Jing Yidan, former TV host. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In 1968, Jing's parents were sent away from home during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). At the time, her 16-year-old elder sister, who had studied till middle school, went to work on farms in the villages of Northeast China. As a result, 13-year-old Jing, the oldest child left at home, had to take care of her two younger brothers with the help of their maternal grandfather.

During Spring Festival in 1969, like many other families, Jing's parents and elder sister could not visit home, so Jing, then 14, washed all the bedclothes and cleaned the house, while her 11-year-old brother was sent to buy food with the coupons collected for the festival.

"At that time, food was allotted according to coupons, but sometimes even with coupons one couldn't get a certain kind of food that was limited in supply. In the snow-covered area (it was winter), he (the brother) carefully carried money and the coupons inside his pocket and went to a shop named Shisanmen time after time to buy different kinds of food. A young boy as he was, he never made a mistake," Jing writes in her new book.

In a letter her brother wrote to their mother that Jing recalls in the book, he reported what he got: "In the month of Spring Festival, each person was allotted 0.5 kilograms of peanut, 0.1 kg sesame oil, 0.35 kg soybean oil, 6.5 kg flour and 1.5 kg rice. We must have a good festival!"