can I not do nonfiction?

In 1905, my mother's grandfather on her father's side was born in Henan. Before he was my mother's grandfather, he was a prisoner. Before he was a prisoner he was a soldier. A lot of things could happen to a soldier and a prisoner. Things we could hardly imagine in a temporary peaceful age. 

Before all these things happened, he was a kid in 19 century's China. It was a time where emperors and royal families existed but would not exist for long. It was the time all emperors died. It was the time a prodigious historical concept let out its final breath, collapsed, and a new age rose on its remains. 

The concept took the time of a whole generation to fall. 

For kids the concept was distant and blurry. They didn't realize that their lives would be a part of the revolution, that their time would be bloody red. In that glorious redness, their lives would be ignored, for you can't see a firefly with a rising sun shining bloody red. 

My mother's grandfather was named Zhang Xinshu. Last name "Zhang", first name Xinshu. "Xin" means "new" and "shu" means "book" or "write". He had 16 cousins, which, at that time, was a sign of being in a rich family. 

Despite having 16 cousins, his small family only contained his father, his stepmother, and two younger brothers by his stepmother. His father was a landlord who spent all their money on opium. His stepmother spent most of her love and care on his two brothers. His two brothers were more than ten years younger than him and would be almost half raised by him and his wife. His wife's name was Guo Xueshu, with "Xue" meaning "learning" and "shu" meaning "good manners for women". Both names were exquisitely rare among people at that time. 

Both names were about learning, because that was the only way a poor kid could change their fate and become rich. Zhang Xinshu was a rich kid, but would no longer be because his father would slowly sell all their lands for opium and necessities. He would remember his father's deeds for his whole life until he was a cool old grandpa with thousands of legends to tell kids, until he was even older, sitting in a wheelchair, trying to recognize his grand granddaughter's figure from the milky, dim color in his eyes. He would remember the days and nights haunted with the rotted sweet burning scents. He would remember it while his memory of father's face gradually got washed away. 

Before his father sold everything, Zhang Xinshu had the opportunity to go to school. To be fair, the wealth his ancestors accumulated was enough for them to live with no income. So the father did it. He lived with no income. 

After Zhang Xinshu grew up, he slowly bought the lands back because he didn't want his future generations to inherit nothing from this once rich and prosperous family. He was a retired veteran of Kuomintang's army who had fought in Second Sino-Japanese War at that time. He had money, fame, wife Guo Xueshu and three children, one of which became my grandfather. He had soldier friends who would die for each other. He also had bullet shreds deeply buried in his body that followed him to his grave; eyes that had seen wars and hands that had killed. He decided to use these hands to raise his sons and embrace his wife and buy the lands back for his sons and his sons' kids because at that time the war was over. The war was supposed to be over. At that time, 1949, the People's Republic of China was created and the red national flag with five yellow stars rose. It would rise forever since then, he would believe. And there would be peace.

He didn't know that there wouldn't. 

A nine-year-old Zhang Xinshu wouldn't know it because he was studying silk extractions and raising silkworms in a silk technique school and would not have known the world outside Henan. A seventeen-year-old Zhang Xinshu wouldn't expect that when he touched a gun for a first time, taken to army by a relative at a moonless night when he knew his father wouldn't care how much longer they could last with his family legacies burnt in a rotten sweet scent. A 44-year-old Zhang Xinshu wouldn't believe it when his friends gave him two tickets and suggested that he flee to Taiwan with his daughter. "I couldn't just leave for such a foreign place with only one of my families," he would say. And the friends would then laugh, and sigh, and cry, and drink like a soldier would drink in wartime if he could. And soon after that Zhang Xinshu would know there wouldn't be peace. In 1951 he would be deeply disappointed by the concept rising along with the national flag so brightly shining and so fiercely burning up not only every rotted custom in the past but also everything building it with its own flesh. He would not expect peace on another moonless night in 1961, when he, leading his small family, walked along a railway track 18 miles long from Ningxia to Baotou. My grandfather, his second son, was 12 years old at that time.

My grandfather soon became the eldest son. 

My grandfather's name was Zhang Qingping. He was born in 1949 in Beijing. His name was given when the sun just rose. "Qing" refers to "clear", and "ping" refers to "peace".