At first, she studied with her granddaughter, reading her textbooks and fairy tales together. She then tried to follow the subtitles of TV programs, lines of her favorite operas and ads on street billboards.
Six months later, she could write, though very slowly. Her family encouraged her to write stories, as she had always been a good storyteller.
Jiang says she wrote "just for fun", but her first piece was about the painful memories of starving.
"I felt very sad when I looked back on those tough times. I seldom cry, but my words moved me to tears," says Jiang, who sometimes had to drop her pen to calm down.
But she persevered: "It is worth writing down and I should share it with my children to let them know what happened in those days. They will understand today's easy living was very hard-won."
In a couple of weeks, she finished the story, "Two Years of Starving". After her daughter put the article on her blog, it quickly received thousands of hits and was reproduced by a literary magazine.
Jiang was paid and inspired. "I just wrote about very common things in my life - I never expected people would want to read them." Since then, she has spent all her spare time writing.
"STINGING DETAIL"
Unused to writing at a table, Jiang sits on sofa, writing on a pillow on her legs. Sometimes she writes all night long.
She writes about other people too - a woman with bound feet, a mute wife, and rude bandits. "Jiang's stories, from a female perspective, embody the indigenous cruelty and kindness of Chinese people in stinging detail," says critic Shi Hang.
"There is no data or any political concepts in my mom's books," says her daughter Zhang Ailing. "She had no idea of revolution, liberation, movements. She just recorded what happened to her and her fellow villagers."
Ma Guoxing, a writer, says Jiang's stories are real and readable; words are free of exaggerations or complicated idioms. Jiang does not add comments; she just writes in a straightforward way.
"Granny Jiang makes me feel ashamed," says Ma.
With two books published, Jiang was invited to be a member of Heilongjiang Provincial Writers Association in 2014. A year later, she joined the Chinese Writers Association, China's top literary organization.
But the official recognition is less important to her than her family's approval.
"My brother laughed at me when I said I was going to write, but after reading my books, he cried, saying my words brought his memories back," she recalls.
"Also, he learned, for the first time, how his little sister had experienced so many difficulties after leaving home."
However, some readers have complained online that Jiang's folktales collection was "so scary", with "too many ghosts" and it "reveals the selfishness and rudeness of human beings".
But Jiang says the folktales are worth recording, as most of the storytellers were 70 or over. "If I didn't write them down, they would be lost."
She has also struck a chord with young readers.
"She reminds me of my grandma, who used to reading interesting tales to me when I was little," one micro blogger commented.
"She is the prime example of how retirement shouldn't be about winding down," said another.
Jiang is now busy writing her fourth book. Despite failing hearing, she has no plans to stop: "I am an old granny, but a still young writer."
