Our Story
A Memoir of Love and Life in China
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
A graphic memoir like no other: the true story of a marriage in China that spanned the twentieth century, told in vibrant, original paintings and prose.
WINNER OF AN ENGLISH PEN AWARD
Rao Pingru was a twenty-six-year-old soldier when he first saw the beautiful Mao Meitang. One glimpse of her through a window as she put on lipstick was enough to capture Pingru’s heart. It was a moment that sparked a union that would last almost sixty years.
But when Meitang passed away in 2008, Pingru realised that their marriage and all the small moments and memories of a life together, would be lost to history. And so at the age of eighty-eight, in an outpouring of love and grief, Pingru began to paint.
Our Story is a memorial to Pingru and Meitang’s epic romance, told through Pingru’s exquisitely detailed paintings and handwritten notes. We see Pingru and Meitang through the decades, through both poverty and good fortune, and as they grow so too does China: the nation undergoing political turmoil and seismic cultural change.
A tale both tragic and inspiring, of enduring love and simple values, Our Story is an old-fashioned romance that unfolds within the rush of a rapidly changing nation. A love letter, a work of folk art and a historical testament, Our Story is a truly unique graphic memoir.
'A beautifully warm, personal, human story of life, love and family' Forbidden Planet
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Using spare prose and stunning, full-color illustrations, Pingru reveal his struggles, joys, and enduring love for his wife over the course of their lives in a dramatically changing China. Pingru, a 95-year-old living in Shanghai, recalls the fun-filled games of dominoes of his childhood and the singular beauty of an evening at the foot of the Peace Bridge in Nancheng when he was 16. Pingru artfully sketches his service as an artillery platoon leader in the nationalist army in the 1940s; his attempts to run his own business after the war; and his painful separation from his family during his "reeducation through labor" in 1958. Though Pingru met Meitang twice when they were children, it wasn't until the spring of 1946, when Pingru was 25 years old, that his father accompanied Pingru to Meitang's family's house to arrange their marriage. He chronicles the pain of growing old and relives the utter devastation he feels when his wife Meitang's diabetes leads slowly to her death in 2004. Pingru's exquisite, visually dazzling memoir reveals an ordinary life lived in extraordinary times.