Life had already fallen apart in China when my mother was born in 1948. The Japanese invasion had ravaged the country for eight years in the midst of the Chinese Civil War that ended with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) taking control of the country in 1949.
At one years old, my mother and all her countrymen were re-solidified as one people under Mao Zedong who declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
As the new nation entered a tumultuous period of state building, normalcy was contained in a three story apartment in a middle class neighborhood in Guangzhou.