Post by MYR Admin on Apr 1, 2007 18:52:28 GMT 7
Chapter 4: About My Home
Quick Stats:
Pages: 27 to 33
Chapter Length: 5 page
Illustrations: 1 page
______________________________________________________
Chapter 4: About My Home
Theoretically, for a person who fears bothersome like me, I should feel somewhat happy and contented after going through the many hard times, the repetitive back aching, leg tiring process to buy a house. Furthermore, this is the first time I’m buying a house ever since living alone at the age of 13, I should be grateful! But the problem is: ‘home’ is actually a very vague and obscure image for me.
The first home in my memory is at Hangzhou, which is something before seven years of age. I love to tag along the workers, and learn to do some jobs from them. My favorite is to hammer a nail, but they all fear that I may hammer my finger and then have trouble explaining to my father, so they instead let me do minor jobs such as sandpapering the tables and beds. In order to prove that I was actually very strong despite my small size, whenever there is watermelon distribution, I will always rush to compete with the adults to throw the watermelon towards the distributor at the further end. But apparently I always never have enough energy, and the watermelon will thus smash and scatter all over the ground. Finally, I was once punished by my mother to eat up the entire smashed watermelon all by myself. She only let me returned home after my stomach was almost bursting with the watermelon. At that time, my father is constantly on business travels, the times he returns home is quantified by the number of weeks in a year. It will only be my mother and I, and my babysitter. Whenever there is thunder, I will be allowed to leave behind my babysitter and sleep with my mother instead, because my mother is terribly afraid of thunder.
After seven, we moved to the nearby limited ‘business class residence’: My house became the entire discussion topic of my impressed young friends when they visit. It was only until an overseas relative who came to visit my home and said to my mother: “In overseas, even the renovation of an old folks’ home is at least this standard.” that my pride that just blossomed diminished away. After my father left for overseas, my self confidence was even less than ever. My junior school headmaster, who used to visit us often, was much cooler towards me as he can no longer obtain foreign cigar, construction fund etc. from my father. When I was in third grade, I even went home and told my mum: “The tea’s real cold after the person left. (Direct translation: a proverb in Chinese)”. Judging by my mother’s expression at that moment, she was definitely surprised at my level of understanding and ability to express the proverb. The days after at home: there were dinners, mahjong sessions, drinking sessions, dances, singing sessions, every night with fresh entertainment, with different occasions came different people. Even with me shutting myself close in my room doing my homework, I can still feel the happening atmosphere from outside. But I did not feel frustrated with it because I thought my mother would be very happy then. It was on my ninth birthday when I awoke happily to find that the entire house was almost empty. That was the day my parents divorced. My mother took away a lorry of furniture with her, I saw her reluctance, but it was the many unbearable that enabled her to leave behind her nine year old daughter in the empty house. The crying while sending away the lorry became a dark patch in my memory, but in the evening, I was again smiling while inviting my young friends who came to celebrate my birthday. The eight and nine year olds back then were all very obedient, they said nothing about the empty house and pretended nothing was wrong. We all sat on the bare floor to cut my birthday cake. Now that I recall, I am really grateful for them.
The following days, I know that ‘when the boat reaches the shore, it will know the way’ (Chinese proverb that Mang Lai Kuan always used in Eternal Happiness). Although the independent days were coming a tad too early, but it clearly shows that life has no obstacle that can’t be overcome. In the morning, I wake up as usual to tie my hair into pigtails, and make a bowl of porridge, putting on my red scarf and head off to school. Like other kids, I attend morning assembly, raise the national flag, attend classes. When it was dinner time, the neighboring family will automatically unlock their gate and allow me to join them for a meal. I in fact became a happy little bird at that period of time. When my paternal grandparents came to pick me up, I was a little reluctant even.
As my grandparents were retired lecturers, my new home is the lecturers’ hostel in the university. The kids next door were all from well educated families, and thus were all excellent in their studies. I, on the other hand, under the love and spoiling of my paternal grandparents became naughty and dominating. Luckily my grandfather is extremely strict in ‘academic’, thus with his high expectations and under his guidance, my academic results were not too bad. Furthermore, my bad temper at home was recognized as ‘independence, leadership and creativity’ at school and thus was selected as the monitor and leader for youth club – it was quite unbelievable. Since I have a lot of activities in school, this has reduced the time I spend at home. The balcony at home was full of my grandmother’s plants. The little time I have at home is spent on this balcony to seed and water the plants, thus I grew up to appreciate every grass and trees around.
