Table of Contents

• Intro
• Interview 1 – Grandpa
• Interview 2 – Grandma
• Interview 3 – Together
• My Takeaways

Intro

When I watched Forrest Gump for the first time on a JetBlue flight, I was charmed by the way he’s interwoven into so many historic events as the main player. I’d like to think that my grandparents are Forrest Gump too, the face of the common man, whichever way China’s history led them. My grandfather’s interview is more meandering, less personal. My grandmother’s has more personal stories, more grounded in the times. It seems that my family’s men and women are always this way.

My grandfather was born in 1950, and my grandmother in 1951. Their names are 新民 and 华，meaning “New People” (of the New China) and “magnificent/splendid/China.” You can find recordings of the interviews here. PS: please don’t judge how my voice sounds, I’m very sick and congested. I’ll try my best to translate them below. Minor edits have been made for readability (removing repeated words/sentences), but to the best of my Chinese ability, I’ve tried to maintain the content as is for historical integrity.

Interview 1 – Grandpa

Explain your family. What do your parents do?

My father worked on a ship. He worked on the Yangtze river, on a boat. He would sail all the way up from Chongqing, down to Shanghai. He was a captain. Before the People’s Republic of China, he was already working on a boat. He was working for a private company, for a private boss. That was until the Communist party took power – they unified his company into a government-owned coalition, and he sailed there. At that time, his salary was high. He was skilled. Maybe higher than mid-level government employees, because he was using his skill to earn his keep.

In ‘63, I was in school. I went through primary school and middle school, and I graduated middle school in ‘66. It was around that time that I was going to be applying for high school or trade school, when the Cultural Revolution started. The point was that Mao Zedong said if you’re against me, I will launch a movement and use the common people to get rid of you.

Were you a Red Guard?

At the time, everyone could join the Red Guard unless you were a landlord, wealthy, counter-revolutionary, or otherwise bad. There were two camps, the protectors and the rebels. The protectors, they protected and supported you. They protected the factory directors, and they didn’t let other people catch you and fight you.

To be honest, the Cultural Revolution changed the movement. At the time, Chairman Mao launched the movement to change the ruling cliques in the party who supported capitalism. Do you understand capitalism? It means that the factory is privately owned. I hire workers to make products for me. At that time, capitalists were exploiting people. That’s what Chairman Mao was meaning to do. He wanted to fight against those and those who opposed him. It lasted for ten years, the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution stopped the high school and college entrance exams, they were abandoned. It was in ‘66, I graduated from middle school and I was preparing to take the high school entrance exam. But then there was no school to go to. In 1969, the government issued an order. At the time, there were tens of millions of students in the class of 66, 67, 68 – they all didn’t have jobs assigned to them. There was no arrangement. All the students in these three classes were sent to the countryside. It wasn’t forever, you stayed until there were jobs available in the factories. They settled you here and slowly recruited you back when the factory needed people.

Where did you go in the countryside? How long where you there for?

I went to my father’s hometown. I was born and raised in Chongqing. My father is from Hubei, from Wuhan, Hanyang, and so I went back to my hometown. It was 1970, and I was 20 years old, 50 years ago. I was recruited to work in the factory that year.

Is your residence (hukou) in Chongqing or Wuhan?

At the time, hukou followed the person and went wherever they went. I was a Chongqing hukou, and I transferred to Wuhan. My hukou came with me. When I went to the countryside, it got changed to Wuhan by the brigade or the commune. So it was 1970, they were recruiting workers, but recruitment was through the government, it was not messy. Everything was legal. It was with the government’s consent. After you were recruited, your hukou followed you back to the factory. So it was normal in the factory.

I met your grandmother in the factory. She kept chasing me, but I didn’t want to be with her at the time. I didn’t want her to chase me. In the end, she said she wouldn’t let me go. She said if you go, I’ll follow you. She said to marry her and to live happily. We got married in 1978, and your mother was born in 1979. It was in the factory that we worked, worked until we retired. Your grandmother was fifty when she retired. She retired in 2000. I retired in 2010, I was sixty. I worked ten more years than her. It ended up I found odd jobs working.

At the time, living conditions were difficult. At that time your mother was still in college, she needed money to pay schooling fees. All of the living expenses depended on me. I worked a lot outside, I ran a restaurant in the factory, I ran it for a year. I drove a motorcycle on the street. I’d go to places and ask people, “where to? three dollars to here, five dollars to there, and so on.” And so I did that for a year.

I went to work in machinery. I had skills – I relied on my skills to do maintenance, I worked in other factories, until 2005, when your mother came to the United States. I will let her talk about her own history. Your mother graduated with a master’s in 2005. She studied for two years. She studied for four years for her undergraduate degree in China, and came to the United States for two years to study for a masters. She came in 2003, and we got an invitation for the graduation ceremony, which we came to the US for in 2005.

