Wang Yangshi

Wang Yangshi was the mother of Wang Hongwen, a former political figure in the People’s Republic of China. She was from Kaiyuantun, a rural area on the outskirts of Changchun, Jilin Province, and was born into an ordinary farming family. Throughout her life, she worked diligently in agriculture and took responsibility for raising and caring for her children.

She married Wang Guosheng, and together they had five children—four sons and one daughter. The family lived in poverty and relied on hard manual labor to sustain their livelihood.

During the Japanese occupation of Northeast China, life for the family became increasingly difficult. To help make ends meet, she arranged for her eldest son, Wang Hongwen, to work for her sister’s family tending pigs in exchange for food after each harvest.

In her later years, after learning that her son Wang Hongwen had been sentenced to life imprisonment, Wang Yangshi suffered a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by emotional distress and passed away. Her life reflected the hardship and endurance typical of rural women in pre-modern China.