Early Life and Family
Deng was born into an ethnically Hakka Han family in Paifang village (牌坊村), Xiexing township (协兴镇), Guang'an County in Sichuan province, approximately 160 km from Chongqing (formerly spelled Chungking). Deng's ancestors can be traced back to Meixian County in Guangdong Province, a prominent ancestral area for the Hakka people, and had been settled in Sichuan for several generations.
Deng had the name Deng Xiansheng, with the given name meaning "early/first" "sage/saint." All of his siblings had given names beginning with "xian." Deng's father, Deng Wenming, was a middle-level landowner and had studied at the University of Law and Political Science in Chengdu. His mother, surnamed Dan, died early in Deng's life, leaving Deng, his three brothers and three sisters. At the age of five, Deng was sent to a traditional Chinese-style private primary school, followed by a more modern primary school at the age of seven.
Deng's first wife, one of his schoolmates from Moscow, died when she was 24, a few days after giving birth to Deng's first child, a baby girl, who also died. His second wife, Jin Weiying, left him after Deng came under political attack in 1933. His third wife, Zhuo Lin, was the daughter of an industrialist in Yunnan Province. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, and married Deng a year later in front of Mao's cave dwelling in Yan'an. They had five children: three daughters (Deng Lin, Deng Nan and Deng Rong) and two sons (Deng Pufang and Deng Zhifang).
Read more about this topic: Deng Xiaoping
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“We’ve only just begun to learn about the water and its secrets, just as we’ve only touched on outer space. We don’t entirely rule out the possibility that there might be some form of life on another planet. Then why not some entirely different form of life in a world we already know is inhabited by millions of living creatures?”
—Harry Essex (b. 1910)
“A ball player’s got to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That’s why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.”
—Joe Dimaggio (b. 1914)