Today, I had a study session with my one-on-one teacher in my Chinese Writing class. It was our first meeting and I think it went well but the best part of this meeting was the conversation that we had afterwards. During our session, we covered many topics, but there was one topic that was captured my attention. This was the topic of “the left-behind children” in China. My teacher revealed to me that she was, in fact, a part of this group of children. To be accepted into this program that I am participating in, students have to take an advanced Chinese class that includes writing a 5000 word research thesis in Chinese. I did my thesis on this very topic, so I was extremely excited to finally meet someone who experienced this in their youth.
My teacher has an older sister who had heart problems as a child and to pay for her care, both of her parents had to move to Beijing to find better paying jobs. Her sister was moved to the house of my teacher’s uncle which was very far away from my teacher’s house in completely different city. Because of this, my teacher lived on her own from the age of eight until she was about 16 years old. She shared with me the details of her upbringing and it is an amazing story. She lived in their big family house all alone and cooked, cleaned, went to school, and pretty much raised herself all alone. She mentioned that during the earlier stages, her neighbors would check on her from time to time to make sure she was safe and bring her groceries but was mostly alone for those eight years. Her parents would come home to visit once a year during the Chinese New Year but that was it.
I was very curious what life was like for her as a child growing up and she mentioned that until the third grade, she was a very average student and didn’t care much for studying. But then, one day her parents had a serious heart-to-heart talk with her about her future and from that point on she became very focused on her studies and eventually was able to get accepted into and finish her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree at one of the top 10 universities in all of China. This is a subject of much discussion in China and I hope to learn more about it during my time here.
On another note, when I was on my way to eat lunch today, I saw a guy selling live animals on the street. I had a hunch that the chickens were going to be sold fresh and then taken somewhere else to be killed and processed. I was in for quite the surprise when I realized that the man that sold the chickens, ducks and pigeons was also the man that ran the little meat stall across from the truck. Then, along came some customers and the man went to get some chickens. He weighed them and then just ripped their heads off which really shocked me. This was my first time to see such a setup on the street, but this is probably about as fresh as it gets.
Tony in China 