Up the Stairs

Soon, Granddad was promoted to Grain Center Chief of Shenyang’s Tiexi district. Around this time, my grandma started selling fabric at the Tiexi Department Store. “She was an unforgettable sight, like a dancer,” Granddad said. (As he told me this story, Grandma was making us zhajiang noodles.) “No matter how much material you wanted, she’d cut it perfectly, not an inch more or less.” As model workers, the couple were taken on a tour of Hangzhou and Suzhou. The year after that, they got married, and over the next dozen years they had my uncle, my mother, and my aunt. Granddad became the chairman of the Tiexi Grain Bureau labor union, in charge of workers’ benefits and cultural activities. Everyone respected him, and he had no enemies.