Brilliant post on Danwei yesterday in keeping with the theme of Spring Festival. It is an annotated translation of interviews about Spring Festivals of years past collected by oral historian Sang Ye. The stories tell not only of the great hardships (floods, starvation) but also of the little joys (roasting a pig in the communal dining hall.) It’s a must-read and another example of why oral history can be so powerful. Thanks to Geremie R. Barmé for his excellent translations and for his wonderful post. It also got me thinking about other oral histories, many of which are closer than we imagine.
This past week as we sat down to another of many dinners, I had the pleasure of talking with YJ’s grandmother. “Lao Lao” was born to a well-to-do family and had gone to missionary school in the 1930s and 1940s in Tianjin. (She scared the hell out of me when I first met her a few years ago by suddenly turning to me and requesting, in perfectly enunciated English, to “Please have a seat.”) She told us stories of when the Japanese invaded Tianjin and she and her classmates rushed to the roof of their school to see