Everyone has a name, Lan does too, but she does not use it. Nobody in the village even uses her name any more. In her mid-80s, she is a great grandmother of two, a grandmother of twelve, and a mother of five. When she was younger, she was addressed as Long’s wife. When I interviewed her, I called her “grandmother”, which is a respectful way to call a lady of Lan’s age in the village.
She said she had a hard life, and she wanted her stories to be told. When I was writing my dissertation on rural women’s education in China, I covered her schooling and part of her family education, but wasn’t able to tell most of her life experiences.
The purpose of this book is to present Lan’s life experience in her own words with my interpretation following each story. I arranged her narratives by a chronicle order in order to match the social change and movements related to each story.
Note, this is a book idea that I have. Hopefully, I will have it completed and published within in a few years.