I went to visit family this Thanksgiving season, and while I spent the week decompressing,
enjoying the company of loved ones, and stuffing my face with turkey, I also got a chance to
read "Our Story: a Memoir of Love and Life in China" by Rao Pingru, and it broke my heart.
Here’s why.
Mr. Pingru is 96-years-old and is still living in Shangai, China. He wrote this memoir shortly
after the death of his wife who he had spent 60 years married to. In it, he tells their
story - a story that starts in 1922, and continues all the way through to 2008 when the couple
was parted in death. It’s a story of enduring love. Of marriage - the kind that works - and,
indirectly, the story of life in twentieth century China.
Pingru’s memoir is littered with his own hand-painted illustrations of his life’s
journey. From his childhood years learning to write, to his time serving in the National
Revolutionary Army, through marriage, children, and over 20 years separated from his family
as he was forced into reeducation through labor at middle age. Even the later years
after returning home as his wife slowly succumbed to illness. Every major life moment of Pingru’s
existence is painted for us to see.
As I read through the story, I was struck by the simple and plain-spoken style with
which Pingru writes. He’s not a flowery historian - he doesn’t pepper the narrative
with over-the-top cliches, or pontificate like so many writers today do about the wind
on their face, or the birds singing from the trees. Instead, he tells you what happened,
when, where, and how. This blunt way of telling the tale cuts away everything but the memories.
Real, raw, at times vulnerable, and, taken as a whole, a beautiful recollection of the
ups and downs as one reaches the sunset of good days and stands on the twilight of this
veil of tears we call life.
Looking back at fairer days and brighter climes often means memories will come in bits and
pieces, and with this book, it’s no different. While many a veteran might have written several
pages of war stories, battles and great victories, Pingru speaks of his deployment with equal
measures of both combat and quiet moments. When recounting a leave of absence to return
home, he focuses on the one memory that seemed to stick out to him the most: in his hurry
to leave the frontlines, he accidentally mixed together his boots and those of another man
in his battalion, only realizing his mistake after having left the camp, and noticing his
right boot was tighter than the other. With nothing to be done, he put up with the discomfort
the entire journey home.
This small memory adds nothing to the overarching narrative of the book, but, to be true, there
is no overarching narrative. A recollection of life is often nothing BUT these moments
that for whatever reason, stay with us through the years.
Consider this memory - the first he has of his wife, when they were children. Details
and images he has kept in his heart for some seventy years.
"Meitang and I knew each other as children, because our families were old friends, but
we met on only two occasions. The first time we met was soon after Meitang and her family
had arrived in the French Concession in Hankou, and they went to visit relatives in the county
of Nancheng. On their way back, they dropped in on us. I remember her getting out one of
my toys and showing her how it worked. She was ten years old.
After we moved, he writes, she and her family came again, this time for dinner. However,
I had eaten early and was in a hurry to be off. That was in the countryside in those
days. There were no lights on the country roads, and we took torches.
Just as I was leaving, I passed by the room where the family was eating and saw Meitang.
She was still a child, and a small, slight one at that, so someone had put a stool on
top of the chair to raise her up so she could reach the table.
Sometime later, Meitang told me that she remembered seeing me then, too: “You had a torch, and
you were flashing it on and off.” She was thirteen.
As Pingru himself writes... “...for ordinary people, life is made up of numbers of small
details that stay with us for no particular reason and, with the passing of time, turn
into treasured memories.”
For what it’s worth, it helps that the author has such a keen visual memory. I was struck
by just how CLEARLY this almost century year-old man could recall the structural layout of
his wife’s family’s residence, or his own childhood home in Nancheng county. It’s
easy to tell why he was often in charge of designing maps during his enlistment.
Food is a recurring motif. In a twenty-first century driven by restaurant chains and fast
food conglomerates, I wasn’t expecting just how many memories a man of the previous century
made in family-owned mom-and-pop diners and dance halls. Several pages are dedicated to
reminiscing about certain meals the couple shared together at certain places during uncertain
times.
What extraordinary adventures these two self-proclaimed ordinary people shared together through the
years.
If you’re like me, and looking for an authentic story that will transport you to a far-off
land and into a far-off time to see how things used to be, to feel simultaneously for a stranger
and yourself, to get a brief, bird’s eye view of a life well lived... of a marriage
plainly laid before all who are willing to consider it, I hope this illustrated memoir
will make it into your hands, as it did mine.
I’ve been married for 16 months. I have a lot to learn to as a husband, and maybe
one day, as a father. Rachel and I seem to just be starting on our journey together.
I don’t know what’s in store for us - though we both know we’ll have our share of blissful
moments, rocky days, and times of loss. All lives, after all, are a tragedy in their own
way - a full course of suffering littered with slices of joy and consumed while on a
quest for contentment.
Pingru muses toward the end of the story about the words pasted across the lintel of his
grandmother’s bedroom door...
“Happiness, long life, good health, and peace.”
"In old age," he tells us, "that’s all people want, and have always wanted."
I’m glad to have read this book when I did. And I’m glad to have read it while the author
is still living. And if by some chance he manages to see this, I wish him well… and
I thank him for sharing this story so that a man like me who has found HIS Meitang can
cherish the time he has with her.
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