Daughter of Good Fortune
The book records the life experience of Huiqin Chen, who was born in 1931 in a village in the Shanghai suburbs. This is how her life began:
“I was born in 1931 in Wangjialong, Wang Family Village. Mother said that after giving birth to me, she could not stop bleeding. A cushion filled with kitchen stove ash was placed under her to absorb the blood. The cushion had to be replaced every several hours. A traditional Chinese doctor was called in. The doctor said that he could prescribe a traditional Chinese medicine to stop the bleeding, but the medicine would prevent Mother from having any more babies.
My father was nineteen and Mother was twenty-one years old at the time. Despite the fact that I was a girl, Father decided to save Mother’s life and my grandmother agreed. Mother took the medicine. Her life was saved, but she never got pregnant again. “
Huiqin Chen did not receive any formal education and does not read or write. As the first surviving child, Shehong Chen listened to her mother’s (Huiqin Chen’s) stories and wrote the book on her behalf.
The book covers more than eighty years of a rural woman’s life, which parallels the ups and downs of modern Chinese history.
This is a photo of Huiqin Chen, taken in the 1950s.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments by Shehong Chen ix
Introduction by Delia Davin 3
Chapter 1 Ancestral Home 12
Chapter 2 War and Revolution 35
Chapter 3 Benefiting from the New Marriage Law 53
Chapter 4 Rushing into Collective Life 67
Chapter 5 The Great Leap Forward 88
Chapter 6 “No Time for Meals All Year Round” 108
Chapter 7 Years of Ordeal 129
Chapter 8 Reaching beyond Peasant Life 151
Chapter 9 Changes in the Family 173
Chapter 10 Farewell to Collective Life 198
Chapter 11 Rural Customs and Urban Life 217
Chapter 12 A House-Purchasing Frenzy 238
Chapter 13 Crossing Borders and Leaving the Ancestral Village 258
Chapter 14 Between the Living and the Dead 280
Chapter 15 All Our Children Are “Plump Seeds” 297
Chapter 16 Return to Ancestral Land 320
Glossary 333
Index 339