My Great-Great-Grandmother, the Woman Who Fought to Survive in a Chaotic Era

[Farming + Food + Everyday Life]

This story begins in the 15th year of the Republic, when warlords forcibly ordered farmers to grow opium. The farmers rose up in resistance. The heroine’s great-grandmother lost her first husband and eldest son to Wu’s army. She fled overnight with her sons and made her way to a small town at the foot of the northern Qinling Mountains, where she settled down and raised her two youngest children. Though the town was a secluded paradise, natural disasters and human calamities eventually forced her to remarry. She married Huzi, the second son of the Zhang family. The eldest Zhang brother was sharp and calculating, and thanks to his cleverness, the whole family lived well through the catastrophic drought that lasted three years, beginning in the 17th year of the Republic.

But fate had other plans. In the 22nd year of the Republic, cholera swept through the region. The eldest Zhang brother contracted it, and Huzi stayed behind in town to care for him. In the end, both brothers died in the cholera outbreak that year. After the epidemic ended, the great-grandmother returned to town. Members of the Zhang clan came to seize the brothers’ estate. The Zhangs had only one daughter and no sons, and the clan feared that the great-grandmother would take the Zhang family fortune back to her former husband’s family, leaving the Zhangs without an heir. Keeping her promise to Mr. Zhang, the great-grandmother struggled on for over thirty years before handing the family’s wealth over to Zhang Kangtai.