My grandma was born in 1911, a common farm family in old China, a great women in my heart. Left me in 1996. Her life was a epitome of China. She really had gone through the hard times – the twice World Wars, the Civil War, the Three Years of Disasters, the Cultural Revolutions and etc. I was the lucky one among her forty grandchildren. She loved me best. I was always the first one to share her stories about her early life.
No chance to get educated. “I am longing for going to school.” She always told me, In fact, girls shouldn’t go to school. It’s a duty for girls to learn how to cook and how to wave. Going to school was the privilege of boys. Sex discrimination was ubiquitous in those days, especially in the countryside.
It’s necessary for girls to bind their feet. My grandma had a pair of small feet. Every girl must do it when they were 8 years old, some may be earlier under the double pressures both society and parents. Small feet mean beautiful, charming, attractive. Some girls couldn’t find a man to marry just because of having big feet. The aesthetical standard killed the generation of my grandma. It’s cruel to prevent growing of feet.
No right to choose. My grandma married my grandpa when she was 16, when most girls study in school nowadays. She didn’t meet her future husband once before marriage.
Parents decided the marriage instead of themselves. Luckily, my grandpa was a good guy. She led a happy life after marriage.
Women were the tool for fertility. She had seven children alive in her life, four boys and three girls. She had my father (the youngest one) when she was on her forties when her granddaughter appeared in the same year. It’s really an interesting thing. Maybe people didn’t know how to control birth.
Thousands of people died from The Three Years of Disasters. It took place from 1959 to 1961. Nothing to eat, even salt. My grandma was so wise that she found something to eat for the family( a kind of mud, bark, ). These things really could fill the belly. But questions arose one by one. Some had a big belly because the mud couldn’t be digested. Some legs became thick due to lacking of salt. Fortunately again, my grandma and her family defeated the disaster and survived.
My grandma was always optimistic. She told me those things with her smiling face. Her only hope was that I could go to college even though she didn’t know how important the education played.
Sorry....Born and raised in France?
Good point, go back into history to find the truth.
But... I'm French!!!
Precisely because history 'lies' is why I would love to have a conversation with historical figures. I'd really like to know if Van Gogh was crazy, if Galileo was wrong, if Da Vinci was as erudite as he seems to be, if Fermi was troubled by his work on nuclear fission, if Jesus was truly a teacher... and why I wish you could visit your Grandma. She sounds terrific.
And idea is neither right nor wrong. How terrible that you are attacked because of them.
Actually I am not interested in visiting any historical figures. I don't really trust what we are told about them, so they are all just strangers to me...I just wish I could visit my grandmother when she was a girl. I am interested to know how they lived then.
You are nice. My previous response was kind of rude but you made light of it and made me laugh...I am getting sensitive here because the Chinese here keep misunderstanding what I say and they attack me for it. So I like the Americans, they know how to chill...
No, dear: no homework. Just the hope for interesting conversation.
Wish you a great weekend.
Dear, that is why our senior citizens are so valuable. They can paint those pictures for us and give us their memories, so that we can live history through them.
May I ask you...
Which 5 people in history would you like the most to visit, and why?
Some tribes believed they must revere the beasts that helped their livelihood but others ha no qualms about ending a service animal's life by putting it on the table - it would be wasteful to not use every part of the animal.
Usually, poor villages would only have one or two oxen at a time and, should a beast be slaughtered, every village member benefited.
Of course, the animals usually actually belonged to a 'rich' villager and guanxi was called for to borrow the animal or receive a portion of it after slaughter.
China was not always a unified country, as you most likely well know. Depending on how far you want to go back, you might find that there were various fiefdoms, with several houses belonging to the rich in each region. Back then, the best a woman could hope for was to either become a rich man's concubine, a maid in his home, or to marry a kind man... not that women had much choice in who they married. Unions were generally arranged and the bride and groom seldom met beforehand.
I like your interest in history.
firstly, Shantou is really a big city. secondly, foot- binding took place in 969 AD.
Comment