My Family and I: 1895 to 2010

Yinyin grew up on stories of her family. Some of them were repeated many times. Her grandparents came from very poor families and fought against great difficulties to survive. From these stories Yinyin learned the value of perseverance and strength of character. When she was a girl she dreamed of telling these stories to the world because they moved her so deeply. As she approached eighty years of age she became determined that she would fulfill her childhood dream and spent two years working with her friend, Stephen Roberts, to produce the book in English so it can more easily be shared with the world and with her foreign friends. The resulting book vividly brings to life the stories of her family along with the difficulties and triumphs that they experienced. Her story of a Chinese family begins in 1895 with Grandmother who becomes a child-bride at the age of seven years old. The story, told by the granddaughter of this intrepid woman, tells how, over the years her family battled to survive kidnapping, the Japanese Invasion, journeys through Japanese occupied China, the Chinese Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, denunciation, exile to the countryside, slave labor and famine. It is a remarkable personal account of how the family faced all these challenges to bring Grandmother's descendants successfully into twentieth century China.