We got a visa easily. You weren’t there at the time, and I was bored. There was no TV to watch, just the dog and we took him for walks all day long. No TV nor phones at the time. There was no way to survive. I took the dog out for walks until I was sick of it. I told your mother, can you find me a job? I did a part-time job in the United States. I worked in a Chinese supermarket. I worked there for a year. Your grandmother met a couple, a Chinese couple, and she became their nanny for a year. We had a bit of a salary now. I offered it to your mother, but she said that it was our money, and that we should take it with us.

Our visa was good. You could stay for two and a half years at most, and you could travel which means we went back for half a year, and came back again. We stayed for two and a half years on one visa. I stopped working when you were born in 2007. Let’s see. From 2005 to 2025, I stayed in America for longer periods than China. Let’s put it this way. I stayed in America for 70% of the time, and I was only back in China for the other 30%. We were busy raising you, we took care of you, we took care of sibling number two, we took care of sibling number three. It was all us, we were there to help with housework.

In Chinese it’s called yuezi. Right after a child is born, that month is yuezi. He needs to eat, he needs to be taken care of, and we helped take care of him. So all you three kids were raised by us. We raised you, right? It was very hard, we all worked very hard. Your mother was not kind to us, she is really heartless. Don’t you know that we do a good job? There was that nanny, that auntie, Zhong Ayi, she was not as good as us. She was not as careful, making food, taking care of you, helping you drive to activities. She didn’t do it, she didn’t know how to drive, and clearly we fixed the problem.

My history is very simple. Born in 1950, I graduated from elementary school in 1963, I was thirteen, and I was sixteen when I was in middle school. After graduating from middle school, it was three years, then the Cultural Revolution lasted for ten. In 1969, we stayed in the countryside, and I stayed for a year and six months, and when I left, I went to the factory to work. I never changed my job, I was always in the same factory. I stayed there for forty years from start to retirement. Including the length of the countryside, it was 41 years. Your grandmother was 33 years.

Really there’s nothing much to say about my time in America. It’s very simple. We cooked. We took care of the kids. We took you to activities. In the US, it’s really simple. Now that you’re grown up, now our hearts are full. We’re relieved that we finally raised you. Let’s see. You’ll go to college, and you’ll graduate in 2030. Basically, our objective is finished and there’ll be nothing for us to do. By then, if there’s no children to take care of, I’ll return to China and retire there.

If you ask me if you want to retire in the US or China, to tell you the truth, I would want to retire to China. My friends are all there, and the saying is that “fallen leaves return to their roots.” I am the leaf– I need to return to my roots and to my own land. No matter how good it is in the US, there’s a langauge barrier, the range of activities is small, and in other words, there’s nothing to do at home. It’s just sitting here and waiting to die! I can’t go out, I can’t drive around. I drive you here and there and it’s quite limited.

Your sister asked me about retirement, and when I heard her tone, I knew it was your mother that asked her to ask me, and she asked: “Do you like America or China?” I know she wouldn’t ask these sorts of things and so I’m sure it was your mother who asked me. I told her it was OK, that both sides were good. I asked her discretely later and I asked: “was it your mom that told me to ask,” and she replied “yes, it was.”

I know her intentions, she wants us to stay in the America, to grow old here, and that she will take care of us. Haha! I’m still the one taking care of her. She’s never spoken to your grandmother in a loving tone. She’s just that sort of person. She speaks to you guys in that same tone too, right? We can’t tolerate it. We’d rather have someone who looks lovingly at me with a smile. I told your mom, don’t dislike me. If I had such a father in any other family, I’d be happy beyond belief. He can cook, he can do physical work, and drive, who doesn’t like to hear that he can cook and drive?

You mentioned that when you were young, it was difficult to get a full meal.

Ah. You can’t blame anyone. When Mao drove Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan, history had already messed up China at the time. Chiang Kai-shek was in power for many years, and he fought for many years. He couldn’t care for the people. He couldn’t beat the communist party, so he was driven to Taiwan. When Mao took over, the communists took over, the country was like a sheet of white paper. Empty and blank. Nothing was there, no crops, no birds. There were also three years of natural disasters in China.

There was no food. There was drought, no rain, no harvest. There were international factors. The US supressed the Communist Party. At the time, when Mao was in power, there were no friends to be found in foreign nations. They relied on Africa. Those countries that needed aid, that needed money, China entered the UN because of those African friends. They all voted to enter in Africa. At the time Chiang Kai-shek’s government was in the UN, but we were lifted into the UN by our African friends. At the time, poor countries like Vietnam, Albania, Romania, also poor, still needed aid. We had to send them food. We gave them planes and cannons.

We tightened our belts andd starved while they enjoyed our food. I lived through three years of disaster. Many people starved to death.

Did you know anyone that starved to death?

