Chen Zimei

Chen Zimei, the daughter of Chen Duxiu, is the child of mother Gao Junman, and she and her father shared a family background tied to the early Chinese Communist Party. She and her younger brother Chen Henian were childhood companions. In her teens, during the First United Front and the Northern Expedition, her father was busy with official duties and the family scattered and regrouped frequently. Chen Zimei, with her mother and siblings, lived in Shanghai, Nanjing, and other places. After her parents divorced, the siblings left Shanghai with their mother and moved to a shabby residence in Nanjing; pressed by poverty, she pursued studies while working part-time, first in telegraphy and communications technology, then switching to obstetrics-related vocational training. Near graduation, her mother Gao Junman died of illness.

In terms of marriage and family changes, Chen Zimei met and married Zhang Guoxiang, who was ten years older and worked at the Bank of Nanjing and the Supply and Marketing Cooperative. Zhang Guoxiang already had a wife and children, but he concealed this from Chen. In 1936, their third child (a second daughter) Zhang Shude was born. Later, Zhang Guoxiang appeared as a “cousin” with a nanny who had the children; the nanny revealed herself to be Zhang Guoxiang’s wife Cai, and the relationship deteriorated, leading to divorce. In 1937 Chen Zimei and Zhang Guoxiang fled to Chongqing with two sons and three daughters. In 1939 Japan began bombing Chongqing; Chen Zimei and her family moved to Kunming and Hong Kong, and soon returned to Shanghai. During the war, her relationship with Zhang Guoxiang broke down, and after the war they officially divorced; Zhang refused to pay alimony, and Chen Zimei was forced to live independently with four of her biological children.

After the divorce, Chen Zimei returned to Shanghai and worked as a midwife in a hospital. She later met and married Li Huanzhao, with whom she had two more sons. Throughout the wartime and postwar years, the education and growth of the children she had with Zhang Guoxiang remained a family focus. In the early 1950s, most of her children studied in Shanghai; the eldest son Zhang Zhaoshan enlisted in the army and was sent to the Nanjing Aviation College, later was charged and died in his twenties. The second daughter Zhang Shude, after completing middle school in early 1953, entered Shandong University; her mother told her that her maternal grandfather was Chen Duxiu. During the Cultural Revolution, Chen Zimei lost contact with Hong Kong and the mainland, and her fate remained uncertain.

In 1997, Chen Zimei appeared in New York; she had previously lived in Hong Kong and Canada, and later worked in obstetrics in Canada and opened a private obstetric hospital. From 1975 she settled in the United States, and in 1982 she bought a cooperative apartment in Rego Park, Queens. In 1991 she became ill and was hospitalized; during her hospitalization, her savings were stolen, and she could no longer afford the co-op maintenance fees. The Chinese Overseas Friendship Association and related organizations stepped in to assist. In 1997, learning that her biological children on the mainland were still seeking their mother, contact was restored. On April 14, 2004, Chen Zimei died at St. John’s Hospital in New York, at an advanced age; for a long time her body went unclaimed, and was later arranged by a charity, with a memorial service held in the same year.