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Example of an Elder's Memoir Published as a Book

Why don’t Chinese people like telling their own stories?

Have you ever tried asking your parents a question: “Dad, what were you like when you were young?” The answer is probably something like, “There’s not much to tell,” or “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Then the subject changes. It feels as if there’s a quiet wall between us and our parents—not one built by arguments, but one slowly laid, brick by brick, from silence.

Look deeper, and you’ll see it’s not personality; it’s a culture carved into our bones. From childhood, we’re taught to keep our heads down and stay modest, because the tallest tree catches the most wind. We quietly tuck away the “I” until, after hiding it for so long, even we forget that we have stories of our own.

Once we become parents, that silence weighs even more heavily. I knew a family with an old wooden chest in their storage room, secured with a rusty lock. The father had made it by hand when he was young. His son had no idea what was inside until his father turned seventy and opened it for the first time: a bundle of ration coupons, a worn-out work ID, a few black-and-white photos, and letters home to his mother. His father had never spoken to his children about those hardships. Before he became “Dad,” he was a boy, too.

What tightens the heart most is time. As people grow old, memory can be stolen away. What they can recount in detail today may be blurry in a couple of years. One report described an elderly person trying to write a memoir, only to stop partway through: “I don’t think my life is worth writing about.” Their daughter even urged them on: “You’re not famous. Who would read it?” But Yang Benfen wrote *Autumn Garden*. Her mother was an ordinary working-class woman, with no accolades or extraordinary adventures, yet her story moved countless ordinary people. The joys and sorrows of everyday people are the truest, and the most moving.

A book can’t bring anyone back, or give a father ten more years to live. But decades from now, a child might turn to this page and learn that their grandfather was once stubborn, once poor, and once secretly slipped money to his son. Turning a lifetime into a book isn’t about achieving immortality; it’s about leaving a trace. If you’d like to preserve your parents’ stories, share them in the comments.

The people who most deserve to do this aren’t the wealthiest

When people hear “memoir,” many picture a gold-embossed cover and a prominent shelf at the Xinhua Bookstore. The subject is usually someone who fought in a war or held public office—as if only remarkable people deserve to have their stories written down.

That’s not true. The people who most deserve to write memoirs are ordinary people like you and me, and our ordinary parents.

Your dad spent his whole life fixing bicycles in a county town, while you squeeze onto the subway in Shanghai. Your video calls last three and a half lines: “Have you eaten?” “I’m fine.” “Gotta go.” You think you’re both doing fine, until one Spring Festival you go home and notice he’s slower at fixing bikes and can’t stand up straight anymore. A friend of mine told me that last month, his mom called to ask where he’d put the blue padded jacket he wore as a child. He was stunned—the jacket had been thrown away twenty years ago. That was when he realized that the side of his mom that remembers everything is slowly turning the page.

Our generation is most afraid of picking up the phone when home calls. It’s not the cost we fear, but hearing, “Your dad did it again today…” We’re so afraid that we keep putting off facing it. Dad was just an accountant; Mom was just a teacher. Search through your memories and you won’t find a single thing worthy of the county annals. Yet it’s families like these that are most easily scattered. The bowl of wontons Dad bought you after his night shift, the school uniform Mom stitched under the lamplight—one gust of wind, and they’re gone without a trace.

Wealthy people have so many ways to preserve their parents’ stories: traveling the world, hiring someone to make a documentary. They have a safety net and alternatives. Ordinary people don’t. All we can give our parents is a meal, a phone call, and a little book that’s hard-won. It may not be worth much, but it could be the most dignified thing your ordinary family can give your parents—a testament to the fact that they lived their lives with care. There’s no “later” on your parents’ calendar. Their tomorrows are made up of shorter and shorter days, and evenings when they call you by the wrong name more and more often.

You don’t need to know how to write. Just jot down those moments you dismiss as trivial, the ones that make you think, “You can write about that?” A book can’t bring anyone back, but it can keep an ordinary person’s life from being scattered to the wind. Decades from now, a child might turn its pages and learn that their grandpa was stubborn, was poor, and secretly slipped money to his son. This is what we do: visit older people and chat with them, gathering a lifetime into a hardcover, beautifully bound memoir. If you’d like to preserve a story for an older family member, send us a private message or leave a comment.