Sichuan, that’s the largest province. At the time, I heard that 100,000 people had starved to death. At the time, everything relied on the sky. If it didn’t rain, there was nothing. If it rained, there was food. Let’s see. It was then that Mao died, in 1976. It was around that time that we were using ration tickets. To buy rice, you needed rice tickets. For tofu, you needed tofu tickets. For cloth you needed cloth tickets.

Were ration tickets given by household?

It was given for each person. If a household had 3 people, there were 3 people’s worth of tickets.

Were rations enough?

Not enough! Not enough at all! Take vegetable oil, cooking oil for example. Each month they only gave two liangs (50mL) of oil. I need two liangs for one meal! How can two liang be enough? So we boiled everything in water. Everything in water. You can’t blame anyone, it’s just that China was quite poor at the time. When Chiang Kai-shek was in power, he didn’t do economic work, didn’t focus on infrastructure, civil affairs, economic construction. So when the Communist Party drove Chiang Kai-Shek the four modernizations happened.

They modernized industry, agriculture, military, and scientific/technological innovation. Slowly, it was five years per plan. A five-year plan from 1949. Even when Mao died, we couldn’t eat til we weren’t hungry. The rations weren’t enough. After he died we didn’t eat well until Deng Xiaoping came to power. It wasn’t until the 80s that all the rations were cancelled with Deng’s reforms and the opening up of China. Mao wasn’t open at the time. The economy was closed. Even if you wanted to give us aid, we didn’t take it. Yes, we did everything ourselves. We used oxen to plow the fields and dug with hoes to grow crops.

Even in the 80s, even though the rations were finished, we didn’t have a good life. We were still quite poor.

So if you were hungry, what did you do?

There’s nothing you can do, you have to keep living, don’t you? At the time, workers were allocated 18 kg of food a month. People who didn’t work, those who stayed in home, they had 13.5 kg of food. Less than 0.5 kg a day. Less than 0.5 kg was definitely not enough to eat. With no fuel in the stomach, all you could hear was rumbling. I had a big appetite. When I was transferred from the countryside to the factory, I didn’t have enough food. My 18kg was not enough to eat. I ate 300, maybe 400 g of rice each meal. But still, it wasn’t enough. So what can you do?

Buy vegetables (in Chinese the word for vegetables and side platters are the same and I’m not quite sure which one he’s referring to). Others bought maybe one dish, I bought two or three, filled my stomach with vegetables. Really, those who made it were heroes. We were heroes. It wasn’t until the 90s that things got better. We got out of poverty. We had some money and we weren’t poor anymore.

You know, I actually got wealthy after coming to the US to work. I made about 100,000 yuan a year, and we didn’t have much money before. When we came to the US, we came on your mom’s dime. Your parents made money. We didn’t have much. We took back enough to take care of two people. Our salaries in China weren’t much. You couldn’t buy a TV, or good clothes. But of course we had to make ends meet. We endured it until ‘05 or ‘06, when things were better.

Where did you get water at the time?

All cooking for water was tap water. The tap was all from the Yangtze and the Han rivers. Our factory was far from those rivers, and so we got it from the East Lake. The water was bleached. There wasn’t mineral water, no bottled water, we just drank tap and we couldn’t filter it. Whatever water came, we drank.

Anyways, I get the sense that life is bumpy, very bumpy, ups and downs like waves. The waves are quite bitter to ride. So why do your parents hate the Communist Party? Life wasn’t good at the time. Chinese people didn’t have a good life. Your mother quarreled with me. She said: “When he (I) was a kid, whatever toys he wanted, I was able to buy for him. They piled up in heaps upstairs. With you, I didn’t have any toys. I was pitiful. Not a single toy.” Of course, we had toys, I remember I bought her a chicken toy, a chicken toy that laid eggs. Cluck cluck, an egg. Cluck, cluck, an egg. But of course, it was very hard back then. It was great that we were able to pay your tuition fees at all.

So of course she was itching to leave the country. I remember when she was in college, she chose to be an English major. From the moment she entered college, she knew she had to go abroad. Language was the first hurdle. She wasn’t afraid of other things such as math, history, and other things holding her back. She mastered the language. I remember in China, undergrads at the time usually graduated with a “level 4” in English. Master’s degrees had a level 6. At that time, your mother got a level 8. Her English was excellent.

There was a time we were shopping, and it was after reform and the opening up of the country. We were in Beijing and there were many foreigners at the time. A foreigner went into a store to buy something, and he spoke English, and he couldn’t speak Chinese. Of course the employee couldn’t understand him, but your mother was listening next to him, and she translated. Later, he asked me, how is your daughter’s English so good? Are you kidding me? She’s English level 8!

From my understanding, Wuhan was super hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.

