My road to college

I was born into a tungsten miner’s family in southern China. Being the offspring of self-subsistencing farmers, my parents had relatively little education. As a matter of fact, they had no more than 7 years of schooling between them. Not surprisingly, their earning capacity was severely limited. My mother had to work extremely hard as a dress-maker at home to supplement the family income, while looking after five kids at the same time. With a meager income and a big family to support, my parents had for most of their lives struggled to keep their heads above the water. Indeed, as far as I could remember, my family had to make do without many common items that are readily available today, not alone luxuries.

When I was 16 (one year before my high school graduation), my father died of miner’s lung disease. I had the option of following my father’s footsteps and became a tungsten miner myself. However, my mother did not want to see me going through the pains and sufferings a miner’s lung disease had brought to my father. Indeed, I am forever indebted to my mom for her insisting on my completing high school against the opinions of my relatives and friends.

Coming out of high school, I went to countryside to undergo re-education. I stayed in a collective farm where about 20 young people like myself also came to work as farmers. We made earth bricks, plant crops and built a place where we called home. In later 1977, we learnt that an open exam for colleges and universities would be held during the year. At the time, there was no electricity in our self-built home, whose windows were covered with black plastics that were retrieved from chemical fertilizer bags. After a day’s exhausting work, I would try to study as mush as possible under a diesel flame (the only lighting available). With the cold wind blowing through the plastic window covers, the diesel flame generated floating black smokes that covered one’s nose and caused tears coming out of one’s eyes constantly. Despite all these misgivings, I became one of the only two students (out of more than 100) in my school year, who passed the national university entrance exam in 1977.

In 1981, when I was near the end of my undergraduate course, I decided to pursue further education. At the time, a Chinese Ministry of Education Scholarship was available for doing postgraduate study overseas. By sheer perseverance and good fortune, I somehow managed to come through the open exam with flying colors, and received the scholarship that profoundly changed the direction of my career as well as my life.

[Tigerbalm]

I suppose every person goes through various stages in life, from a baby, a toddler, a teenager, a mature grownup, a middle-ager, an old-ager and finally to a tomb-sitter. There is nothing you or I can do to avert this process despite remarkable advances in medical science taking place in this modern age. That is to say, sooner or later, both you and I will become tomb-sitters somewhere in this planet. The way how one deals with this issue will have strong bearings on his/her outlook of life.

Getting old is not a problem for me, as I believe I have made contributions to the human society through my past work; and now through summarizing my experience, which I hope will be of value to future generations. With this type of mindset, I seem to be happy everyday in spite of some boring daily routines I have to go through, and in spite of apparently becoming older and older with each passing day. If there is a choice between living under constant worries/pressure for ever and living a daily happy life for a limited span, I am sure many will choose the latter rather than the former.

[红小兵]

once a person start talking about the past. he/she is getting old :)

[Tigerbalm]

Yes, I have been living in Englishs-speaking countries since 1983 (staying in Australia between 1983-2002, and moving to USA in early 2002), being one of the first group from China to study overseas. I plan to put down my experience episode by episode in English, so that one day when I have more time, I will prepare an autobiography in Chinese based on these episodes. Certainly, there will be more episode to come on this space. Thank you for your interest.

[红小兵]

looks like the writter has been living in the states for many years. Typing in English might be earsier. But I always think this kind of story can be more readable if written in Chinese. Maybe because I read Chinese most of the time.

This looks like a overview. more detailed stories?