It’s been a very long time since the word “zhezi” slipped into my mind again.
I haven’t seen one in ages. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it either. Its image is almost fading from memory.
When it disappeared from our lives, I didn’t even own a mobile phone.
And yet, I found a picture of it online. The moment I saw it, a surge of emotions overwhelmed me. It was familiar—achingly familiar. Memories came rushing back like a flood.
“Zhezi” (or in formal terms, “xuézi”) is a kind of narrow, rough mat traditionally woven from sorghum stalks or reeds. It was used primarily for storing grain. But the name most rural people knew it by was the colloquial “zhezi” —a word filled with warmth and earthiness.
Back then, once the wheat was harvested and dried, it wasn’t sold right away. No, every family kept their grain. They stored it, folded it into the zhezi.
As a child growing up in the countryside, I was no stranger to this process. I helped fold and store grain many times.
The day when the wheat was finally dry enough to store—oh, that was a joyful day for any farmer. The moment when “every kernel returned to the barn” was the true conclusion of the season’s toil.
I still remember clearly—our family’s grain was stored in the western room of our house. Before we began loading the wheat, we’d clean the entire room, lay down a layer of wheat husk on the floor, then cover it with a thick sheet of plastic. That was how we kept the moisture away from the grain.
Then came the backbreaking part: bag by bag, basket by basket, we’d carry the golden wheat in and pour it into the middle of the zhezi.
At first, the zhezi was just a low ring, encircling the grain. But as the volume of wheat grew, it would spiral upward, taller and taller. Some zhezi could reach heights of nearly two meters—cylindrical towers of golden treasure.
But storing the wheat was not the end of the work.
Grain, when kept together, can attract pests. So how did we deal with that?
My father would prepare bundles of pest-repellent herbs, known as “menyao”—a locally common form of insecticide in rural China. He’d wrap them in gauze, each the size of a chicken egg, and bury them inside the grain to keep insects away.
In many rural households, people even lived in the same room where grain was stored. I remember, before high school, my own bed was placed next to our zhezi in the western room.
At night, I could hear mice scurrying across the top of the mat.
Whenever we ran out of flour, we’d go to the zhezi, scoop out some wheat, wash it, dry it again under the sun, and take it to the mill to grind into flour.
Nothing—absolutely nothing—tasted better than flour ground from our own wheat. Whether it was for steamed buns or hand-pulled noodles, it was always more fragrant and flavorful than the bleached white flour you find in supermarkets today.
Back then, no farmer bought flour. We all ate what we had grown ourselves.
And as the days passed and we used more and more grain, the zhezi would gradually shrink in height. Once the grain was gone, the zhezi would be coiled into a roll, hung up in the rafters, waiting patiently for the next year’s harvest.
Today, hardly any household stores grain. Everything is sold right after harvest. If we need flour, we just buy it from the store.
Why did people in the past insist on storing grain?
The answer is simple: fear. Fear of poverty, fear of hunger.
Before the rural household responsibility system in the 1980s, having enough to eat was not a given. Most farming families had no surplus at all. Even if they wanted to store grain, they simply didn’t have enough to save.
It was only after the economic reforms that grain production increased and families finally had more than they needed. That’s when the zhezi truly came into its own.
The 1980s and 90s were the golden era for the zhezi. It was a symbol of abundance.
Still, even as society moved on, some farmers held onto the habit of storing grain. My father was one of them.
Born in the early 1950s, he lived through the dark years of famine. To him, storing food was instinctive, a survival reflex he could never shake. Even when wheat spoiled in the zhezi, he refused to give up the habit.
I remember that even after the year 2000, he was still storing wheat.
By then, hunger was no longer a threat. But he had another reason: he hoped the price of grain would go up.
Of course, that never happened. Prices fell more often than they rose, and storing grain came with many hidden costs. Mice would steal from the stores. Moisture could cause mold. The bottom layer of wheat often went to waste.
Not to mention the energy it took to manage all this. He had to check the grain regularly, make sure the roof didn’t leak, worry if it rained too hard…
Eventually, even my father gave up. After seeing all our neighbors quit the habit, he too stopped storing grain. Our family became one of the last households in the village to say goodbye to the zhezi.
Today, no one stores grain anymore. The zhezi is long gone from daily life.
And yet, when I close my eyes, I still see it clearly.
I remember one Chinese New Year in particular. My father took a piece of red paper and wrote the characters for “Abundant Harvest of Five Grains.” He pasted it on the side of the zhezi.
Then he stood silently before the tall tower of wheat, staring at it for a long time, lost in thought.
That image—of a man and his grain, of a generation’s stubborn endurance—remains etched in my heart.
