EDITOR’S Note:

Human development in the past century has been dramatic, but it seems that the faster we go forward, the more we become interested in the past. Minhang, covering 370 square kilometers, is a tiny spot on the map, but it looms large as a bellwether of both change and nostalgia. Shanghai Daily has compiled the stories of Minhang locals to record the history of the district in a new series entitled “Minhang Geographic.” The stories are told in the voices of those sharing their memories. In this installment, residents living along the Huangpu River in Minhang relive the past.

The Huangpu River makes an L-shaped turn in the Minhang District. This bend is where the river is deepest and widest. The district has plans to create a riverside scenic area here.

To villagers living nearby, however, the bend goes beyond mere scenery. For generations, people fished here as a main source of food and income. They also drew water to irrigate their fields and jumped on a ferry here to go shopping.

Xinghu Village sits along a tree-covered lane called Sizuijiao Road. It flanks one bank of the river, with rice fields to the other side.

Most of the local farmers nowadays aren’t natives. The young people have left to pursue careers in industry, commerce and government departments. Their family farmlands have been entrusted to migrants or to parents and grandparents long past retirement age.

Xu Jiafu, 84, is one of the old-timers of the area. Most of his descendants have left for the modern amenities of city life. The more time passes, the more he cherishes memories of the past.

When he was young, Xu said, villagers worked together in the fields, gossiping about local life when time permitted.

“At that time, every family member was allocated 0.7 mu of farmland (about 466 square meters), and we had four people in the family, so we had 2.8 mu,” he said. “The farmland was called ‘ration fields,’ which meant that all our food came from it.”

Apart from rice, people also grew wheat and vegetables.

Rice seed sowing started from April on the lunar calendar. Transplanting the rice began around the Dragon Boat Festival in late May or early June. Wives would prepare zongzi, or glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in large flat leaves, for their husbands to eat while out in the fields.

Fishing to most families was a second business, with most of the catch sold in local towns. At that time, flax, cloth scraps and old clothes were all used to make nets that were somewhat shabby, Xu said.

Families cooperated in fishing. They went out onto the river in turns, and sent one or two people back to sell the products. The earnings were split.

“Back then, there were many varieties of fish in the river,” said Xu. “But later on, maybe because of over-fishing, some of the species became rare.”

Though farming and fishing kept the villagers pretty well fed, their living conditions were sparse compared with larger towns, not to mention cities. There were no shops or markets in Xinghu Village. Residents had to take a ferry from the former Sizuijiao Ferry Station across the river to shop in a place called Xiagang. The ferry shut down more than three decades ago.

Old people in Xinghu Village talked about Xiagang as if it were heaven, but they didn’t get there all that often. There was only one wooden ferryboat, which held 20 passengers a time. Shopping trips to Xiagang were mostly confined to the Chinese New Year or when guests came to visit.

Indeed, the ferry was its busiest the week before the Chinese New Year. Every morning, the ferryman would go down to the docks before dawn to bail any water out of the boat, check for leaks and install the large oar at the rear.

People carried their empty baskets on board to start what for many was one of the happiest days of the year. They would return with baskets full of pork, chicken, bean curd, flour, glutinous rice, cooking oil and household decorations.

Kitchens brimmed with the aroma of rice cakes and meatballs. Residents exchanged dishes with neighbors.

Before having the annual New Year’s Eve dinner, a ceremony to worship ancestors was held. Freshly made food was placed on the table, with wine and rice, and memorial tablets or pictures of deceased family members were placed on empty chairs. After incense was burned, the family gathered to kowtow to ancestors and pray for a prosperous new year.

“At that time, we had only one truly good meal a year,” said Li Sangen, a 72-year-old resident of the village. “Staple foods were always in short supply, and we didn’t have money for medicine either. When someone was sick, the family just went to a temple to pray for them.”

During the famine years of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the government asked the village to grow more rice than field capacity. As a result, the rice crop failed and villagers were forced to dig up wild plants to feed themselves.

The bend in the river was their salvation.

It’s rich aquatic life that provided some food for the table, and on riverbanks, wild thatch buds in the spring were covered with nectar that was candy to the village children.

The riverbanks also were home to crab that could be dug from the sand. Though crab is now somewhat of a luxury, it was a common food back then.

Children honed special skills to lure the crabs out. When they spotted a possible crab hole, they would remove the mud around it and stick their arms in. When fingers touched a crab shell, the arm was swiftly removed but kept near so that the crab could be caught as it tried to scamper away.

Fan Zhenyang said he was a renowned crab catcher when he was a teenager.

“It was funny that when one crab started to flee from a hole, others would follow,” he said. “I once caught 140 crabs from a single hole. It was a record in the village. When there was nothing else to eat, the crabs saved our lives.”

The villagers were a stalwart bunch. They accepted life as it was, always assuming that the bad times would eventually pass. The elderly who have remained in the village no longer have to worry about the basics of living. They look out upon the bend in the river and see better times ahead.

“The old, hard days are not coming back,” said Xu. “They are gone for good. But we still have a future.”