Student or Learner
Does "when the child had become a woman of power, and such a legend in her own lifetime" mean "when the child had become a woman of power, and had become such a legend in her own lifetime"?
The infant, whose first given name was Shumeng ("Pure and Simple"), was born into an odd, troubled family. Decades later, when the child had become a woman of power, and such a legend in her own lifetime that the facts of her childhood were overlaid by myth, she remarked to a laborer in a receiving line during a visit to the city of Tianjin: "Your father was an oil worker, mine was a capenter - we're both of the working class." But it was not quite so. The father was a carpenter who managed to start his own wheelwright's shop, acquire a small inn for overnight travelers, and later buy farmland.
The passage is followed by "Dour at best, her father, Li Dewen, drank heavily, and enjoy7ed a poor reputation in Zhucheng. A man of sixty when Shumeng was born, Li took little interest in her, leaving a totally negative impression on her memory of him. His relation with Shumeng's mother, ambiguous from the start, was remote when it was not stormy. "
I failed to understand "dour at best." What does it mean?
When he was at his most cheerful, he was still dour. Normally he was very severe/miserable.
dour - WordReference.com Dictionary of English. "At best" means "at least/to say the least". That is, when he was in a good mood, he was dour. So imagine when he was in a bad mood!
Please be aware that I'm neither a native English speaker nor a teacher.