Recording the past in the words of those who lived it

"I fear I have failed in my effort to understand her, but at least I tried — sometimes, that's all one can do," wrote Rao Chenxi, a student at Beijing's Moonshot Academy, a private institution serving students from primary through high school. Her words appear in the epilogue she appended to her oral history transcription, a project centered on her paternal grandmother — a woman toward whom she had long harbored deep misgivings.