Auntie Lan

TIANLIN 13 Village, where I live, sits in the southwest corner of Shanghai. It was built in the early 1980s. Whenever the people of the community have problems, they always turn to the woman in charge of the neighborhood committee for help. Most of the residents do not know her real name. They simply refer to her affectionately as their "Auntie Lan." I met Auntie Lan for the first time when I came to the neighborhood committee office to donate some clothes for the people of an area hit by an earthquake. The bright and tidy office, with its wall covered by all kinds of certificates of merit, impressed me deeply. Auntie Lan took the trouble to carefully count and record the donated money and clothes. Her neat penmanship on the notebooks was in harmony with the orderly office.     

My Nepalese Friends

NEPAL and China are good neighbors. In the 1980s many Chinese technicians went to Nepal to help build roads and other projects. As an interpreter with a Chinese construction cooperative, I worked there from 1993 to 1994. During my stay in Nepal, I met many different Nepalese women who impressed me deeply. My landlady Sumiyala, was the first Nepalese woman to come into my life. She was over 40 years old, a healthy and good-humored housewife. Whenever Ⅰ had time, I liked to chat with her and gradually we became friends. I remember my landlady was busy in and out of her house all day long— cleaning, cooking and taking care of her grandchildren and her parents-in-laws.     

Women in My Eyes

Ihave many women in my life, such as my wife, mother, mother-in-law, colleagues and customers. I feel pressure from them in different ways when I am in contact with them. Sometimes these pressures make me lose my breath, but on the other hand, they also are the motivation behind my success. I was born to a common family. There are three brothers and no sisters. I was the oldest. The woman I knew the earliest was my mother. She also came from a common familv, was hardly educated and     

My Family Loves Fish Dishes

HAVING meals together could be regarded as one of the most important aspects of family life. My husband, my senior high school-age daughter and I have meals together only in the evenings, so we pay close attention to what we eat. We usually talk about what we will have for supper in the mornings. As a housewife, I want to cook a supper that is rich and appetizing, so my husband and daughter will enjoy it more.     

My Ping-Pong Family

WHEN I was born, my father was 40 and my mother was 36. Father is a man of few words and an introverted nature. He belongs to that type of people who are very tough and strong-willed; he has worked hard all his life. Mother, on the other hand, is extroverted and eager to excel. My personality is a combination of both of their characters. Father loves playing ping-pong ardently. He used to be a top player of the Henan provincial team and won the men's singles championship in a contest of five provinces in central and southern China. Mother, a worker at the No. 4 National Textile Mill in Zhengzhou, also loved to play ping-pong when she was young. It was because of the sport that she and Father were brought together and got married. When the Henan     

Where Is My Home?

WHEN I was asked where my home was the name of the unknown county would always escape my lips. By then I had been in this fancy metropolis for quite a few years. It had accompanied me to do everything and my family, my habits and whatever I had had all been merged with the city. But still I didn't know why I believed that remote and nameless village     

A Permanent Memory

My mind is filled with unbearable sorrow when I recall my dearest mother. The calender on the desk where mother worked still shows November 29 1995, the day my mother went out and was killed in a traffic accident. I leave the calender at this date because a very important part in my life stopped still on this day also. Mother was the only daughter in her family. My grandmother lived with my parents after my grandfather passed away. I was born during the War of     

Spirit Coinciding with Nature

I have given a name to the studio where I make my soft sculptures: "Spirit Existing." It means that my life exists together with my spirit; that spirit is inseparable from body. I believe the original nature of life is the most beautiful thing in the world. On September 6th, 1997, I handed in my resignation to the tax bureau where I worked. Leaving my family and my son at home, I came to Beijing alone to create a new life for myself. As a woman making such a choice at the age of 35, I     

Flawers of the Sun

I was not a flower lover when I was a little girl. Instead, I spent my days mixing with the "mischievous" boys in the neighborhood; my favorite toys were wooden sticks which I imagined to be guns. I guess part of the reason for my unusual behavior goes to the influence of my father serving in the army and China was undergoing the Cultural Revolution. Then all things beyond bare necessity were categorized as bourgeois extravagance. How could a prole-tariat offspring come to love flowers, which     

Mom's Hut,A Restful Harbor

I have become very fond of returning to my own parents' home, and to my mother's side, ever since I was 30. When I am tired of life in the noisy city and being a mother and wife, returning to my mother's side makes me feel like a daughter again. There I am free from worries and can enjoy the tender care and love of my mother. In the morning, lying in bed lazily in the most comfortable posture, I do not need to urge my son to get up for school. The clatter Mother makes when she goes to the kitchen to prepare breakfast is the     

