Gift of Love Behind a rural Chinese family’s rise from deep poverty is a mother’s lifelong sacrifice.

By Justin Jin

Layer by layer, lace by lace, Mother Wu draped her daughter in the garment she began while Xia was pregnant, before she knew the baby would be a girl, let alone what kind of girl she would grow up to be.

Mother Wu crowned Xia with the golden headgear. Everything fit. Mother Wu’s stoic face melted, the deep lines of hardship recast with the dignity of sacrifice. According to the Dong people, the dress should be presented to the child during an auspicious event in her early adult life, usually a wedding. But for Xia and her mother, today is the day: Xia won a university place.

When Mother Wu heard about her daughter's university acceptance, she rushed back from her work at the big city to celebrate with her -- and the entire the village.

Xia, Mother Wu's daughter, arrives at university to study food science and transforms into a city woman.

Friends and family gather at dawn to pull up a house that has been stacked by the master engineers.

An 80-year-old woman weaves her own funeral cloth so her children will not be burdened with buying one when she dies.

The Dong song is listed as a UNESCO heritage. Women wearing hand-woven embroidery perform in the spring rain.

Shin-deep in wet cement, a frail 56-year-old Mother Wu bends down to pave a new courtyard with large brute machines pounding the ground around her. Mother Wu’s worker attire does not reveal, however, the achievement of a woman who single-handedly raises her four children determined they would be educated, even though she had never been to school. Their slow and steady rise from abject rural poverty to material comfort means Mother Wu’s life’s work is almost complete.

International writer and photographer Justin Jin first met Mother Wu in 2012 while traveling in the mountain villages. He developed a friendship with the family and have visited them over the years.

Appreciate

Credits:

Justin Jin