Life in the Chinese Countryside
As a child, my grandfather walked to school in the village during the Japanese occupation. Once, when he was seven or eight, he encountered a Japanese soldier standing in the idle of the road. And the soldier was holding a gun! He and his schoolmates had never been so close to a foreign soldier before and they were terrified! The boys huddled together by the side of the road, watching the soldier stare at them. Needless to say, they were too scared to go to school.
My grandmother's name is Li Qui Ying, my grandfather's name is Sun Xingyi.
Sun Xingyi was allowed to go to school and to leave the house once in a while. However, Li Qui Ying, as a girl, never had that luxury. That she wasn't allowed out of the house raises the question of how she met Sun Xingyi. Well, when Li Qiu Ying was old enough to get married, her aunt came to visit her. Her aunt was a local matchmaker that went around from town to town matching up young couples. Her aunt knew of a boy in a nearby village that was looking for a wife. She told him about my grandmother and arranged for them to meet. The boy liked the sound of Li Qiu Ying, and after they met, he decided that she would make a good wife. After a couple of other meetings, they got married in a traditional marriage ceremony at age nineteen. Li Qiu Ying was carried in a cart led by a cow, and she wore a dress borrowed from her aunt. Since they were poor, they couldn't get a hold of a horse, and she didn't have enough money to buy a new dress. They've been married ever since, and they've had five children that they've raised in the Chinese countryside.