Years of Trials and Hardships Give Way to Happiness

Imarried my wife in 1946. I was 19 years old then and my wife Shao Chunrong was 22. The second year after we got married the Kuomintang army was forcibly recruiting able-bodied men. I ran away from home to avoid being forced to join. For two years I wandered the country; Chunrong was left alone at home to make a living selling pancakes. In 1951 I got a job as a teacher, and soon was sent to the Linjiang Middle School in Jilin Province, far away from my home. Chunrong again waited in peace for me,     

Birthday

IN the 1960s I was a resident student in a primary school. Nobody cared about my birthday, not even me. Often when I remembered my birthday, it had long passed. I was naughty when I was in the 2nd and 3rd grade of primary school. Every day after classes were over, I went out in search of fun. An ancient     

An Unfor gettable Rural Couple

Twenty-five years ago when I was 17, I went to the countryside and spent three years in a village called Rucun one thousand kilometers away from Beijing. During the three years, like an ordinary farmer, I went into the fields at sunrise and returned at sunset to obtain my rations from my own labor. I never expected the three-year experience would become an unforgettable memory in my life. I went to settle down in the     

Woman Remembers her Past by the Hualong Bridge

IN the Shapingba District in Chongqing, Sichuan Province, there is the Hualong Bridge. During World War Ⅱ, my father ran a bean curd plant near the bridge where he sold bean curd and green vegetables. My mother made the bean curd while I helped to tend the kitchen fire. This small bean curd plant witnessed the hard times that my family had undergone in the eight years of the War of Resistance Against the Japanese Aggression. Now I'm over 70 and live together with my children in Hong Kong. Although I now live a peaceful and comfortable life, I cannot forget the past—the long, unstable years by the     

My Motherland, Myself

AMONG contemporaries of NewChina, I am but an ordinary woman. Ihave experienced hardships and so has themotherland. On November 26, 1949 I was born,when the country was just liberated.Immersed in the golden sunshine of thenew era, I spent my childhood joyfullyand was admitted into a key high schoolin Beijing. Just as I was crowing overmy bright academic future the CulturalRevolution broke out and classes weresuspended in my school. Looking at thelarge posters all over the campus,hearing the shouting, "It is right torebel," I felt confused and hoped that     

Marshal's Wealth Left to His Children

FOR commemoration, for passion and for belief-I wrote this article to dedicate to my father Zhu De's 110th anniversary of his birth. I did not meet my father until I was 14. I had no memory of him in my mind. The first time I saw him was in Yan'an at the end of 1940, where my memory of him became clear. But because our time apart was so much longer than the period of our reunion, the memory actually only became a dim     

Pasta, Shanxi Style Hand-pulled Noodles Loved by Tourists and Residents Alike

I had my most delicious meal with noodles in a small village along the Yellow River. It was on a March day a decade ago, when I had just moved to Shanxi Province. I was out in the field as a reporter, and was exhausted and starving after traveling more than 50 kilometers on foot and by bus. A middle-aged man, whom I did not know, was standing in front of his dugout cave, the traditional dwelling of the Shanxi people." He called to me and invited me to have a meal in his home. Upon entering the cave, I was asked to sit on a kang, a brick bed, while the man's wife busied herself with cooking my meal. In no time a huge bowl of youpomian, noodles with Chinese prickly ash oil, was on the table in front of me. My nostrils were immediately filled with the strong and delicious smell of chili and prickly ash.     

With Senior Women Officials

IN early May when flowers were blooming, 37 senior women officials of 16 nationalities from 14 provinces and autonomous regions were invited by Hong Kong Pei Hua Education Foundation Limited to attend the Seventh Seminar for the Senior Officials of the Minorities' Autonomous Prefectures in China. I was also invited as an ethnic women's affairs worker at the All-China Women's Federation. This was the first time I had been with s many senior women officials. They didn't know each other, yet the first day they met they sat together, introducing themselves     

The Call for Peace

THE war left a deep impression on people. I was still a child then and what I remember most was fleeing from the war and the air raids. During the eight years of the war I went with my mother to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou. We fled to literally every part of the country in the south. Now and then I was able to go to school, but I never stayed in any one of them long before we had to flee again. By the time I was supposed to graduate from middle school I had been to five different middle schools, but because of the constant changes of schools I never obtained any graduation certificate. In my research work I see some materials on the war, and     

Campaigning Against City Pollution

The Atmosphere Wang, a governmental clerk in Beijing, still remembers the good old days when the Beijing sky was clear and blue. "When I was a child, I used to stare at the flowing clouds against the pure, blue sky, and let my imagination roam. But now, I raise my head only to see the sky gray and dull," said Wang, who usually goes to work by bicycle. "When I arrive at the office I have to clean my face with tissues, and they always turn dark." A global inspection on the atmosphere