Qiuyuan

“Qiuyuan” (秋园, meaning “Autumn Garden”) is an extraordinary literary work, remarkable not only for the story it tells but also for the circumstances of its creation. Author Yang Benfen was born in 1940 and didn’t begin writing until she was nearly 80 years old, recording her mother Liang Qiufang’s (nicknamed Qiuyuan) life stroke by stroke at a small table in her kitchen. When it was published in 2020, Yang Benfen was already 80. This slim volume became one of the most moving literary events of the year.

Qiuyuan was born in 1914 in Luoyang, Hunan. In an era when women were generally denied education, she was fortunate to attend high school—extremely rare for rural China at the time. However, fate did not favor her.

In 1929, the 15-year-old Qiuyuan was betrothed to a man she had never met—Yang Renshou. After marriage, she followed her husband from place to place, experiencing the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the various political movements after the founding of the People’s Republic. She gave birth to many children, only to lose them one by one—some to war, some to famine, some to disease. Her husband was a weak and irresponsible scholar, and nearly the entire burden of the family fell on Qiuyuan’s shoulders alone.

The Great Famine of the 1960s was the darkest period of Qiuyuan’s life. Her husband starved to death, several children starved to death, and Qiuyuan herself struggled on the edge of death. To survive, she even had to beg on the streets. Yet even in such desperate circumstances, she maintained an astonishing resilience and dignity.

What makes “Qiuyuan” most moving is its presentation of macro-history from a micro-perspective. Those events that typically appear only in history textbooks—the Anti-Japanese War, Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution—all have specific texture and warmth in Qiuyuan’s life. We see not numbers and concepts, but a woman striving to survive, care for her family, and maintain herself—even that small bit of dignity—through these great upheavals.

More importantly, “Qiuyuan” records a kind of experience usually forgotten by history. Official history is often written by men, recording men’s deeds. The life experiences of women—especially rural women—rarely enter formal historical narratives. Their suffering, their labor, their resilience, their daily work of maintaining families and communities, are all taken for granted, deemed not worth recording.

Yang Benfen wrote “Qiuyuan” precisely to break this silence. In an interview, she said: “I want people to know that such women once existed.” This is not only a tribute to her mother but to the countless women of that era—whose names may never have been recorded, but whose lives are equally worth telling.

Another moving aspect of “Qiuyuan” is the story of writing itself. Yang Benfen didn’t begin trying to write until she was in her 60s, initially just wanting to record some past events to send to her daughter and granddaughter. She had no professional literary training, and she wrote in the cramped kitchen of her home.

This identity as an “amateur writer” actually endowed “Qiuyuan” with a unique power. Yang Benfen carried no burden of literary technique; she simply told sincerely and plainly everything she remembered. Her language has no embellishment, no sentimentality, yet it is precisely this simplicity that makes it more moving. When she writes about children dying one by one during the famine, she doesn’t dramatize the grief but simply recounts the facts calmly—this restraint actually makes readers feel the suffering more deeply.

For Yang Benfen herself, writing was also a belated form of self-expression. Like women of her generation in China, she spent her life serving others—husband, parents, children—with few opportunities to express herself. Writing allowed her to become, for the first time, the teller of her own story, to possess, for the first time, her own voice.

After “Qiuyuan” was published, it immediately sparked widespread social discussion. Some critics noted that Qiuyuan’s story resonated so deeply because she represents a collective experience—throughout Chinese history, there have been countless women like Qiuyuan whose stories have never been told.

At the same time, “Qiuyuan” sparked discussion about women’s narrative. When we read history, women are often absent—or more precisely, their existence is taken for granted, not recorded. “Qiuyuan” reminds us that history happens not only on battlefields and in meeting rooms but also in kitchens, in fields, at bedsides—in every space where women quietly labor.

After “Qiuyuan,” Yang Benfen published “Floating Wood” and “I Who Was Once Fragrant,” continuing to write her own and her family’s stories. This woman in her 80s, with her plain words, has opened a window into the depths of history, allowing us to see those forgotten lives, those silent women who, though they never took the stage of history, held up an era with their own hands.

For any reader seeking to understand the fate of Chinese women in the 20th century, “Qiuyuan” is essential reading. It is not a grand historical work, but a love letter from one woman to another—a eulogy from a daughter to her mother, a tribute belated but never outdated.