Hi Mr Emery,
I am reaching out to you because i recently saw my photo online when i was a little girl. I know that you were looking for people in your photos, so i am reaching out to you with great respect and gratitude. I was 3 years old then, 43 year old now and going to be 44 in Feb. Seeing this old photo is the best birthday gift that I have ever had! It is like a time machine that has brought us back to 40 years ago.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself: My name is Wei Meng. I am living in Pennsylvania United States with my husband. And we have a 11 year old daughter Ava. People say that Ava looks like me. The woman holding me up in the photo is my mom who is still living in ok Beijing with my Dad. They used to visit us in the United States once every other year, but have not been able to do so for the last couple of years due to the pandemic. We Facetime with each other everyday though. The article stating that you were looking for the people in your photos was sent to me by my mom. She was on a spring field trip in the Summer Palace Ng with her colleagues on the day when the photo was taken. Many of them brought their children too.
We also recognized a the little girl with the pink bow and holding a blue purse. She is the daughter of my mom's colleague. I believe she's (who was also born in Feb) married too and lives in Beijing now.
I have a very ordinary but happy life so far. I was the only child and the first grandchild of my mother’s family. Because of this, I was loved and a little bit spoiled. I lived in Beijing before I went to Canada at 25. I was and will always be a proud Beijinger. I promised that I would tell you a little about my mom when I have the time, and this is what I am going to do in this email. My mom played a very important role in my life and she was the reason that I made some most important decisions at the turning points of my life.
My mom is the oldest child of her family and has 3 younger sisters. She moved to Beijing when she was 6 with her parents. At that time, she was still their only child. I believe the picture that I attached here was her first picture taken when she was 5 or 6 years old in Xi’an in a photo studio before they moved to Beijing. She is 7 years older than my oldest aunt, 8 than my deceased aunt, and 14 than my youngest aunt. Her second sister (who was 8 yr younger than my mom) died of pneumonia in February 1980, a few weeks before we met you. My mom was invited to a field trip by her colleagues. They wanted to cheer her up. She had a great day that day, as you can see from the picture that you had taken. My aunt in my memory and my mom’s description was a very kind, gentle and quiet person. She was like Beth in the Little Women. My mom is a good story teller and likes to tell me stories about her and her sisters’ childhood.
My mom was a smart and hardworking student. She finished 10th grade before China’s Cultural Revolution started. Her biggest regret was that she couldn’t go to college because of that. After the Cultural Revolution, she had a chance to go back to school to do a part-time study in college when she was 28. But she found out that she was pregnant. My mom chose giving birth to me over this precious opportunity. Luckily my father was also given the same opportunity from where he worked. So at least one of them went to university. Her youngest sister, who showed great academic talent, was admitted by one of the best universities in China and came to the United States for grad school. My mom was very proud of her and wanted me to follow her path. That was one of the reasons that made me apply for grad schools in Canada.
I was born in China in the late seventies. My father was a middle school history teacher and my mother was a factory worker. They are both the oldest child in their own families. In my memory, we lived in a small unit in a traditional quadrone yard flat-house, called 四合院 Si-he-yuan in Chinese (You can google it online to learn more about it if you want). Normally there are at least 7 or 8 units in one Si-he-yuan and each unit belongs to one family. We are all neighbors to each other. All neighbors shared the common space, public restrooms, faucets, sinks and so on. Everyone got water for breakfast and dinner from the shared faucet. Sometime you had to be in lines to get water before dinner time. But that was a happy social time for everyone. The Si-he-yuan was quiet during daytime because most people went to work and school. But it became a social place after dinner, especially in the summer. Most adults would bring out chairs to sit in the yard and chat, enjoying the evening breeze as air-conditioners were not common at that time. In the mean time small children like me would come out playing games such as hide and seek. Those were my happiest time.
We didn’t live with my grandparents because they all had their own residences, which were also units in different Si-he-yuan. My Yeye (paternal grandpa), who is 97 years old now, was a carpenter then, and my Nainai (Paternal grandma), who passed away, was a homemaker. My Laoye (maternal grandpa), who also passed away, was an accountant, and Laolao (maternal grandma), who just passed away last year, was in the same treasury department as my Laoye. I spent most of my early childhood living with my maternal grandparents. Their residence was very close to where we lived (within 15 mins walking distance), so they offered to babysit me all the times. I was the first and only grandchild in Laoye and Laolao’s house for a very long time and everyone was so happy about my arrival. My oldest aunt Spring (there is the word “spring” in her name) spent a huge portion of her salaries, taking me out to try all kinds of toys and playgrounds, and buying me new clothes at every Chinese new year. She took me to a hair salon to curl my hairs when I was four or five years old, because it was fashion in the eighties. She was scolded by my mom later. 😊 She took me to the first KFC opened in Beijing in 1987.I thought the meal was just so so, but experience was exciting! My aunt Jing (as in Beijing) passed away when I was three, as I told you in my early emails. My aunt Winter (there is the word “winter” in her name) is the youngest among her siblings and is only 14 years older than me. She was my role model as she was the first college students in my mom’s family, who graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in China and later got a full scholarship to study in the United States for her PHD. One of the greatest memory that I had with her was about TV. My Laoye bought our first TV in 1979. The TV screen was only 9 inches big and was black and white. There were not a lot of TV programs back then and you have to read the newspapers to find the programs. One day, Laoye wanted to take the whole family to a relative’s house in the other side of the town. Aunt Winter asked to stay behind because she had schoolwork to do. I insisted to stay behind too. After everybody left, Aunt Winter shared a secret with me: There was a new cartoon movie (ne zha nao hai) showing at 10am and we can watch it together on TV. But I had to keep secret and not let others know about this. That was my first and most memorable movie that I ever watched! It was so good and touching that we both shed tears while watching the movie. That was my only memory about the black and white TV. Laoye bought our first coloured TV in 1982 from Hongkong.
This is it for today.
Wei Meng
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