Hong Shouzi

Hong Shouzi (1918–2007) was the second wife of Yao Yilin, former Vice Premier of the State Council of China and member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. She was originally from Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, but was born in Tianjin, and came from a prominent family; her grandfather was a well-known industrialist. After Yao Yilin’s first wife, Zhou Bin, passed away in 1990, Hong Shouzi lived with Yao during his later years.

When she was two years old, Hong Shouzi lost her mother and was sent with her mother’s coffin back to live with her grandmother in Dongzhi for several years. After her father remarried, her stepmother brought her back to Tianjin. She and her younger sister, Hong Kangzi (born 1920), both attended Nankai Middle School in Tianjin. In 1937, following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the sisters fled Tianjin and made their way to their uncle’s home in Dongzhi. After the war ended, her sister remained in Dongzhi, becoming a rural primary school teacher, while Hong Shouzi returned to Tianjin to continue her education, later studying at Yenching Women’s University (the predecessor of Beijing Normal University).

The Hong family was a distinguished lineage, historically connected by marriage to the influential Zhou family, which produced Qing official Zhou Fu. The family’s development in Tianjin was also linked to the Anhui-based political faction (the Anhui Clique) led by figures such as Li Hongzhang and Duan Qirui. This heritage gave Hong Shouzi deep ties to both Tianjin’s elite society and Anhui’s gentry.

In her later life with Yao Yilin, she remained low-profile but was a significant presence in the family. She attended key events, such as the unveiling of Yao Yilin’s statue, and was remembered for her steady companionship. Despite living quietly, she was seen as an important figure within the Yao household and a witness to the intertwined destinies of prominent Chinese families during the 20th century.

Hong Shouzi passed away in 2007 at the age of 89. Her life reflected both the privileges and the hardships of being a woman from a notable family navigating the dramatic transformations of modern Chinese history.