Gou Zheng Lian

苟正连

Gou Zheng Lian

Gou Zheng Lian, first trip to Beijing, 2016

Gou Zheng Lian is the 79-year-old grandmother of my good friend, Lotus.  I often see Gou Zheng Lian looking after her 1 and 6-year-old great granddaughters, Xuxu and Tutu, in my village of Jiaotong University.  She is always very friendly.  I enjoy trying my basic Mandarin on her, telling her things like, “I like your shirt today.”  She always breaks into a big smile and laughs, adding joy to my day. 

Lotus told me that Zheng Lian never went to school, never learned to read or write or do simple arithmetic.  Although she understands Mandarin, she really doesn’t speak it.  Her language is the local Sichuan dialect.  One day Lotus told me how much she loves and admires her grandmother, and so I decided to ask Lotus to tell me about her.

Zheng Lian was born in 1941 in a small village in Sichuan province called Gou Jia Lian.  Her earliest memories are something of a blur now, and it is difficult to establish an exact chronology.  Her father died when she was 2 or 3 years old and not long after that she lost one of her two older sisters to smallpox.  She remembers one of her sisters as being very tall and beautiful. 

After her father died, her mother remarried and she was sent to live with her paternal grandparents. Her stepfather did not want her to live with them, but did allow her remaining sister to stay with her mother and join him at his home.  The fact that Zheng Lian was not included made her mother very sad, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.  Her mother, older sister and stepfather lived in a village not far away and she often brought Zheng Lian food without her husband knowing about it.

Zheng Lian’s life with her grandmother was  very difficult.  She spent all day doing farm work and did not have the opportunity to go to school.  When she was still quite young, it’s difficult to remember exactly how old, her grandmother died.  At that point she was sent to live with some other relatives.  She recalls working very hard, but she’s not bitter about it.  She points out that everyone worked hard in those years.  In the meantime, her mother had 3 sons with her second husband.  After several years, when Zheng Lian was about 16 or 17, her stepfather took pity on her and had her move in with them.  By this time, her older sister who had been invited to live with her mother and step father had already died. 

Zheng Lian met her future husband, Wang Yin Fang, the way nearly everyone in China did in those days: through a match maker.  Lotus says the match makers were generally kind people who brought couples together primarily for the great personal satisfaction it gave them.  However, there was some economic incentive as well, since match makers would always get a gift in the event of a wedding.

As arranged by the match maker, Yin Fang met Zheng Lian.  They got to know each other a little through a series of meetings. She discovered that Yin Fang’s background was very similar to her own.  Like Zheng Lian, he was born very poor and his father died when he was still a boy.  His early life was filled with hardship.  He was sent to live with a much older brother who mistreated him.  Ultimately, he was adopted by a paternal uncle.

 Their meetings were successful, and one day Yin Fang brough Zheng Lian some gifts, probably some meat and clothes.  They were married soon after that.  She was 20 years old.

They worked the land and were quite poor.  In 1963 after she had been married about a year, she had a daughter.  She is Lotus’s mother.  She wanted to have more children, especially a son.  Her neighbors would say mean things to Zheng Lian like, “You have no sons, just a daughter!”  Lotus points out that there was not always enough nutritious food and so she couldn’t get pregnant again.  She did not let this upset her.  She focused on her work.  They prospered and after a few years they moved into a bigger house. 

Lotus says Zheng Lian and Yin Fang grew to love each other over time. Their farm grew and they made enough money to move from their little village to a small town.    They supported and helped each other and built a good life together.  When Lotus’s father died, Lotus’s mother was left with 3 children, Lotus, age 12, her younger brother age 10 and older sister, age 15.  Lotus’s mother felt overwhelmed, but Zheng Lian and Yin Fang came to the rescue, helping her raise her 3 children and run her clothing and shoe peddling business.  Two days a week, they could sell their merchandise in their home village.  The other  five days of the week Zheng Lian and her daughter would pack up to 60 pounds of clothes and shoes on their backs and walk more than 20 miles to neighboring towns to sell their goods.  On these market days, they returned home very late, usually by 9 PM.  The work was exhausting, but they had to earn money to raise the children.  They wanted Lotus, her sister and brother to have a better life.

It wasn’t just all work and no play in Zheng Lian’s life.  She likes preparing food for her family, in particular “Dou Ban Jiang” or thick fermented broad bean sauce.  Her tastes have changed over the years and now she enjoys sweet and sour spare ribs. 

She enjoys singing Sichuan folk songs and Chinese Communist Party songs in praise of both the party and Chairman Mao.  She and her husband were huge fans of Mao.  She points out that before 1949, she and her people lived like slaves.  After the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, she was given a chance to have a decent life.

In 2016, Lotus did something very special for her grandmother.  She knew how much her grandparents loved Mao and so she took them for their first ever trip to Beijing along with her little daughter, Tutu.  It was a bit complicated organizing her elderly grandparents and young daughter, but it all worked out very well.  Her grandparents were thrilled to go to Tiananmen Square and visit Mao’s mausoleum.  In addition, they saw the Olympic park and Forbidden city.  This was the first time Zheng Lian had ever been to  Beijing.  The return trip to Xi’an was by plane and this was her first time to fly.

The best part of my year in Xi’an has been getting to know my colleagues, students and new friends.  How wonderful it has been for me to spend time with my neighbors!  The story of Gou Zheng Lian and her family is inspirational.  As China has prospered, so has her family.  We talk about “The American Dream” where I come from, but I see that Gou Zheng Lian’s family has experienced a “Chinese Dream”.  Over the past 70 years her world has improved dramatically.  She was born a poor farm worker who never learned to read or write, but her granddaughter is a college graduate, a specialist in preschool education and fluent in English.  Her great granddaughters are already on the way the being highly educated world citizens.  I look forward to inviting them all to my home.

Gao Zheng Lian and Wang Yin Fang at Tiananmen Square, 2016