Dream's Inheritance

Only in the darkness can people find a real way to the light. In Chinese history, there was a period of darkness. Since the establishment of new Chinese government in 1949, the law and the policy declared that the people were masters of the country and the government required people to work together to build the new country. After years of wars, in addition to the farming requirement, President Mao also declared “Cultural Revolution” which required young adults go to countryside and wilderness to plant more abandoned land. At that time, workers were valued than scholars. Education became an absurd issue among scholars. Because of this event, it has completely changed the education path of our family for three generations.

The most obvious influence that Cultural Revolution had was on my grandfather’s life.  My grandfather was born before the war period, he always went to private school in a sedan chair as a child because of his rich family and powerful parents. In addition, when my grandfather was younger, he was just beginning to learn Western knowledge. However, most of his family died in the war, he also had to end his study career. Although when my grandfather’s life had settled down in his middle age, he still wanted to continue his studies, the Cultural Revolution completely interrupted his dream of studying again. From then on, learning became a distant dream for him, a dream that could not even be realized in his children.

In addition, my father was the generation that was most affected by the Cultural Revolution. My father encountered the Cultural Revolution when he was old enough to go to school. Instead, the new laws prevented him from studying, so he had to go to the countryside with his siblings after primary school. He had heard the stories of my grandfather and was eager to acquire a lot of new knowledge abroad and even to see other bigger places. Conversely, he could not do anything he wanted and believed Mao’s initiative that workers were the greatest than scholars. Even after China renewed the college entrance examination, many of his friends attended universities, but he did nothing. In fact, my father told me that he knew the importance of education, but his family did not have enough money to train a scholar at that time, only earned money was the most important.

After the Cultural Revolution, all Chinese people realized the importance of education, including my family. As a result, they put their hope in me. Because I have a big family, it was not to rich to support everyone to study at that time. In addition, because my father’s siblings neglected of education, most my siblings gave up studying after junior high school. As a result, only my father paid more attention to my education. Therefore, he and my grandfather tried their best to make me have a better learning environment and enrolled me in many extracurricular classes. They even let me to learn English since I was child. Even though they did not know English, they still stubbornly believed that if I learned English well, I can learn everything. In order not to disappoint them, I have tried my best to study well. Finally, I became the first college student in my family and became the pride of my family.

There are many people think that the Cultural Revolution was the worst policy in Chinese history. It set economy back, disrupted education and left many families stuck in poverty. Although this revolution made many middle-class intellectuals give up learning and created many people who could only read but were of low quality, it also made them have a deep understanding of education and pay more attention to cultivating children’s education. China has certainly suffered from many difficulties in the past decades, but it is a resilient country and it has gradually become a new country.