CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, CHINATOWN BRANCH, 2018
We met Li Ting Lan Li, eighty-five, at the library. She had come for Chinese opera—musicians and singers perform two to three times a week in one of their event spaces.
She wore a quilted jacket with Chinese symbols. The fuzzy collar coordinated with her mauve two-piece wool set, slightly fuzzy in a similar color. “Someone gave me the clothes,” she said. “I don’t have anything.” Over the course of our stay in Chicago, we saw her walking around Wentworth Street in different patterned sweatshirts. Most of the time she wore her red baseball cap. When she wasn’t, you could see her silver bob, which had a frosty white strip that framed her face.
Ms. Li told us about growing up in Toisan during wartime. Her whole town was burned down during the second Sino-Japanese war, when Japanese imperialist forces wanted to take control of China, especially the port towns in Guangdong province.
“When I was younger, the Japanese invaded Toisan and killed everyone,” she said. “When they invaded, I was at home. I saw people killed and leave. It’s a miracle I didn’t starve.” As a result of the war, she never went to school and never learned how to read. She worked as a rice farmer and later washed dishes at restaurants.
After a while, the talk must’ve brought back too many painful memories. When we tried to ask her more details of her past, she turned away and said, “I don’t remember.” Our translator said, “I’m not sure if she remembers or doesn’t want to talk about it.”
