1

My Grandmother and I

The first memory I have about reading is about gathering in a circle and reading picture books in English back in kindergarten, however, the most important memory I want to talk about is not how I learned English, but how I learned Chinese, my first language. I was born in the states, then my mom brought me back to China when I was about one year old. I lived in China for about twelve years, making it the most part of my life out of my short seventeen years. 

 

When we were back in China, my mom was too busy and always got caught up in work and countless calls, so then the burden of raising and educating me falls onto the shoulders of my grandmother. My grandmother is not a very educated woman. Her family came from a small farming village, and of course, there was not enough resource for her to get educated back in the times of cultural revolution. Not convinced by her own fate, she was the hardest working student in her class during elementary school. She always tells me the story of how she wakes up before dawn and walks for miles just to get to school on time, and every time she sees me writing too big or sloppy or wasting paper in any way, she begins to talk about how she would write so small on a piece of paper that she can barely read because her family did not have the extra money to buy papers. No matter how desperate she was for education, she had to accept her fate of not being able to continue her education and went back home to help her family farm.

 

Despite how my grandmother was not educated enough, she always had the heart of making sure her children could get as much education. So when my mom asked grandmother to take care of me, she was more than happy to do so. The most vivid memory when I think back to how I started learning Chinese was when my grandmother and I reading flashcards with bolded Chinese characters and tones labeled on them. At first, she didn’t know what and how to teach me, so she bought a big package of flashcards to start with. Out of her expectation, I was a very fast learner and a great observer. I could recognize every single word on the flashcards within a month when I was about 3, and I could smoothly read an entire page of a newspaper before I went to kindergarten. She was surprised by my learning and progress, but was happier to see that the power of education has extended to two generations after. 

 

I can still remember that one time that we were on a bus after dusk, trying to get home after I long day, I pointed out the window to every shop sign that we pass by and tried to read all the characters. When I saw a character that I don’t recognize, I turned my head to my grandmother to ask her the meaning and pronunciation of it. I never stopped learning, reading, or fail her expectation after kindergarten. I continued to read more fictional stories in elementary school. At one point, I was reading the same level of books as my mom because I tried to find stories with deeper meaning. As I was spending more time in books, taking down meaningful sentences, and trying to comprehend complicated words, my writings also improved fast. 

 

Until now, by the age of preparing for college, my grandmother still regularly asks me how many books I have read. She always believes the saying of “活到老学到老”, which means keeping learning until you die. As I see the world more and better understand my goal of life, I will always keep her sayings in mind and embrace the power of studying.