Siheyuan: An Eight-Year-Old Orphan With a Fortune to Protect

In the autumn of 1960 in the capital, eight-year-old Lin Weiguo was as thin as a beanpole. His father was a Grade Eight welder at a steel mill, earning ninety-nine yuan a month, but he had been badly injured in an accident six months earlier and hadn’t survived. His mother had died giving birth to him, leaving the eight-year-old boy a helpless orphan. But before Lin Ping passed away, he taught him everything he could: how to cook, do laundry, fold bedding, and use ration coupons for grain and meat. He had even set aside a full year’s worth of coupons for him.