable person. He is one of the leaders of the production department responsible for the safety of the village. Living in his house, I can fall asleep safely. Jiaqiu's son came to me and said that his father stood up and twisted his waist. Now he can't move because of the pain. I examined him and found that there was a muscle strain in the waist and a pain point of acupuncture near the back of the hand. At the same time, I asked him to turn his waist slowly. After that, Jiaqiu said, the pain disappeared. He wanted to know if there was medicine on the tip of the needle. I said no, but I gave him two days of medicine to relieve the pain and hurt. I saw a pile of mushroom things under his eaves. They we
原文：
A villager named Wangbao requested me to treat his mother's lower back pain. After I gave her
acupuncture and massage, the pain was relieved quickly. Aunt Wang, as I called her, was very happy. I
also gave her painkillers, and told Wangbao that his mother needed successive acupuncture for a couple
of days. Wangbao said no problem and invited me to stay in his house.
Wangbao was tall and burly and usually wore a pair of shorts in summer. He was generous; in
case a villager had difficulty or needs, he would put down his work to help even if busy. His wife
sometimes complained, but he said, "Do you want to carry the coffin yourself when you die?"
Tingwen asked me to help treat his wife's stomachache. I guessed she had gastric acid reflux and
gave her antacids. After a week, the pain was relieved. I also healed the headache of his mother, and the
wound and infection of his child's foot. Tingwen was very pleased. During that time, I mostly boarded
at his home. Tingwen was a sincere, smart and an able man. He was one of leaders of the production
team and was in charge of village security. Living in his home, I might sleep safely.
Jiaqiu’s son sought me saying that his father sprained the waist when he stood up and now it was
too painful to move. I examined him, found lumbar muscle strain, so did acupuncture at a tender point
near zhongchu in the back of the hand. At the same time I asked him to slowly rotate his waist. After a
while, Jiaqiu said the pain disappeared. He wondered if the needle tip was coated with medicine. I said
no, but gave him two days of medicine to help relieve pain and injury.
I saw a pile of mushroom-like things piled under the eaves of his house. They were black or
yellow and surprisingly large, up to the size of a small washbasin, some of them clumped together to
form an even larger mass. Jiaqiu said it was "gemu fungus". Gemu is a kind of hard tree. These
mushroom-like things grow near its root and have an astringent taste. He explained that people from
Dongxing came to buy them for use as a medicinal herb. Those not purchased would be burned as
firewood.
Later I learned this was the so-called "magic fungus (ganoderma lucidum)”, an expensive tonic
herb which was sold in herb stores by grams!
Ironically, "A material item is more valued away from its place of origin, while a man becomes
more humbled away from home!" Ganoderma lucidum was valuable as a "magic fungus" only away
from its place of origin, but a man going far away to a strange land is like a tree without root or a fish
out of water. I was an example, wandering in North Vietnam as an illegal resident, eating whatever I
could get and often sleeping in the wilderness. My “humble” situation was truly lamentable!
Jiaqiu treated me to dinner. There was a dish of fried fresh sand worms. Sand worms are
coelenterates (related to jellyfish) that are slightly bigger than chopsticks and about the length of a
human palm. The first time I ate sand worms, I found them to be very delicious. They are a famous
specialty of the local coastal area. There was also a bowl of pickled crabs. Each crab was as big as a
thumbnail and eaten with the whole thin shell.
Jiaqiu told me that they sometimes went to the beach to pick up sand worms and small crabs.
Picking up small crabs was easy: just spread some BHC (pesticide) powder on the beach while the
small crabs were out. He could pick up half a bamboo basket in one night. It’s crisp if fried freshly and
especially delicious when eaten with liquor. Those not eaten immediately were pickled and that was
what we were eating now. I was alarmed when Jiaqiu said they had spread BHC to poison the crabs,
and quickly warned they should not be eaten. But Jiaqiu didn’t take it seriously, saying he had not
heard of anyone poisoned. But he promised to wash them more thoroughly in the future.
What I Saw and Heard in Dong Hoa
Dong Hoa was about two kilometers north of Tien Yen town. There was a gravel highway passing
through the village from south to north. The east side was flat land with more than 30 households, each
in a single family house. Farther east was a river - Binh Lieu River that flowed through the east side of
Tien Yen town into the sea. East of the river were mountains and there were several families living in
the foothills. To the west of the highway were hills with only three families. Farther west were more
mountains.
Dong Hoa inhabitants were ethnic Chinese whose ancestors were mostly from Dongxing. As in
Dam Ha, they spoke Cantonese or Hakka.
