Biographers extract extraordinary tales from lives of ordinary people

陈小将

Tong Xiaojun, 34, is a biographer who focuses not on the great people of history, but instead on those who make up its very fabric.

He is often commissioned by family members who want to record the contemporaneous role an elderly or deceased relative played as momentous events and change unfolded around them.

Sometimes the writing of a memoir also serves as a healing process in the loss of a loved one or to build better understanding in a troubled family relationship.

Ju Ruiqi, 41, an administrative supervisor in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, commissioned Tong to write about the life of her grandfather. The brief profile is intended to introduce the "legendary" man to his descendants and be included in the family tree, she said.

"My grandpa's lifetime, if we look at it from a broader perspective, was a precise footnote in the dramatic changes and development of New China," Ju said.

"At first my father wanted me to write the profile, but I was worried that I might not be that professional a writer. So I searched on the social media platform Xiaohongshu (Red-Note) and found Tong," she said.

Last year, Chinese social media platforms witnessed a sudden boom in the professional writing of memoirs of the elderly, providing writers with a decent income stream and shedding light on the lives of ordinary older people who helped transform the country.