IT’s related to geographical environment. Wuhan is close to the equator. The four major cities on the Yangtze, they were Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, and –well there was another city, but I forget. Those four major cities, or “furnaces” were close to the equator. Longitude and latitude. At the time, there weren’t even electric fans. We didn’t even have a good fan. We had a round fan, and we kept fanning ourselves by hand. That’s why your mom was so good to your great-grandmother. When we were at work, we sent your mother to our old home. Her grandmother didn’t have a job, and so she took care of her while we were at work. She slept in the room, and her grandmother fanned her. Fanned by hand the entire time. And so she was very touched, and was good to her in return. She was grateful.

When she was in high school, her grandmother would send her lunch. At the time, the students bought lunch in the cafeteria. She would make ribs and good dishes of the like and brought it to school for her.

How far was the high school?

It was far. At the time, it was all es as no one had cars. She had to transfer twice.

So how did you deal with the cold?

Extra layers. It was so cold. At the time, we didn’t even have good shoes. I had cloth shoes. It was far getting from home to work. It was 30km. It was freezing. My feet were so cold, and I only had cloth shoes. The soles were made of plastic, and they were nigh pinches fingers together thick. Cold rises from the feet, no? If your feet are warm, then your body is warm.

The buses to and from work had a big engine next to the driver. There was a large cover, but a little slit near the bottom of the engine cover. In wintertime, even if there were seats, I stood for the entire bus ride. I stood next to that slit, holding the railing, and I plugged my feet in that gap. I used it to keep warm. It was only then that I was warm. But then I got home and it was cold again. I got frostbite often. My feet and my hands were always frostbitten.

We didn’t have good clothes either. We had nylon socks, not even socks made of cotton.

What did you do at work?

In the factory, I was a lathe operator. Ther were two types. I clamped the turntable on the wind line there (? no idea what’s going on here) There was a cone here, a frame there. There was a workbench turntable. A large turning tool. You measured something and clamped it on. There was a joystick on the operating table, and it was large, for large parts. I used the big lathe. We were an electric motor factory, and we made big motors.

Your grandmother worked with iron. Iron plates needed to be punched into pieces. The machinery would punch holes, ka-cha, ka-cha, one by one making shapes.

What was your, or Wuhan’s reaction to Mao dying?

There was no reaction. Of course there were some elderly people, I figured who weren’t educated. They cried. The whole country had a memorial ceremony. The factory even held memorial ceremonies. People cried painfully. Uuuuuuaaaaaaa! Of course you didn’t cry. We definitely didn’t cry.

Interview 2 – Grandma

Were you born in ‘51?

Yes, I was born in Chongqing. When I was four, my grandfather moved from Chongqing to Wuhan for work. So our family moved here.

What memories do you have of Chongqing?

I have no memories. I was still very young. But when your mother was one or two years old, we visited. At that time, Chongqing was broken-down and shoddy. The houses were bad. They were on the side of the mountain, all of them about to collapse. They held on barely. Later they slowly were rebult and they’re better now. The good thing about Chongqing is the food. All of their dishes are good, they’re tender, they’re delicious.

Is the food in Chongqing better than in Wuhan?

Of course. And it’s cheaper. You know, people from Chongqing have good skin. The climate is warm, the rain is warm.

When you were little, were you hungry?

For my household, it wasn’t so bad. His (my grandfather) house was hungry because they were all wolf children, they ate everything. At that time there was only 13.5 kg of food, so they didn’t have enough. You know why food wasn’t scarce in our house? It was my jiajia (maternal grandmother). She would work in a store. They’d sell fish, flour. She worked there a few years, and she was very brave. She did some improper things to get stuff. I was small so I don’t remember.

Anyways, peoople wanted to eat (fried?) food, but she convinced them to eat rice. At that time you needed to keep track of sugar too. White sugar. You couldn’t buy it normally. There was another woman who worked in a different store, and jiajia worked with her. Jiajia would bring me to the store to buy candy, and she gave it to me. Normally you couldn’t buy it. And she would come over to jiajia’s store to buy rice. Anyways our family was small, and there were more women, so we weren’t as hungry. We felt as though conditions were OK.

What did your parents do?

My mom also worked in the store, then she worked as a nanny in a kindergarten. She worked for a while. She taught in elementary school for two years, grade one or two. She didn’t have much education, so she couldn’t teach the higher grades. Then she went home to take care of us. I had three siblings, an older sister and two younger brothers. She didn’t work.

(My grandmother did not say, but her mother divorced her father. She took her mothers last name instead of her fathers’)

What was life like at school? How did you get there?

It was a half-hour walk to school. We didn’t have buses at the time. We walked for half an hour there, and half an hour back. I studied in middle school for two years. I would get up at six in the morning, then walk. Class started at seven. School was over at twelve, then after school got out, we walked home for lunch. There was no cafeteria. Even if there were, there wasn’t money to buy food there. So at the time we just went home and had a meal. I got home at 12:30, ate for ten minutes, took a five minute break, then walked to school again. Not like you guys, eating at school. Pitiful, the way we were walking.

