Chen Fangling's story was equally legendary, and in some ways a mirror of her mother's. Working as a talented nurse in Nanjing, she fell in love with a playwright at a local acting troupe. Her mother, due to the turbulent times, refused to approve the match, and Chen Fangling eventually had to marry the man Chen Xiaowen would later know as her father. Chen Fangling resented her mother for this, the irony being that it was that same mother who had once defied convention by leaving an unhappy marriage.
Chen Xiaowen also traces the stories of her step-grandfather and stepfather, as well as her biological grandfather and father, and the eras they lived in.
As for the title, Chen Xiaowen says that although the book is about her family story, it is named Grandma's Bitter Tea because her grandmother was the matriarch of the family, whose life spanned 106 years. Moreover, the lives of her grandmother and other family members were like a cup of tea, which tastes bitter but also sweet.
"The book is nonfiction, but it reads like a novel," says Zhang Li, a literature professor at Beijing Normal University. "By reading the book, I came to understand the complicated relationship between Chen Xiaowen and her family members. Through the book, I found ordinary people's lives can be so magnificent. The realism, drama, cruelty and warmth of fate can all be traced in its pages."
Chen Xiaowen says that, because she had never written a book before, she lacked confidence in her writing and saved the file on her computer under the name Practical Pig Farming Manual for fear that her family might read it. Then she plucked up the courage to send the draft to an editor, who told her the prose seemed weighed down by "old grievances".
She was surprised to hear the comment, but when she reread the draft, she agreed with the assessment. She then revised it four times until she was satisfied, and the final version won recognition from Beijing-based Dolphin Books, which published it.
Chen Xiaowen says that working on the book was a process through which she came to reevaluate her understanding of her beloved family members. "Before my writing, I had fixed impressions of them, especially my grandmother and mother. My grandmother was kind yet resolute, and my mother always seemed delicate.
"Through writing, I began to understand what shaped my grandmother's personality and I found that when my family faced difficulties, my mother was always the one who stood firm," she adds.
