Grandma's China

This book tells the story of one women,the author's grandmother,and her family's experience through China's modern transformation.Following Grandma's life path, one gets an intimate glimpse of how China has evolved from a closed, imperial society ruled by thousand-year-old traditions to the "new China" led by Mao Zedong's government, then to the "new New China" that is the political and economic powerhouse in the world today. The ups and downs in Grandma's life at a deeply personal level illustrate how epic social changes have affected China's ordinary citizens and their way of living. Growing up in Manchuria when the territory was occupied by Japan and run by a puppet emperor, Grandma came of age during World War II when China was torn by an eight-year war against Japan, then a civil war between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Grandma relocated from her hometown to Beijing, China's capital, to flee from the Korean War. Here, she lived under Mao's restrictive government for three decades, witnessing, and at times falling victim to, political disasters such as the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Starting in the early 1980s and into the 1990s, in a new era of economic reform and integration with the world, Grandma, and all three of her children, battled lay-offs, rising housing cost, corruption and other social issues as China's economy morphed from a completely government-run model into a market-based economy. Throughout her life, Grandma rode out one storm after another, one government after another, to finally arrive at the peaceful harbor of retirement today. Now, she is ready to share her story.