Chinese Version
02-18-2019，Monday, Snowy
In the middle of February, following my daughter’s request for a dark color, double-layered, knee-length skirt, I made three skirts for her. She liked them all and I was very happy. Last week, while visiting QM (one of my friends in Waltham) for a small gathering, a mother praised my daughter’s short skirt and lamented that she didn’t like to wear skirts, so her daughter didn’t like to wear skirts. It reminded me of my own mother and the dress my mother bought for me. I think children will always have their own new tastes. As a mother, learning to support children’s own tastes would be good.
In my childhood memory, my mother only wore plain clothes and trousers all year round and never wore any skirt. I only saw her in chi-pao in her school-year photos before 1949. Now I think about my mother’s dress code, I guess it’s because my mother, a Communist Party member from a landlord family, was carefully following the “To face the powder and not to powder the face (translated by a famous scholar 许渊冲 from ‘Women are encouraged to love battle outfits more than pretty dresses’)” culture that was very popular at that time.
The era of “To face the powder and not to powder the face” was also my school period from elementary school to high school. In those years, I only wore one or two short skirts and never wore any dresses.
In 1981, at the early stage of China’s “Economic Reform and Open Up”, I went to college and spent four years at the Sichuan Normal University on Lion Mountain, while I and seven roommates living in room 501 of the girls’ dormitory building. The eight college students in room 501 forged a deep friendship. In 1983, one year before the release of popular movie “Red Skirts Is Popular on the Street”, we, the eight girls in room 501, from the Lion Mountain in the eastern suburb of Chengdu, took buses, after several transfers and went to the Chunxi Road Photo Studio in downtown Chengdu to have a photo with the theme of dresses. This photo sealed our vitality in our sophomore year: in the picture, I was wearing Ping’s strapless dress, a glimpse of a girl’s desire to be pretty and the good team spirit of the college students who were born in 1960s China. More than 30 years have passed, from saying goodbye on Lion Mountain, to being distant between the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States, Ping and I are now neighbors in Greater Boston. Fate in life carries deep love between Ping and I.
As a college student, I enjoyed wearing dresses. Since then, I have worn many dresses, but I think my most beautiful dress is the one my mother bought for me after I graduated university and returned to my alma mater Zigong Shuguang high school as a chemistry teacher, in 1985. At that time, Zigong’s trendy fashion clothes were mostly sold on the street between YingXiongKou (Hero Mouth) and Ziliujing District Committee, which was close to the gate of Zigong No. 1 middle school. That place was called Caravan Fashion Street. I often visited there to see fashion clothes and I was especially interested in pretty dresses. One day, I fell in love with a dress on the Caravan Fashion Street, after a few rounds of bargaining with the shopkeeper, the dress still cost more than 80 yuan. In Zigong in the mid-1980s, the monthly salary of college graduates was around 50 yuan. I didn’t dare to spend a month and a half salary on a dress.
That day, after I came back home, I told my mother: “I saw a pretty dress on the Caravan Fashion Street today. Unfortunately, it was too expensive to buy.” My mother saw from my eyes that I really liked it and regretted it, so she went with me to the Caravan Fashion Street and bought the dress for me.
My mother was frugal all her life and wore very simple plain clothes. After retirement, she bought me a pretty and expensive dress that I dared not buy. This dress left a trace that I was well pampered by my family after I started to work.
I liked this dress very much. I often wore it in the USA. This dress inadvertently accompanied me to meet Chen Xiangmei in Washtington DC and President Bush in the old white house.
On the cold February day in Waltham, looking at the snowflakes flying outside the window, thinking about my late mother and the summer dress, I felt my love for my mother and the warmth of my home in Zigong. Today, looking at the dress my mother bought for me more than 30 years ago, I felt the style of the dress is still very modern.
Because of my late mother, my daughter’s pretty short skirt, decades of college friendship，two late celebrities and a dress bought in my hometown came together as one story. This story from a long ago time is like a bottle of private aged wine. Drinking alone, you will be intoxicated by the private family memory; when sharing it, others will smell the richness of history blending around us.
I am thankful for my mother’s love.
Little Episodes
1. 02-18-2019，Waltham is snowing
2. 02-10-2019，a small gathering at QM’s house, my daughter wore the pretty little skirt:
3. Because of my late mother, two late celebrities and a dress bought in my hometown came together as one story.
On April 6, 2018, [Let Me Say] Chen Xiangmei passed away and the Sino-US trade war is in full swing. The intertwining of unrelated events reminds me of the past when I saw Chen Xiangmei in 1991: she organized many Chinese communities to the White House to support China’s entry into the WTO. In the photo, my friend and I visited the White House (July 10, 1991). Now it may be time for civil society organizations to lobby…
On July 11, 2018, [History in Today] on July 10, 1991, several mainland students took the subway from the CUA (Catholic University of America) to the Old White House to participate in the Chinese activity of “supporting China’s entering to the WTO”. Seeing President Bush (Figure 1) and holding a free White House brochure (Figure 2). The symbolic building of CUA outside the experimental building (Fig. 3). May the people finally benefit from the current hot trade war.
On July 10, 1991, I stood in front of the Old White House, wearing the dress my mother bought me and holding a free White House brochure in my hands.
In May 2017, my mother （10-25-1928 to 05-02-2018年）in a quiet and calm happy mood.
4. On May 28, 1983, Photo of college students living in room 501, our sophomore year in college.
5. Popular in the 1960s and 1970s, “To face the powder and not to powder the face” means “Women are encouraged to love battle outfits more than pretty dresses”, origins from Mao Zedong’s “seven wonders · Title photos for female militia”: “valiant five foot guns, the dawn shines on the drill ground. Chinese people have many wonderful aspirations, do not love red clothes and love armed forces.”
