Jiang Shumei learned her first Chinese character at the age of 60. Now, the 87-year-old grandmother from Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province is the proud author of six books.
“I wasn’t educated as a child. I never imagined, even in my wildest dreams, that I would publish a book one day,” says the resident of Suihua city. Her books detail the chaos of wartime and the hardship during the famine, and vividly retell anecdotes over the decades.
The elderly woman had her own way of learning. She composed lyrics for songs, and asked children to write them down, so that she could read each character as she sang the songs again and again. Whenever she came across characters she didn’t know on pamphlets (小册子), bus stops, or shop signs, she found someone to ask.
She first put pen to paper in 2012, at the age of 75. It was not easy. Sometimes, completing a single sentence could take a day. As a college teacher and a writer herself, Zhang Ailing, Jiang Shumei’s daughter, gave her mother a lot of encouragement and help. She told her that while writing, she should imagine herself telling stories to an audience, so that they would be easier to understand and be full of interesting details.
Zhang was also her first editor. Every time her mother finished writing something, she would discuss the manuscript (手稿) with her and check it over before typing it on the computer. Zhang began publishing her mother’s stories on social media platforms in 2013. When they drew the attention of her writer friends, the pair made the decision to publish them.
The first book, Time of Trouble, Time of Poverty, was published later that year, and proved to be a success. The book earned Jiang a lot of fans and sympathy. So far, the elderly woman has published six books, totaling more than 600,000 characters in length. In her spare time, she is also learning painting and calligraphy. “I would like to be a writer, a painter and a calligrapher,” she says, adding that her dream now is to have her own art exhibition when she is 90.
【小题1】How did Jiang Shumei learn characters?| A．By reading books with her children. |
| B．By asking questions whenever she was free. |
| C．By going to a college to get herself educated. |
| D．By singing lyrics and memorizing characters around her. |
| A．Her hard-work and Zhang’s support. |
| B．The care and attention from the public. |
| C．The help from her friends and editors. |
| D．The popularity of social media platforms. |
| A．At the age of 60. | B．In the year 2012. |
| C．At her 87-year-old. | D．In the year 2013. |
| A．Adversity makes a man wise. | B．Practice makes perfect. |
| C．It is never too old to learn. | D．Still water runs deep. |
