A woman spent thirty years sewing the fate of a family into the beauty of the times.
In the winter of 1978, Shen Xiulan returned to the city from Beidahuang with her two children. Her husband, Zhao Jianguo, was a recently rehabilitated factory cadre, but his family lived in a warehouse occupied by others. She dug out the sewing machine left behind by her mother and set up a stall at the door of the market.
No one thinks much of her. The subdistrict office said she was "speculative," and the Industrial and Commercial Office fined her three months' salary. Neighbor Li Shufen reported her everywhere for tax evasion. But she just refused to bow her head - if her husband's salary could not support the family, she would earn it herself; if the iron rice bowl in the factory was not stable, she would make one herself.
It took Shen Xiulan twenty years to go from a sewing machine to a garment factory, from Jincheng to Shenzhen, from self-employed to the president of a group company. In the past twenty years, she has experienced life-and-death stakes when prices soared, endured the wave of layoffs and resettlement after the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, and supported her son in the darkest moments when he owed loan sharks.
But the most difficult thing is not the business hurdle, but this family.
Her husband didn't understand why she insisted on being in the public eye. Her son thought she was too strong and wanted to leave Shenzhen. Her daughter learned to remain silent during the cold war between her and her husband. As her factory grew bigger and bigger, the family became more and more scattered.
It wasn't until the bell of the millennium rang, and the white-haired Shen Xiulan stood on the roof of the newly built Splendid New City, looking at the changed city under her feet, that she finally understood——
What she has been sewing her whole life has never been just clothes, but the destiny of this family, this group of people, and this entire generation.