What was also pitiful was when we had to pay school tuition. It made me anxious. At that time, tuition was six yuan a month. Money was very valuable at the time. Six yuan tuition. When it came time to pay, my jiajia had no money. She wouldn’t pay it of her own volition. I would remind her, as I was anxious. “Pay me the tuition money quickly,” and I knew she had no money. And so I had to ask my diedie (maternal grandfather). I wouldn’t dare open my mouth, but there was no other way. “Diedie, I have to pay the tuition. Can you lend me money?” I remember that time very clearly, and I was always afraid of not having money to pay tuition with.

At the time my diedie made 78 yuan a month. His salary was high by comparison to other people, most people earned about 30-40 yuan a month. It was because he used to be in the Kuomintang. He was a senior official. Of course, his salary was reduced after the liberation (communists kicked Kuomintang out of the country). He used to earn more, more than 200 yuan. So he gave it to jiajia, and left 15, 20 yuan for himself. That 50, 60 yuan that he gave jiajia, well, our family needs to eat, right?

Jiajia was not the type of person that knew how to save. She was a big spender. She’d bring home good things to eat, didn’t plan, and every time there was not enough for tuition. So what did my diedie do? He came to a hospital. He was in charge of registration. Each person paid five, ten cents for registration at the hospital. He collected medicine fees and prescribed medicine. He was like an accountaant. Every month the family would ask him to borrow money, five, ten, fifteen yuan, and we’d pay it back the next month, then borrow again.

Was there ever a time when you couldn’t get money for tuition?

No, we made it work. We all went to school in the end. How could you not go to school? We still paid the tuition after all. There was no free schooling back then. Even if it were free, it wouldn’t’ve been free for us. There were people in worse situations than us. After all, there were people earning only 30-40 yuan. How did they survive? I don’t know.

So when you finished school, did you go to the countryside?

Yes, it was ‘68. I graduated from middle school in 1967, and I was sent down the countryside in 1968. I was there for two and a half years.

Were you a Red Guard?

No. But I followed them while they were searching peoples homes. We were searching their homes, searching if they were capitalists. Some people led us to their homes, thinking that they were rich. The Red Army led us to search people’s homes. Anyways, I was still a teenager at the time, not yet a Red Guard. I was just listening to Chairman Mao, searching homes. Aiya, we would stand in a row and take things, pass it down. Their families were also poor. You can’t say they are part of the old guard, the capitalist. It was the 60s then, years after liberation, they were poor now too. They didn’t have much of a salary, all their original money was spent. There was nothing in their homes.

Even if there was nothing, we’d search the house anyways, confiscating items.

The 50s were not far from WWII and the Chinese Civil War. Could you feel the influence?

We were still young, we didn’t understand these things at all. We didn’t know that there was war. We were girls, war didn’t affect us. I was still three.

What did you do when you were sent to the countryside?

It was really pitiful. We had a big paddy field, and it was flooded with water. We picked things all day. Bent our back, picked like this. From one end of the field to the other side, it was long. You got a back ache. After the plants grew up, we had to (thresh?) them. Like this, you’d snap the plant, and bundle it. Snap the plant, then bundle it. And after gathering it all, we still had to bring it back.

How many hours did you work in the field?

At least eight or nine hours. It was pitiful when we were sent down. In the morning, we would get up at five AM, and buy things before the sun came up. We came back at dawn. After making breakfast, then we went to work at nine. We would work and work, then come back for lunch at twelve o’clock. Making and eating lunch took about an hour and a half, and so we ate and went back to work in the afternoon. We worked until about six. What’s worse was that when we got home, there was no food to eat. We didn’t know how to grow vegetables, we were still very young.

Nobody buys vegetables in the countryside, you just grow them yourself. It was real pitiful. All we did was eat white rice. Sometimes, we started to learn how to grow beans, and for a while, every day we’d come back home to eat beans and only beans. And then after finishing the beans, there were no vegetables. Sometimes we would go to the town center, buy some pickles, some radishes, and just bring them back.

The countryside’s rice is delicious. There was no need for vegetables. A little bit of salt, a little oil, a little soy sauce, and it was really good. It was fresh rice.

Were you able to satiate your hunger?

When we went to the countryside, there was no sort of regulation on food. It was fine. We weren’t hungry.

When were rations introduced?

We had ration tickets starting from the liberation, and we used those ration tickets all the way until the nineties. Eighties, I mean. For tofu, every person every month was given four portions. You could eat one plate of tofu a month. But if there are several people in the house, there’s enough, we could buy more than ten portions of tofu. It was cheap. Three yuan a portion, each portion four pieces. We’d fry them. In the countryside it was just that there was no vegetables to eat.