Living with the elderly, you will not speak much but will instead benefit a lot. In future I must write articles about how my grandmother taught me to do floral arrangement, wrap dumplings, make fragrance bag, make a kite, sing operas, pick herbal medicine, plant flowers, and many other skills. When I was young, I suspected that my grandmother used to earn for a living with skills when she was young, and not the precious daughter of an established family that she claimed she was. Anyway, I had yet enough time living with my grandparents when I was brought to US, and later truly started out my independent living – I was thirteen that year. It was only much later that I learned from my friend that it was definitely not an easy thing for a thirteen year old girl to be living alone in New York city. First of all, you need to cook, then you need to shop for groceries and ask for discount, you need to do your own laundry, pay your own bills, you need to keep cleaning up the apartment that kept being messed up, you need to change the burnt bulb, you need to keep moving place due to the landlord’s request or if there was a thief next door, or reasons of all sort. Also, you will have countless of silent and serene night… you will in fact be so used to loneliness, that even when you’re in a crowd, you can no longer sense the presence of others.
Thus, when I came to this ‘family’ of Hong Kong TVB station at the age of 19, I was a little unaccustomed, because I realize that people is constantly at my surrounding, especially when everyone is paying attention to you, teaching you, loving and protecting you, supporting you, it is a little shock… Although initially I still can’t differentiate the reality within the film and outside the film, but having your film’s parents’ warmth and concern, your film’s friends’ help and support, your film’s lover’s passion through life and death, everyday, day and night, it is like they’ve brought this emotion voided person some happy memories, how can I not love this ‘home’?
Like the months and years that have past, be it the warm home or the lonely home, it is just a part of our journey, it will become a memory, and this memory will become a treasure. When I was to leave the TVB family in July 2005, it was also as if fated, it is not something that human can plan. Now having a new ‘home’ and new ‘family’, it is yet another new environment.
The coming and going of the many ‘homes’ in the past years has taught me not to be obstinate about a certain matter or certain person. Whenever you feel that you can’t let go of a certain matter or a certain person, you only need to think that this person is just coincidentally this person, this matter is just coincidentally this matter, there will be more of such coincidences in future, then you will be able to let go and be free. There is no matter that is too big, there is no need to be foolish, and where does home lie? Home lies everywhere.
Quick Stats:
Pages: 27 to 33
Chapter Length: 5 page
Illustrations: 1 page
______________________________________________________
Chapter 4: About My Home
Theoretically, for a person who fears bothersome like me, I should feel somewhat happy and contented after going through the many hard times, the repetitive back aching, leg tiring process to buy a house. Furthermore, this is the first time I’m buying a house ever since living alone at the age of 13, I should be grateful! But the problem is: ‘home’ is actually a very vague and obscure image for me.
The first home in my memory is at Hangzhou, which is something before seven years of age. I love to tag along the workers, and learn to do some jobs from them. My favorite is to hammer a nail, but they all fear that I may hammer my finger and then have trouble explaining to my father, so they instead let me do minor jobs such as sandpapering the tables and beds. In order to prove that I was actually very strong despite my small size, whenever there is watermelon distribution, I will always rush to compete with the adults to throw the watermelon towards the distributor at the further end. But apparently I always never have enough energy, and the watermelon will thus smash and scatter all over the ground. Finally, I was once punished by my mother to eat up the entire smashed watermelon all by myself. She only let me returned home after my stomach was almost bursting with the watermelon. At that time, my father is constantly on business travels, the times he returns home is quantified by the number of weeks in a year. It will only be my mother and I, and my babysitter. Whenever there is thunder, I will be allowed to leave behind my babysitter and sleep with my mother instead, because my mother is terribly afraid of thunder.