Dong Hoa was an agricultural village. Farmers formed a production team which was also the
administrative unit. The main task of village officials was to organize and lead the collective
production. The farmers appeared sluggish and perfunctory in collective labor; in fact the yield of
collective production provided only a minor portion of family income. They put more efforts on their
private plots, the most important crop being sugar cane, followed by peanuts, corn, vegetables and so
on. They also raised chickens and pigs, reared silkworms and wove.
Sugar cane was used for juicing, the juice boiled thickly and formed into sugar cubes. The
squeezed sugar canes were splashed and infused with water and squeezed again. They repeated the
procedure two or three times to obtain a lighter sugar juice for brewing. The final product was called
"sugar fermented liquor”.
The sugar cubes and sugar fermented liquor of Dong Hoa were famous. It was the main source of
income and was the reason why Dong Hoa villagers were slightly richer than those in other rural areas.
In addition, there were one or two mulberry trees in the front yard of every house, and many
households had simple reeling and weaving machines; the cloth was dyed with dye yam (dioscorea
cirrhosa) to yellow brown and used for clothes or mosquito nets. This was the most common type of
clothes for farmers, because the rural population was not issued cloth coupons.
A farmer who wanted to buy cloth at state-owned stores had to obtain the coupon indirectly from
an urban resident, or to buy it on the black market. How did the black market get clothes to sell? It was
said there always was someone who found a way to obtain them. It seemed that corruption under an
autocratic regime was the same in Vietnam as in China.
Another sideline of Dong Hoa villagers was logging. The forest was state property, so anyone
logging must apply for a permit, and must sell felled wood to the government. There was a quota per
person per year, and the price was very low. After completing the quota, the loggers would secretly sell
more the wood to private individuals at a much higher price, or save it for personal use.
Felled lumber was linked into rows and pulled by a water buffalo to the riverside. Several people
cooperatively bound rows into a long raft and floated it downstream at night for secret sales directly to
customers. What they most worried about was being seized in midstream by the forestry antismuggling
officers. Then all the wood must be sold to the government at very low price (about 1/5 to
1/8 of the private price) and months of hard labor were all but cast to the winds.
Along the highway were a number of simple huts built by residents evacuated from Tien Yen
Town, Haiphong or other cities to avoid the U.S. aircraft bombing. A hut usually consisted of front and
rear parts. The front part was used for some small business which the government allowed the evacuees
to do for living, such as selling homemade cakes, noodle snacks, or repairing, sewing; the rear was for
living quarters. When the situation became tense because war in the South, the number of evacuee huts
might grow to a dozen or more. Even the County Hospital and other units were evacuated to a hillside
half a kilometer north of Dong Hoa.
There was a primary school north of the village on the roadside. There were several classrooms
with muddy bamboo mat walls and thatched roofs. Dozens of students came from the village and
across the river. They learned mainly Chinese but also Vietnamese. Rural children, especially girls,
usually studied for a few years and were capable of simple reading and calculating, but only some
would attend the county high school. One of my patients, a villager, was amazed by my quick writing,
and exclaimed, "You know a lot of words!" He asked, "How many years have you learned at school? I
think at least five or six years."
Dong Hoa villagers lighted their oil lamps at night. Once I went to see a patient and saw the
owner scoop out a kerosene-like but thicker and yellow liquid from a jar and pour it into the lamp.
Surprised, I asked what it was and why it was stored in a big jar. He replied, "It’s free!" It turned out
that the oil was an aid from China. The crude oil was transported by pipeline which passed through the
mountains. One time the pipeline on the other side of the river burst and the crude oil flowed down the
hill to the river day and night; people rushed to collect it with buckets and every household soon had
full jars and canisters.
I was flabbergasted and sighed. We in our country had to import crude oil to supplement domestic
consumption!
There was an automatic waterwheel device on the riverside of Dong Hoa, which was driven by
the water flow and connected with pipes to the village for irrigation. The full set of equipment was
provided with assistance from China. It was a good thing, but unfortunately the annual flood caused
damaged, and it would require a lot of labor to fix it.
They told me that China had once assisted them in setting up a simple power grid to provide every
household with electric lights. Later it failed because of poor management.
A short distance to the north of Dong Hoa was an apiary established with the assistance of China
and once directed by a Chinese apiculture expert. The harvested honey supplied officials of a certain
status. The apiary sometimes presented movies which were often Chinese, so the nearby villagers
would go to watch.
Even the state-owned Tien Yen Forest Farm was set up with assistance from China and was later
taken over by the Vietnamese government.
China spared no effort to aid Vietnam, first in the fight against France, then to fight against U.S.
China not only contributed human power and money, but gave a hand to the rural construction. In order
to be the head of the international Communist movement, Mao distributed large sums of money to
countries throughout the world regardless of the life and death of our own people - this was the socalled
"selfless spirit of internationalism”!