Do you remember how often you’d be able to eat meat?

In the countryside, farmers raised pigs. When they slaughtered them, they would share a little bit with us. Maybe 0.5, 1 kg per person, for a few people. In my commune, there were seven or eight people. You could take that and eat it for a while.

You ate meat every month?

No, only during New Year’s and other festivals in the countryside, any festivities. They would give each person a little bit of pork to eat. It was in each commune. Later, when we returned to Wuhan, out of the countryside, there was a meat ration ticket. One person, every month, was maybe 250 grams, maybe 500 grams, I forget. It was when your mother was born (1979). She always says that she wasn’t able to eat meat. I never heard her say she wanted to eat meat.

When your mother got a little older, all the rations were cancelled. It was 13.5 kg at the time, maybe 14.5-15kg for men.

Tell me the story of how you went to Beijing on the train.

Haha, that was Chairman Mao. He already did many things. We were still quite young, we were only 16 or 17. We saw that everyone was going there, that they were meeting with Chairman Mao. We lived at home, several us, and so we saw that and we said that we should go too. Later, we heard that Chairman Mao would meet with the Red Guard. And so we became students, Red Guards, and we ran off to Beijing.

It was three people from my family, my younger brother, my older sister, and me. A girl next door to me came, ah, in total seven people went. We were all quite young. It was on the train that we ran away. There it was all Red Guards. There were so many people, and at that time the train tickets were free. Some Red Guards ended up climbing on the train and sneaking on board to go to Beijing.

We couldn’t beat other people. We saw other people climb on each other into the windows, and flip themselves into the train car. After we flipped in, it was crowded. Everyone sat, on the floor, on seats, no one slept. When we arrived in Beijing, there was a public transportaion company, public buses, they handled everything.

They gave us thirty cents a day. It was fine back then. It was December, winter at the time, and we didn’t wear shoes. We didn’t have boots in the winter, and so we got them. Whether they were sneakers, or cloth shoes… I ended up wearing a pair of cloth shoes. Our feet froze in Beijing, they froze into ice cubes. It was too pitiful.

How long did you stay in Beijing?

We were only supposed to stay for ten days to meet Chairman Mao, then leave. But we had a relative in Beijing. Your great-grandmother’s little sister. We found her, and she was super happy. At the time, of course there was no money to go visit far-flung relatives. She was so happy, all three of us came. She told us to stay at their house, and we stayed there for more than ten days.

That company ended up giving us meal tickets, we already overstayed and they still gave them to us. We took the money in our hands and we bought bags, bags of stamed buns and the like, and we brought them all back to eat in Wuhan. That was my first time in Beijing. We’d never been to a faraway place before.

Interview 3 – Together

What did you eat for lunch and dinner as a kid?

Grandpa: You can eat whatever. If you want to eat rice, buy rice, If you want to eat noodles, eat noodles. China is too rich!

Grandma: He said when you were young.

Grandpa: When we were young we just ate rice.

Grandma: It was quite poor back then. We ate some small vegetables on the side. You didn’t know if you could plan to eat meat.

Grandpa: There were many people then, many brothers and sisters.

Grandma: For dinner, we ate leftovers from lunch.

Grandpa: Ha! Like there were leftovers, there were no leftovers in my house.

Grandma: We had rice in soup overnight.

And school, what happened if you were late, what things did you do in school?

Grandpa: For middle school, I went to boarding school. I was there for three years, eating and sleeping. Your grandmother walked to school.

So what did you learn in school? What was taught?

Grandpa: There were textbooks, we just followed whatever the textbooks taught us. What it wrote, we wrote. There are mandated teaching materials, just like the US. There were patriotic teaching materials (literally translated: loving the country teaching materials). Loving the Communist Party, loving your motherland.

What do you think are the biggest differences between China today and China of your childhood?

Grandpa: It got rich. The whole world knows it now, China has money.

Grandma: There are things to do/entertain yourself in China now.

Grandpa: Look, nowadays, whatever country you go to, there are Chinese people. They all want to do business with Chinese people, earn Chinese people’s money.

Where did you like to go play as a kid?

Grandpa: We didn’t play. There was no place to play. When we were little it was just going to school and going home, three points in a line so to speak. School, home, school, home, there was only these two. There was nowhere to play. No cars.

Then at home, what did you do?

Grandpa: At home, we played with classmates.

Grandma: When I went home, we did homework.

Grandpa: We would play with marbles. Glass marbles. We would dig little holes, and flick them with our thumbs. Just like golf. We took turns flicking the ball.

Grandma: We would skip rope, and we would kick a jianzi (shuttlecock/hackysack). At school, when we had free time, we just did that.

Are there differences between the Yangtze now and before?

