"A whitish caterpillar about the size of my finger." I stuck out my second finger.

"What happened to the worm?" she asked eagerly.

"The goat ate it very quickly," I replied casually.

"Next time when she sneezes out the worm you must pull the goat away from it and try to capture it. This kind of worm is worth a lot of money!" She became happier then, and seemed to dream. "Maybe this is our saviour goat," she murmured to herself, and she would forget about her despair for a while.

But one day I told the same story once too often and she realised I had been making it up all along. "Get lost! Don't think you can fool me again!"

What a shame, I thought. Now I would have to think of a cleverer tale to cheer her up.

And the goat? She eventually died, from starvation, the following winter.

My niang was also recognised as one of the best seamstresses in the village. Sewing was one of the most important pastimes for the ladies. My parents simply had no money to buy ready-made clothes, and my niang didn't have a sewing machine. So the older ladies would teach the younger ones, and they often gathered together as a sewing group in our small, crowded house, even though they knew we were very poor, to share their secrets, drink tea and gossip. The women of the village loved to come and share their happiness or their problems with my niang, and her sewing skill was admired by many. Her stitches looked as if they were made by a sewing machine-small and perfect. Once she was asked by a friend to redo some machine-sewn zippers because he preferred my niang's delicate stitchwork.

My niang's warm personality was well liked and respected by people of all ages in the surrounding villages. Like my dia, she always tried hard to help others. Besides that "lucky woman with seven sons", she was also known as "the live treasure". Men occasionally stopped by our gate to have a chat with her: most women would have been intimidated and embarrassed, talking to men other than their own husbands, but not our niang. For this, Na-na often fondly called her "that wild girl".

But my niang was also an open-minded person, receptive to new ideas. Mao's Cultural Revolution boasted that one of the great achievements of the Red Guards had been the establishment of evening schools. These were especially aimed at teaching the uneducated peasants Mao's communist ideas. We were all given copies of Mao's Red Book. I was six years old then and I remember two enthusiastic young Red Guards coming to teach my niang to read. She never learned to recognise individual words, but she could memorise entire paragraphs of Chairman Mao's sayings. She would practise while she was washing, cleaning, sewing and cooking: I often saw her lips moving as she silently recited passages from her book. She was considered a model student.

One day, while my niang was trying to make a fire to cook dinner, two young Red Guard girls came into our house to check on her reading progress. She was having a terrible day and couldn't get the half-burnt coal to light. Smoke filled the whole room. My niang was a sensible, fair woman: she was polite and explained that she didn't have time to talk just then and asked them to come back another time. So the girls left and she pulled all the unlit half-burnt coals out and tried again. She asked me to push the windbox for her. But just as she was going to start cooking, the two girls came back. They kept insisting on testing my niang on her understanding of Mao's Red Book. They had to report back to their group leader that evening they said.

I could see my niang's anger growing. Eventually, she told me to get up off the floor and asked one of the girls to push the wind- box. She handed the second girl her wok flipper and asked her to take over the cooking. The two girls just stood there and looked at each other, very confused. By now my niang was frustrated and at the end of her patience. She roared at them. "I could learn Chairman Mao's sayings every day, all day long, until I die, but who is going to do my cleaning, washing and cooking? Who will bath my sons, sew their clothes, provide my entire family with three meals a day, every day of the year? Who will cook things out of thin air? Do you think Chairman Mao's words will fill our stomachs? If you can come back every day to help me do all of these things, I will learn whatever you want me to learn-and more!"

The two girls left, red-faced. That night my niang told my dia what she'd said to the two girls. He just smiled. That was the end of my niang's educational adventure, and the two girls never returned to our house again.

By the time I was eight, the hard work and poverty had begun to wear down even my niang, strong as she was. She woke up one morning complaining of dizziness and a headache, and she didn't eat any breakfast. My youngest brother Jing Tring and I were home with her. She had planned to do a lot of washing that day but found the water in our storage pot frozen hard. So she packed up a heavy clay washing-basin full of clothes and, carrying a wooden washing-board under the other arm, she headed to the man-made dam on the steep Northern Hill.

I knew she didn't feel well. I begged her not to go. "I'll fetch you some water so you can do your washing at home."

"It will be slippery at the well with all the ice around it! Do you want to die in the well?" she replied impatiently. "I have to finish these clothes, or your brothers will have to wear filthy clothes to school tomorrow." She walked out the door. "If I don't get back before your dia gets home, tell him to come and help me carry the clothes back."

A couple of my friends came over to our house to play that morning. Then, around noon, a neighbour rushed to our house, shouting, "Hurry! Your niang has fainted halfway between the dam and your house!"

My dia was not yet home from work and often he had to finish his quota of lifting heavy materials for the morning before he was allowed to take his lunch hour. Most of the time he wouldn't come home for lunch, but that morning he'd said he would try to get back because he knew our niang wasn't well.

I asked my friends to look after Jing Tring, then rushed to my fourth uncle's house to see if he was home. The door was locked.

In a panic I rushed to another neighbour's house, but realised immediately that she would not be able to help: she had tiny bound feet. It would take her all day to walk up the Northern Hill on the rough dirt road.

I ran to a couple more houses and found no one to help. Then I ran as fast as I could towards the dam. Tears streamed down my face. I was afraid that I would be too small to be of any help.

I found my niang lying on the side of the road, her clay washing- basin broken in pieces, the pile of washed clothes scattered around in the dirt. She looked so pale. I threw my body on top of hers and shook her violently. "Niang! Niang, wake up!" I shouted, panicking, fearing she was dead. When my face touched hers, I felt it burning and she lay in my arms, motionless.

A few minutes later she slowly opened her eyes and asked me, in a weak whisper, "Where is your dia?"

"He is not home yet!" I replied, frightened, but relieved she was still alive.

She sighed. "Where are your elder brothers?"

"They are not home from school yet."

She sighed again. It seemed hopeless. "Help me up," she said.

My earlier fears were correct: I was too small to be of much help. I held one of her hands to support her but it was not enough and after a few slow wobbling steps, she crashed to the ground again. I felt useless. I wished that I was big and strong enough to carry her on my back. I wept in desperation.

"I'm going to have a little rest here," she said. "Go home and see if your dia and any of your brothers are back."

I flew home. No one was there. I rushed out of our house in all directions trying to find help. Eventually I saw a middle-aged man riding his bike home. "Da… Ye! Are you in a hurry?" I stuttered, the words like bullets out of a machine gun.