This is a photograph of my father as the child in the center with his older sister to the left, and both are perched on my paternal grandparents’ knees. Although the picture is undated, I assume it was taken around 1973-4, when my father would have been a toddler. If I remember correctly, at the time of this photograph China would have been undergoing a period of transition from the Cultural Revolution to the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. However, I believe that Mao Zedong would still have been alive when this photograph was taken, so he must have still had considerable influence in Chinese politics and society. I see marks of the Mao era in my paternal family’s standardized, unisex style of dress (the collared button-up overcoat + pants worn by both men and women were very typical of the era) as well as the statue of a Communist Party icon in the background who may well be a likeness of Mao himself.
I took a picture of this photograph with my phone when I visited my grandparents in China in 2016. Although I can’t say I’m very close to my paternal grandparents, I spent many summers in that Suzhou home as a child myself, playing in my grandfather’s rooftop vegetable garden. I remember beds of lettuce and pots of tomato plants, cucumber vines that climbed the trellises like green snakes. My grandfather also grew his own chrysanthemum flowers, from which he brewed tea that he fed to me in a glass jar. In the kitchen downstairs, there would always be a string of dried red chilis hanging next to the door.
In the photo on the right, I have adorned my family’s picture with items that remind me of my own experiences. On the bottom left, dried chrysanthemum flowers for my grandfather’s tea; in the middle, a succulent for the plants in his garden; on the bottom right, a pack of dried chili peppers for the bundle next to the kitchen door. Although the other two items, the scarf and the sunglasses hanging over the screen, are not necessarily associated with childhood memories, they represent the material outcomes of my family’s legacy. Almost fifty years later, I exist in this moment as a product of those before me, and these are the items that prove I exist.
Such a powerful post, Sophia. The things you point out the picture that date it/place it in Chinese history really struck me—even though they are literally snapshots in time, pictures do so much archival work to capture timelines too. In the picture, the clothes and surroundings tell your singular story, but when zoomed out, tell a much larger sociopolitical story. I think this is so cool for me because I have trouble contextualizing my oldest photographs in historical timelines, but your breakdown is an awesome perspective on the image, including the description of your grandfather’s rooftop vegetable garden! Thanks for sharing this!