3 ms·

imagine being like 85 and having lived in China through WW2, revolution, famine, cultural revolution, and then the last 30 years of growth and prosperity. a lot

• nostrademons 4y ago
  My grandfather was born in 1909 in China. When he was 3 years old, the Emperor fell. When he was 7, the Warlord Period began. When he was 17, the country was unified under Chiang Kai-Shek; when he was 18, it fell apart again and the Chinese Civil War began. When he was 22, the Japanese invaded, and he emigrated to the Philippines. When he was 32 (and my dad was 2), the Japanese invaded the Philippines too. When he was 35 (my dad was 5), the Americans invaded, and his house was bombed, and he had to move up to a camp in the mountains and shit in the river. A year later the Americans had won and he made a fortune off occupying G.I.s, opening the only restaurant with a slot machine in the city. When he was 40 the Nationalist government that had been, well, "the government" when he grew up fell to the Communists, and he was left stateless. He ended up sending his kids to North America, one by one, and finally emigrated in the early 80s and lived out his last years in peace, but my dad's obsession with geopolitics is in retrospect pretty justified by world events.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    This is worthy of a book or a movie. Your grandfather has made your life difficult: try filling those shoes ;) Seriously though, what a resilience.