After seven, we moved to the nearby limited ‘business class residence’: My house became the entire discussion topic of my impressed young friends when they visit. It was only until an overseas relative who came to visit my home and said to my mother: “In overseas, even the renovation of an old folks’ home is at least this standard.” that my pride that just blossomed diminished away. After my father left for overseas, my self confidence was even less than ever. My junior school headmaster, who used to visit us often, was much cooler towards me as he can no longer obtain foreign cigar, construction fund etc. from my father. When I was in third grade, I even went home and told my mum: “The tea’s real cold after the person left. (Direct translation: a proverb in Chinese)”. Judging by my mother’s expression at that moment, she was definitely surprised at my level of understanding and ability to express the proverb. The days after at home: there were dinners, mahjong sessions, drinking sessions, dances, singing sessions, every night with fresh entertainment, with different occasions came different people. Even with me shutting myself close in my room doing my homework, I can still feel the happening atmosphere from outside. But I did not feel frustrated with it because I thought my mother would be very happy then. It was on my ninth birthday when I awoke happily to find that the entire house was almost empty. That was the day my parents divorced. My mother took away a lorry of furniture with her, I saw her reluctance, but it was the many unbearable that enabled her to leave behind her nine year old daughter in the empty house. The crying while sending away the lorry became a dark patch in my memory, but in the evening, I was again smiling while inviting my young friends who came to celebrate my birthday. The eight and nine year olds back then were all very obedient, they said nothing about the empty house and pretended nothing was wrong. We all sat on the bare floor to cut my birthday cake. Now that I recall, I am really grateful for them.
The following days, I know that ‘when the boat reaches the shore, it will know the way’ (Chinese proverb that Mang Lai Kuan always used in Eternal Happiness). Although the independent days were coming a tad too early, but it clearly shows that life has no obstacle that can’t be overcome. In the morning, I wake up as usual to tie my hair into pigtails, and make a bowl of porridge, putting on my red scarf and head off to school. Like other kids, I attend morning assembly, raise the national flag, attend classes. When it was dinner time, the neighboring family will automatically unlock their gate and allow me to join them for a meal. I in fact became a happy little bird at that period of time. When my paternal grandparents came to pick me up, I was a little reluctant even.
As my grandparents were retired lecturers, my new home is the lecturers’ hostel in the university. The kids next door were all from well educated families, and thus were all excellent in their studies. I, on the other hand, under the love and spoiling of my paternal grandparents became naughty and dominating. Luckily my grandfather is extremely strict in ‘academic’, thus with his high expectations and under his guidance, my academic results were not too bad. Furthermore, my bad temper at home was recognized as ‘independence, leadership and creativity’ at school and thus was selected as the monitor and leader for youth club – it was quite unbelievable. Since I have a lot of activities in school, this has reduced the time I spend at home. The balcony at home was full of my grandmother’s plants. The little time I have at home is spent on this balcony to seed and water the plants, thus I grew up to appreciate every grass and trees around.
Living with the elderly, you will not speak much but will instead benefit a lot. In future I must write articles about how my grandmother taught me to do floral arrangement, wrap dumplings, make fragrance bag, make a kite, sing operas, pick herbal medicine, plant flowers, and many other skills. When I was young, I suspected that my grandmother used to earn for a living with skills when she was young, and not the precious daughter of an established family that she claimed she was. Anyway, I had yet enough time living with my grandparents when I was brought to US, and later truly started out my independent living – I was thirteen that year. It was only much later that I learned from my friend that it was definitely not an easy thing for a thirteen year old girl to be living alone in New York city. First of all, you need to cook, then you need to shop for groceries and ask for discount, you need to do your own laundry, pay your own bills, you need to keep cleaning up the apartment that kept being messed up, you need to change the burnt bulb, you need to keep moving place due to the landlord’s request or if there was a thief next door, or reasons of all sort. Also, you will have countless of silent and serene night… you will in fact be so used to loneliness, that even when you’re in a crowd, you can no longer sense the presence of others.
Thus, when I came to this ‘family’ of Hong Kong TVB station at the age of 19, I was a little unaccustomed, because I realize that people is constantly at my surrounding, especially when everyone is paying attention to you, teaching you, loving and protecting you, supporting you, it is a little shock… Although initially I still can’t differentiate the reality within the film and outside the film, but having your film’s parents’ warmth and concern, your film’s friends’ help and support, your film’s lover’s passion through life and death, everyday, day and night, it is like they’ve brought this emotion voided person some happy memories, how can I not love this ‘home’?
Like the months and years that have past, be it the warm home or the lonely home, it is just a part of our journey, it will become a memory, and this memory will become a treasure. When I was to leave the TVB family in July 2005, it was also as if fated, it is not something that human can plan. Now having a new ‘home’ and new ‘family’, it is yet another new environment.
The coming and going of the many ‘homes’ in the past years has taught me not to be obstinate about a certain matter or certain person. Whenever you feel that you can’t let go of a certain matter or a certain person, you only need to think that this person is just coincidentally this person, this matter is just coincidentally this matter, there will be more of such coincidences in future, then you will be able to let go and be free. There is no matter that is too big, there is no need to be foolish, and where does home lie? Home lies everywhere.
