Page 4 of Memoir: Foolishly Brave Unconditionally Blessed, From a Chinese Girl to American Working Mother

March 22, 2022 by Jennifer Colegrove Ph.D. founder, Touch Display Research Inc.

Below is page 4 of my: “Memoir: Foolishly Brave Unconditionally Blessed, From a Chinese Girl to American Working Mother”.

(Continued from page 3)

I remember my paternal great-grandmother (my biology grandfather’s mother). She didn’t live in the same house as my grandparents, but somewhere nearby. My great-grandmother visited my grandparents sometimes. My great-grandma was born in 1899 in China and passed away in 1975. Foot-binding was a traditional common practice when she was young, so her feet were only three inches long. They were proudly called “Three-inch Golden Lotus Flowers” in old China. She wore handmade, black fabric shoes with a white fabric sole. The front toe of the shoe was so narrow that it looked like the pointed shoes you can find in modern days, but the whole shoe was only three inches long and two inches wide. Great-grandma wore the normal clothes for Chinese old ladies in the 1970s. She wore a dark blue blouse with twisted fabric buttons on the side and black pants wrapped at the ankle so the “Three-Inch Golden Lotus” was proudly visible. She would take small but fast steps to my grandparents’ house to chat with my grandma.

My parental grandma’s feet were a similar shape to my great-grandma’s but larger, about five inches long and also a little wider than my great grandmother’s. Grandma was born in 1919. She started to wrap her feet when she was six or seven years old, as instructed by her parents. She told me that at those times, if a girl didn’t wrap her feet small, she wouldn’t be able to find a husband when she grew up. In the 1930s the culture changed and the Chinese began to liberate women’s feet. So, when my grandma was about ten years old, her parents stopped forcing her to wrap her feet. However, at ten years old, the bones of her toes had formed into a point. That shape was with her the rest of her life, until she passed away in the year 1999 at age 81.

Figure:  Old Chinese realistic mud sculptures: I bought these figurines in China because they looked like my grandparents in the farm village. The old lady is making a sole for a shoe. (My grandmother’s right hand was handicapped due to an illness, and she could only do some simple sewing.)

One time my Grandma talked about Chinese foot binding. She said, “The old poem was ‘Three-Inch Golden Lotus performs a lovely walking gesture, looks like a water lotus waving in the wind.’ Later, people changed the saying to ‘People all sit in the bus covered with skirt, nobody sees your feet.’” I was about four or five years old as I sat beside my grandma and watched her patching old clothes for my uncles. Her whole life was influenced by the cultural trends of China in her time. Her generation went through the process of “feet liberation.” However, my grandma couldn’t read or write.

(to be continued, or you can purchase and read the book now.)

This Memoir includes:

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Praises of Foolishly Brave Unconditionally Blessed

“It is a good book. Hard to put down. Jerry “

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About Touch Display Research Inc.

Touch Display Research, Inc. (https://TouchDisplayResearch.com) is a technology market research and consulting firm specializing in touch screen and emerging display technologies such as OLED displays, quantum dots, flexible displays, e-paper displays, ITO-replacement, Active pen, near-eye displays, smart windows, micro & mini LED, gesture controls, voice controls, eye controls and Batteries. Touch Display Research helps technology companies grow and connecting their technologies to the marketplace. We have been writing about OLED industry for over 10 years. We were the first company to publish Quantum Dot market reports. We were the first company to publish Active Pen market report, and ITO-replacement market report.  We have always been there to analyze new and emerging technologies. Touch Display Research provides reports, consulting, and due diligence to touch suppliers, display manufacturers, semiconductor companies, consumer electronics ODMs/OEMs, material suppliers, investors and venture capitalists. Battery Market Research is a subsidiary division of Touch Display Research, and focuses on battery technologies and market. For report and consulting, please visit our website: TouchDisplayResearch.com. 

About the Author

Dr. Jennifer K. Colegrove is the founder and CEO of Touch Display Research Inc. (www.TouchDisplayResearch.com), a market research and consulting firm that focuses on touch screen, display, sensor, battery and emerging technologies.

Dr. Colegrove has over twenty years of industry experience.  She holds many analyst “firsts”: She was the first analyst to write a comprehensive touch screen industry report since 2006 (therefore, she is called “Doctor Touch” by her colleagues); she was the first analyst to write an active pen industry report since 2013; she was the first analyst to write an ITO-replacement industry report since 2013; she was the first analyst to write a quantum dot industry report since 2013; she was the first analyst to write a touchless HMI industry report since 2014.

She has authored over one hundred market forecast reports and over one hundred published articles. She is frequently quoted by media and industry press including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. Dr. Colegrove has been a featured speaker and session chairperson at over one hundred worldwide conferences. Dr. Colegrove has advised over two hundred companies through her standard reports or consulting projects in recent years.

She has five patent applications with one U.S. patent granted.

Dr. Colegrove has a Ph.D. from the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University in Ohio. She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees with honors from Peking University in Beijing, China. To learn more about Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and her work, you can visit the website: www.TouchDisplayResearch.com  or JenniferColegrove.com