Living History: Xinjiang Part 3

February 11, 2010:

Every day is full of surprises. Today Reborn's grandma came over for a shower. She is the tiniest 85 year-old I've ever seen, but she has perseverance. When she was six years old in eastern Shandong province, her parents began to bind her feet. I've never met anyone with bound feet, especially since most of those generations have died. It was a traditional practice in China to make girls' feet look more "beautiful." The tradition had mostly died out by the early 1900s, but it still hung on in some parts of the country until the 1920s.

So here is Reborn's grandmother with 6-inch long feet, shaped like triangles. She can still get around quite well, and walks by shuffling along on her heels. It was like a living piece of history walked into the apartment.

We were curious about her feet, so she told us more about them, especially how painful it has been her entire life. They had to break all the toes except for the big one, and bandage them tightly into the rest of her feet. And she proudly showed us her tiny little shoes. I was in disbelief. This woman with abnormally small feet laughed when I showed her my large feet, which are twice as long as hers.

We wanted to know more about her life, so she told us a bit through Reborn as our translator. In 1950s, when Reborn's mom was born, they all nearly starved to death. Millions of people did starve to death. Maybe that's why Reborn's grandma and mom are so petite and look older than their age. They could only eat one mantou (bun) a week. The only other thing they could eat was tree bark. They were farmers who literally had nothing, and there was a terrible famine. So now I can understand why Reborn's family is so frugal...

During the afternoon I trudged across a long road and bridge to Reborn's grandparents' house. It wasn't as cold as yesterday, but it was snowing. The temperature might have been as high as 8 degrees or something!

Then Kelsey, Reborn, and I went to the Kazakh neighborhoods. Aletai is about 60% Kazakh. We went to one area, in particular, that looked like a World War Two Jewish ghetto, Kelsey and I both thought. Nobody was probably starving, but that's what the place looked like. They sold saddles, whole skinned animals, and blocks of rock-solid cheese. Everything was extremely dark, dingy, and dirty. The buildings looked like they might collapse any second. Then we rounded a corner and saw a cart full of animal heads-- all bloody, frozen, and still with all the skin, eyes, hair, and teeth. The horse heads were especially grisly.

The rest of the evening was spent inside. We washed clothes, which was the most laborious, time-consuming effort ever. They had a "washing machine," which was barely one step up from washing the clothes by hand. The machine wasn't much of a machine, and didn't do much washing.

You had to fill the machine up with water yourself using buckets of water from the sink. Then you turned a crank, and it halfheartedly swirled everything around for a bit. Then you had to haul the extremely stretched-out, wet clothes to another side of the machine, where you wrung the clothes out with another crank. This whole process was repeated twice. Then we hung all the clothes to dry over the radiators. I would be a terrible Chinese housewife.

And one of the most exciting events was taking a shower! I haven't taken a shower for nearly four days. After the water was heated up in a big, metal box on the wall, I got to take a shower in their dimly-lit bathroom. The water was just a lukewarm trickle from a pipe that stuck out from the middle of the wall. Never had a shower felt so good. I'm learning to be grateful for so much!


(Reborn's grandma with her 6-inch long shoes).


(The grandma's description of her feet being bound).


(Family picture! With Reborn's family).


(The trek across the river to Reborn's grandparents' house.)


(Need some meat? I lost my appetite when I saw these animal parts in the Kazakh section of Aletai).