★A soul-stirring masterpiece by Liang Xiaosheng, winner of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize.

★Celebrating the extraordinary in ordinary Chinese mothers — A testament to women's resilience and optimism through adversity.

★Selected for national standardized Chinese textbooks — Embodies the Chinese reverence for family and parents' selfless devotion, offering profound humanistic insights with enduring educational value.

★A multidimensional portrayal of grassroots life — Vividly captures humanity's virtues and flaws, showcasing ordinary families finding joy amid hardship and Chinese mothers' relentless pursuit of better lives.

This acclaimed novel by Liang Xiaosheng includes excerpts featured in Lesson 18, Unit 6 of the fifth-grade national Chinese textbook. The story chronicles a mother who, despite crushing poverty, embodies diligence, frugality, and moral integrity — setting an exemplary model for her children through actions rather than words. It movingly depicts a tender mother's boundless love and children's deep reverence for their parent.
Using the mother as a microcosm, Liang simultaneously traces China's social transformations and the multigenerational struggles of the working class.
Written in unadorned prose that shifts seamlessly between heart-wrenching poignancy and unexpected humor, the novel crystallizes: the Chinese cultural emphasis on family, the spirit of unconditional parental sacrifice, as well as unflinching humanistic compassion.

Liang Xiaosheng

He was born in 1949 in Harbin with ancestral roots in Rongcheng, Shandong. He is a renowned contemporary Chinese writer and scholar. Currently, he serves as a senior professor at the School of Humanities of Beijing Language and Culture University, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and a researcher at the Central Research Institute of Culture and History. To date, he has authored over ten million words of literary works, including essays, novels, commentaries, and documentary literature. His representative works include "Tonight There’s a Snowstorm", "The Rings of Time", and "Educated Youth". In 2019, he won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize for his novel "A Lifelong Journey".

The Mother/ 001
Black Button / 038
White Hairpin / 073
Blue Hairpin / 139
Submersion / 197

The rain cries outside, and the thin leaves cower before the window. On this lonely day, I miss my mother. Three eyes peer at me through the window, all of them the eyes of the poplar tree. They stare at me blankly and dully, and I feel that it is a kind of gaze.
How I wish I could be like a man from Shandong and call my mother "Ma" to her face.
"Ma, why aren't you eating?"
"Ma, why are you feeling unwell again?"
Should the Shandong men in a small village by the sea in Rongcheng County speak to their old mothers in this way? I often regret that the place is nothing more than my "place of origin" to me, like a person's shadow — it should exist, but not having it doesn't really matter. I can't perceive my father's deep affection for that small village. Because I was born and raised in Harbin.
It's only when I meet someone from the north that I feel I've met a fellow townsman. I am probably a descendant of the younger "adventurers to the east of the pass" — among the immigrants who were driven to the north by famines from the Jiaodong Peninsula year after year, there was a fourteen-year-old, ragged, and lonely boy, who later became my father.
"You must go back to our home! That's your native soil!" My father would say to me solemnly, pronouncing "our" as "owl", and I sensed a hint of pride in his tone.
I don't know if I should feel the same pride, because as far as I know, there are no famous mountains or historical sites there to be proud of, nor has it produced anyone who could be considered a celebrity. Yet I still want to go there very much because it's by the sea.
But where is my mother's hometown? What is it close to?
My mother never said to me that she hoped I or she herself could go back to her hometown.
Is my mother from Jilin? I can't be sure. It seems so. Was my mother born in a place called "Mengjiagang"? It seems so, but it also seems not. Perhaps my mother was born in a place near Jiamusi City? A place where my father and mother lived together in the past?
When I was very young, my mother often told her stories while doing needlework — she had many brothers and sisters, seven or eight. One year, when smallpox broke out in the countryside, only three survived — my mother, my eldest uncle, and my youngest uncle.
"Everyone thought your eldest uncle wouldn't make it, but he did. He opened his eyes, looked around, and seeing me by his side, he asked, 'Sis, where's Little Stone? Where's Little Stone?' I told him, 'Little Stone's dead!' 'What about San Ya? Is San Ya dead too?' I told him again, 'San Ya's dead too! Second Sister's dead too! Han Zi's dead too!' And then he burst into tears, crying so hard he lost his breath..."
As my mother spoke, tears fell from her eyes. They fell on the back of her hand, on her lapel, but she didn't wipe them away or look up. Stitch by stitch, thread by thread, she mended my or my siblings' torn clothes.
"The next year, the bandits came again. Your grandfather hid the mule, but the bandits hung him from a tree and whipped him with a wet rope... Your grandfather wouldn't tell them where the mule was. Your grandmother held me and your eldest uncle in her arms, covering our mouths tightly, hiding in a dry well, listening to your grandfather being tortured and crying out to the heavens. Your grandmother didn't dare climb out of the well to tell them where the mule was; the bandits wouldn't spare women. Later, the bandits burned our house, but the mule was saved, and your grandfather died..."
It's more accurate to say that my mother was talking to herself, or rather, using a special way of reminiscing. These fragments of memory etched in my mind are all I know about my mother's background. Plus that vague place called "Mengjiagang".
Before my mother became a mother, her fate, tied to a life of poverty, was full of disasters and hardships. Later, her fate remained tied to poverty when it was linked with my father's. After she became our mother, she tied me and my siblings to poverty as well.
We grew up clinging to the faded hems of our mother's clothes. In poverty, she fulfilled her duty as a mother...
My initial sympathy for others was formed by my sympathy for my mother. I don't complain about my childhood and adolescence spent peeling tree bark and picking coal lumps because I shared the burden of poverty with my mother in this way.
And life has also given me a rich gift — it has taught me to respect my mother and all women who hold on to a hard life with endurance and never let go because of the bitterness...
On this rainy and lonely day, I miss my mother.
The eyes of the poplar tree peer at me blankly and dully through the window...
That year, my home was "besieged" on an "island" in the city — surrounded by foundation trenches two meters deep, demolition ruins, and construction materials. Almost all the residents of the street had moved away, but my family had nowhere to go. This was because we rented a private property — the landlord wanted to take advantage of the situation to demand a large sum of money from the construction department, but the construction department thought it was unreasonable. The direct victims were my family. As I wrote in my novel "The Black Button", we became "Robinson Crusoes" in the city.
My aunt went back to the countryside. In that city with a population of over two million, besides our mother, we had no other relatives. And the mother's relatives were her few young children. To earn a meager salary, my mother worked as a temporary worker in a railway factory, selling the cheap physical strength of a grassroots woman. Foundry work — it was very tiring and dangerous heavy work for men. Temporary workers had no labor protection to speak of; it all depended on being extra careful during work. If not careful, one could be scalded by molten iron or injured by castings. My mother almost never came home without minor injuries. Her clothes were burned with patches of holes by splashing molten iron.