The “My Life, My China” series is an interview series jointly produced by China Institute, Fudan University and Guan Video, covering 10 Chinese journalists who work in China, talking about China in their eyes. It looks at hotly debated issues including corruption, immigration, criticism against China, and also, party membership, as they are all Communist Party members.

In this episode, Beijing Review editor Liu Yunyun recalls her family’s life in a poor and backward village before China’s economic reform, when the main decoration in their living room was the New Year calendar featuring the country’s leaders. Liu was confused as a teenager about her mother’s strong belief in the “man in the calendar”, and that the reform— which cost her mother to lose her job at a state-owned enterprise — would deliver opportunities for everyone in the village to lead a better life.

Years later, she witnessed the hometown she once desperately wanted to escape from transformed into “a beautiful garden district” of a bustling city. Liu came to understand her mother and the kind of belief that sustains people when they are faced with adversity and a highly uncertain future. 

Liu Yunyun is the Assistant Executive Editor of Beijing Review, China’s only national English news weekly since 1958.