Heidi's in China and can't get on blogger...

...so this is Annie, updating on her behalf. Heidi emailed me the following transcription of one of her first interviews with her grandmother. She says, "I've been working on the Chinese mostly and haven't been translating, so this is all I have for now - I have probably 4 pages of Chinese to translate still, and about 2 hours of tape to transcribe." Hopefully we'll get to see more of that soon!

S: Talk about when I was younger?
I: Yes, talk about when you were young. Who lived in your home when you were young?
S: Who lived at my house? Then it was just us and mother. I didn’t have a father, father died early. When I was one year old, father had already died…then my sister and I lived with our uncle and his family, we were all in the same court. When you went outside and you were four or five years old, when you went out to play, uncle would bar the door and ask “where are you going?” and not let us go out.
I: Then your uncle and his family all lived in that same court?
S: All in the same court. My mom, my father passed away, so we all lived with that uncle, my mom and sister, we couldn’t go to school, women didn’t go to school, only boys went to school, women didn’t go to school.
I: When would you start school?
S: When you’re 7 years old. My grandfather said to my sister and me, I said, my sister can’t go to school, can I go to school? “women can’t go to school!” They all said that boys can go, but girls couldn’t.
I: When you saw that your older sister couldn’t go to school, and you couldn’t go to school either, what did you think?
S: Back then, you all had to bind your feet, stay in the house and you couldn’t go out, couldn’t leave the front door. Girls can’t go out and run around outside. I learned how to embroider when I was 7, embroider cotton.
I: What did you sew?
S: Embroidery! The cotton we grew had to be stretched for 72 times before it can be made into cloth…we embroidered and made cloth.
I: (confused) what do you mean by 70 times?
S: 70 times! You plant the cotton plants, pick cotton, use a machine to crush the cotton, and turn the cotton into thread, after kneading the cotton 72 times, can you turn the cotton into fabric. Then, you dye the fabric yourself. To dye the fabric, it’s all…you use pomegranate skin. You steam the pomegranate skin, add black powder to the pomegranate skin, to dye black, dye that fabric. Older people always wear black.
I: How did your family make money?
L: We relied on land. Back then, why did they brand us as landlords? We didn’t have anyone to plant, so we had to ask others to plant. Then we gave the workers some of the food we produced. Girls couldn’t leave the house. They bound your feet, and didn’t let you leave. All day you do work at home.