My great-grandparents were based in Kaifeng, Henan, a city marked by its prosperity in history and demise in recent times. They built their lives there when China was the Republic of China reigning under leaders from Sun Yat-sen to Chiang Kai-shek.
My great-grandpa was adopted from birth by his paternal-uncle, a business magnate whose lineage produced seven daughters and no sons. He got conscripted to be heir. Imagine a five-year-old schoolboy as your manager at the local corner store, that was the start of his apprenticeship.
The scope of the family business included competing chains of hardware shops, pharmacies, grocery stores, and commercial real estate during the early 1900s in the city of Kaifeng. Due to a 50-year age gap with his adopted father, great-grandpa inherited everything the year he turned 19. Within a year, he went on to wife two teenagers and my great-grandma. She was his “main” partner, per millennials verbiage.
It was an advantageous marriage.
My great-grandma was unmarried at the ancient age of 26; had repulsively big feet (US size 4), and a reputation for being a snobby, hellbent, know-it-all. Considered unattractive physically and spiritually, she was salvaged by being the eldest and only daughter of Kaifeng’s highest-powered mafia boss. Word of mouth during those times was that the mafia policed and governed the police, government, and the city. Naturally, as if a preset law of nature, power unionized with wealth.
They lived a grandiose life as the power couple at the epicenter of the town gossip. Behind closed doors, a soap opera was playing of an adoptee and his seven older sisters that perpetually treated the breadwinner of the family like male-Cinderella. The inflection point of this story and many Chinese families came at The Chinese Revolution.
Film Recommendation
To Live (1994)
Director: Zhang Yi-mou
Starring: Ge You, Gong Li
