Mission possible

While most people slow down in their 70s, Jiang Shumei has published her first book - a biography. Sun Ye finds out more about her incredible life.

Jiang Shumei was illiterate for much of her life. She only started learning to write Chinese characters at 60. Not only did she become proficient enough to read the voluminous Mo Yan collections, she turned to writing at 75 and produced a popular memoir a year later. The slim, vivacious, silver-haired grandmother, born in Juye, Shandong province in 1937, has recently published Chaotic Times, Poor Times, a 100,000-word nonfiction with incredible tales from the past century. Writing the book did not come easy because Jiang only knows a thousand or so characters. But she invented rhyming songs, and simple poetic verses and asked her grandchildren to write them down so that she could memorize the characters. She watched the China Central Television's opera channel so that she could learn more characters by reading the subtitles.

Eventually, she had the basics of written language so she could write her life story.