By Wang Jiancheng

"Have some more, eat up." My father, who is over 80 years old, still pesters me to eat more when I go round for dinner. Although it is thirty years since rice was hard to come by, my father just can't get out of the habit.

In the 1960s and 1970s, food and basic goods were rationed. At the time, there were three of us teenagers, all with huge appetites. But our food ration was only 23 jin (11.5 kg) per month. We would run out of rice after two weeks.

For the rest of the month we had to buy rice on the black market at six jiao per jin, four times the state price of 1.4 jiao. Sometimes the black market price went up to eight jiao. My father's wage was around 70 yuan, and he had to spend half of it on rice. My mother used to say "we spend all our wages on filling our stomachs." The high-price of rice was my parents' biggest problem at the time.

After the reform opened up markets after the 1980s, we could buy food everywhere and my parents didn't have to worry about the price of rice any more.

That was then, this is now. High-priced rice was a symbol of the times but it has gone forever.

(China.org.cn translated by Li Xiaohua, October 30, 2008)