Grandpa: Yes, there’s been a change. The water is clearer now. The Three Gorges Dam blocked it. Before the altitude of the water didn’t even reach 100m, and now it’s built to 175m. They rely on that water to generate electricity. Doesn’t America have dams too? When it dammed the water, it became clear. Now, it’s like lake water, green and beautiful. It used to be turbid, more yellow. Now it’s green. If you go back to China this summer, I’ll put you on a boat to Chongqing, and you can watch the water flow in the Three Gorges Dam.

Grandpa: It’s beautiful to see the muddy water be let out from the dam. It looks like a watery dragon, the muddy water being released from the dam. We can ride a boat and go check it out. When you were little I told you stories of ghost cities, they’re right by the bank of the Yangtze. (Frying in oil?) saws, say that you’re living right now, and you do something bad. Once you die, the King of Hell will punish you. He’ll put you in a pan and fry you, saw you with a saw, put you in a lantern. I’ve taken pictures of it before, and shown you. There are colorful clay sculptures. I’ll take you to Fengdu ghost city if I have the chance.

Grandpa: There’s also Baidi city. Didn’t Li Bai (famous poet) write a poem there? Baidi (city) Caiyunjian (stepping between clouds). It’s about leaving Baidi City in the morning, stepping within the clouds, two mountains sandwiching the river. 3000 miles of the river, in a day, I could cover. The monkeys on the banks would chitter. And the little boat would go through it all. (This is all a description of poetry)

Grandpa: It’s actually where Liu Bei and Tuo Gu (no idea) from the Three Kingdoms are. There’s not much to see, but it’s a cool historic point.

Were there any ceremonies to getting married back then?

Grandpa: Wine parties! You go to a restaurant, pay a few dollars, well, in the ’70s, gifting ten yuan was a lot of money. Some people would give cigarette holders. They came to drink. Money was worth a whole lot back then, in the ’60s and ’70s. With two cents, in the ’60s, I would eat breakfast, eating chiba (Chinese mochi), covered in yellow soybean powder. Sweet chiba. So even though people were poor at the time, moeny was worth a lot.

Grandpa: At the time, an average person would get maybe 10, 20, 30 yuan. At the time, my dad, he earned 300 yuan a month. Wasn’t it so much? Ten times a normal person’s.

Was life happier back then?

Grandpa: Let’s put it this way. It was a time of poverty, but there were no corrupt officials. (erm, sure…) Whether you were a leader, whether you were a mayor, everyone was paid by salary. There wasn’t a hierarchy. There weren’t corrupt officials. So even though we had little money, even if you were an official, you had a salary. Say I am workking class, I get 20 yuan, you’re an official, you get 30-40 yuan. There was no class distinction back then. There wasn’t such thing as being extremely poor or extremely rich at the time.

Grandpa: Now, the gap between the rich and the poor is huge. Of course, commoners still can eat, you can get your stomach full. It’s to have a good life. I’ll tell you a joke from the countryside: Chinese people have this habit of panbi (comparison). What is it? If you have it, then I need it. What you don’t have, I also want! Panbi. So now for countryside villagers, it’s a weird thing, working in the city, you buy a car, why can’t I have a car? Well, while you’re working, there’s no time to drive a car. You buy one, you leave it in the house, in the countryside. And you’re scared of getting the paint scratched up and everything, so you put up a shed to keep it safe.

Grandpa: You end up only driving it once a year, driving it during the New Years. All those migrant workers from the countryside go back to their hometowns, and they drive that car. And then once there’s no more work to be done, there’s no more money, no more salary. Does it cost money to refuel the car? Does it cost money to insure the car? And so you have no more money to do those things. So they end up selling that car anyways. So why panbi (compare yourself to others)? Chinese people are always panbi’ing.

Grandpa: Now when rural workers go back to their hometowns from working in the city, they have to do side jobs. There’s no more jobs in the city. So they raise fish, raise chickens, do more side jobs and grow fruits, that sort of thing.

Do you think you lived by any teachings or idioms that modern Chinese people don’t anymore?

Grandpa: Not really, to be frank I don’t really get your question.

Grandma: Use idioms to talk about life!

Grandpa: Ah there’s a couple, “happy and contented,” “self-sufficiency begets happiness,” hmmm, there are so many that I can’t remember them all. Well those are the usual ones.

Grandma: Then before, when we were kids, what idioms were there?

Grandpa: “Drunk and full,”

Grandma: There’s no way…. When we were young, when you couldn’t be full!

Grandpa: “Hungry and cold” then?

Grandma: Ah, you can’t say that either. They’ll think you’re mocking the Communist Party. Life was plain.

Grandpa: No one panbi’d then, everyone was hungry.

If you were to go back to being young, what would you do?

