Xi Story: Women breaking free from household chores to explore broader horizons

 

习主席的故事：女性从家务中解放出来，探索更广阔的天地

 

BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) — More than half a century ago, Xi Jinping, then a teenager, was among millions of “educated youths” sent from cities to live and work in the countryside.

半个多世纪以前，习近平还是个十多岁的少年，当时也曾是从城市被派往乡村生活和劳动的百万“知青”之一。

In Liangjiahe, a poor village on the Loess Plateau, he witnessed firsthand the hardships of rural life. The heavy burdens borne by women left a particular impression on him.

 

Xi once said to Wu Hui, a local villager and friend: “Why is the life of a woman always so hard?”

 

For him, this was not merely a lament. Even at that young age, he was already searching for ways to improve people’s lives.

 

Xi arrived in Liangjiahe before turning 16. He spent seven years there, joining the Communist Party of China (CPC), and later serving as the village’s Party chief.

 

Back then, the farming work for local villagers was quite heavy, and farmers’ clothes would wear out quickly. After a long day of labor in the fields, women still had to sit by dim kerosene lamps at night, doing the mending and sewing work for the whole family.

 

To ease the burden of rural women, Xi organized the villagers to establish a sewing cooperative.

 

Wu, who worked with him at that time, once recalled that the cooperative recruited skilled seamstresses to run sewing services, and the villagers made payments with a share of their income, their “work points,” for this service.