Remember how I mentioned that five essays from my school would be chosen to be published in a book? Well apparently, my English teacher loved my essay and it is one of the five!
Actually, it was more of a short story than an essay. We all interviewed a relative from an older generation to write original compositions that give insight into China’s past.
I chose to interview my grandmother and I am so glad I did. Since I moved to Australia when I was five years old, I never really got to know her. After the interview, I realized how much we have in common. As a teenager, she also loved to read and write. Her dream was to become an author. Unfortunately, society and the Cultural Revolution took that dream away from her.
My grandmother was left with family friends as the rest of her family fled from the Communists. Her new guardians made her childhood miserable. They were strict, unloving and would not even allow her to read for pleasure. She told me that once, she won prize money at school for speech competition. Not only did her guardians not congratulate or support her by going to the awards ceremony, her money was used to compensate a girl who accused my grandmother of breaking her cup.
Life was no better after her was reunited with her family. They were virtually strangers and she felt her mother disliked her most of all. She could not stand any longer to live a family who did not know her so she ran away at the age of sixteen and joined the army. A year later, she served in the Korean War.
After she left the army, she applied for university. She had never even completed high school so her chances her slim but to her surprised, she was accepted by a “normal school” which is what a university for training teachers was called in China. There, she met her future, husband, my grandfather. However, it was not a whirlwind romance but a sensible union of two people who admired and respected one another. I don’t think my grandmother ever knew love in a passionate sense. Or if she did, she never acted on her emotions.
Then came the Cultural Revolution. It literally tore up the life she had created for herself. As my grandmother was a teacher, she was persecuted for being an intellectual. The whole country was in mayhem. Classes had ended and schools were taken over by students who had joined the Red Guard movement. The roles of student and teacher was reversed with the former taking charge. Teachers such as my grandmother were subject to daily beatings from their students, some, to their death. My grandfather, a middle school vice-principal was arrested by Red Guards for being an “anti-revolutionary” and tortured to the point that he ended his own life. This left my grandmother a single mother of two boys.
I wish my grandmother could see herself they way I see her: an inspirational and strong woman, a role model in its every sense. But she is too broken to ever realize such a thing. When I asked her in my interview what she thinks her biggest accomplishment was, she said, “I failed life.”
This was definitely one of the most challenging pieces I have ever written. Born in the late ’90s and moving to Australia to live a comfortable life, I have never suffered the way my grandmother has. I was writing something I knew nothing about. I did not want to bring back bitter memories during the interview so I skirted over the more delicate subjects and asked my dad. This left many details such as emotions and thoughts to my imagination. Regardless, I have decided to showcase my story below to give my followers some insight into China’s past.
Keep in mind that I had to write this in a certain way because we will also be using it for an English exam. In the story, the protagonist needed to experienced some sort of change or formative moment. Otherwise, I think this story would have turned out a bit differently.
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