Grandpa: Sure, if I went back to thirty or forty, I’ll buy a big truck. I can make money, and it’s fun. I’m not afraid of hard work, and driving I don’t even consider work. At the time, it was difficult to get a driver’s license. If I wanted to learn, it was inconvenient. And anyways, there were no cars to drive. At the time, China’s trucks were all imported. There was only one brand, and that was the liberation brand. The Soviet Union helped China produce those liberation trucks. Our cars were imported from Eastern European countries – Romania, Soviet Union, those cars made their way to China.

Grandma: I’d be very happy, to be young again.

mom interjects about their impending cataract surgery

Grandma: I’d like to eat well, to have warm clothing, to go everywhere and be a tourist.

Grandpa: She wanted to be a teacher. She didn’t know what certifications you needed to be a teacher. She went to the factory manager and asked what talents you needed, and the factory manager gave her a lecture. He said you need a diploma, a university diploma.

How did you pass New Year’s?

Grandpa: Eat and buy stuff.

Grandma: Cooking.

Grandpa: When we were young, we looked forward to it, you got money. The

Grandma: You would get new clothes. Every year I got a flower-embroidered coat.

Grandpa: It was all about eating good food. We’d eat from the first to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. We ate tangyuan, big fish, and meat. China attaches a lot of importance to this holiday. You can go without eating meat for a year, but you must have eat over New Year’s. In the North, people eat dumplings. In the South, people eat stir-fry dishes.

Do you think there were any superstitions that people believed?

Grandpa: People burned incense, worshiped the Buddha, they asked for the blessing of the Buddha. They asked him for protection, peace and safety, health.

Grandma: Burning paper, kneeling your head.

What did you do when you were sick?

Grandpa: People went to the hospital if it was bad, and people bought medicine if it was mild.

How did neighbors interact?

Grandpa: People were neighborly, we asked if we needed help, needed people at home, looked after children. We had a good relationship.

Grandma: Before the revolution, when I was in middle school, there was a woman next door to me. She was a worker in the sand fields. She had to go to work, and she gave birth to a child. She had no one to take care of the child, and she always asked me to take care of her kid. I took care of the kid for afternoons.

Grandpa: People’s relationships with each other were good. There’s a saying: “far relatives aren’t as good as close neighbors.” They’ll send you to this hospital if you’re sick, pour a glass of water for you, etc.

Grandma: Let me tell you, the house that you’re sleeping in, the room that we’re in, that’d be for one family. Your room would be one family. Every room in the house would be one family.

Grandpa: Door to door, everyone was close by. The door across from you was a different family.

Grandma: One floor would be occupied by ten-some families.

Grandpa: Now it’s good. You can buy your own house. Back then the government distributed housing.

Grandma: One house for fifteen years, it’s about this big.

Grandpa: All socialist countries are all divied up by the Communist Party.

Where did you guys buy things? On the street, in markets, in stores?

Together: Stores.

Grandpa: There’s all sorts of them. Big ones, small ones.

Grandma: There are cheap ones, good and expensive ones, it’s the same in the US. If you’re well off, you can get a nice set of clothes, if you’re poor, you get a bad set.

Alright, that’s all the questions I had.

Grandpa: Don’t make China out to be as if it were a mess.

Grandma: Don’t write bad things, it’s not all bad.

Grandpa: China is doing well now. Even foreigners visiting China say that China’s good. Foreigners marry in China, they bring their elders to China as tourists.

Grandma: Chinese people will see you write bad things and get mad at you.

My Takeaways:

I know for certain that my grandparents hold a lot of negative stuff in the past. It’s a complicated thing. A lot of the time, my grandmother would ask me, “should I answer this,” asking if she should share her pain with me. They both have such strong national pride, yet find fault with so many things. It’s their upbringing – taught to love the Communist Party and the motherland, but they can’t separate their harsh upbringing from their country.

My grandfather likes jumping from topic to topic. It’s shaped around external events and practical concerns: work, family, survival. There’s certainly a self-imposed distance from hardship – it’s much easier to give a matter-of-fact sentence, then jump ship to the next thing. He tends towards philosophical or idiomatic generalizations.

My grandmother’s stories were more intimate and emotional. She focused on family, small acts of kindness and corruption. Lots of her memories are more sensory, and she’s much more aware at the emotional cost of the hardship she went through. The story about tuition money contextualizes anxiety about burdening others, and that anxiety has been clear throughout all of my life. Out of fear of burdening us, she sacrifices so much of herself, standing during meals, giving up the best cuts of meat.

There are certainly gender roles at play here. Chinese society is deeply patriarchal, and I wish my grandmother spoke more about adopting her mother’s last name, and what that meant at the time. When I interviewed them together, it’s clear that my grandmother was talked over, as she often is in the family.

They irk me at times, and it’s easy to become frustrated with them. I’m stubborn, my mom’s stubborn, and they’re stubborn too. It runs in the family. Either way, they’re my heroes. They might not be a Forrest Gump, making small decisions that would somehow make global ramifications, but they’re my world and their stories have certainly impacted mine.