Traverse the Ocean

For many older generations of Chinese people, going to the U.S. was a gleaming and golden dream. In the middle of the 1900s, many Taishan villagers were crazy about moving to the U.S. for panning for gold and building railroads to support their needy households back home. In the post-modern stage, Taishan villagers continued to pour into the U.S. in order to earn dollars. Meanwhile, they followed most villagers to immigrate to the U.S. because they thought it was a kind of honor and they could show off their lives in the world-renowned and developed U.S. to others. My grandparents also decided to leave Taishan and immigrated to the U.S. to open up a new world. Their decision had a far-reaching influence on their next generations.

                              

The first effect occurred on my grandparents’ children’s generation—my mother who is a strict woman and lacked love from her parents. When my mother was in middle school, she was sent out to Shenzhen which is now one of the most advanced and modern metropolises in China for a better education, while her parents stayed in their hometown. Besides, my mother was forced to take care of two little sisters who accompanied when she moved Shenzhen. Thus, even though she was young, she acted as a strict mother and a careful father at the same time. Later my grandparents immigrated to Chicago, so my mother saw them infrequently. Due to my mother’s own experience with her parents, she insisted that I needed to grow up beside her, so my mother spent much time with me and gave me a lot of love.

               

The influence of my grandparents’ immigration has also run to my generation. When I was a little girl, I had always heard about that from my mother, when you grow up, we will go to the U.S., which bothered me because nobody knew when it would happen. At that time, I often regarded myself as a ridiculous liar in front of my classmates and friends. Every few years, my mother would tell me, we are going to the U.S. soon. Each time, as long as I heard this news, I would announce it to my friends. However, going to the U.S. did not happen as scheduled that I felt embarrassed. In addition, since I could judge what was right or wrong by myself, I had no idea that whether I should go to the U.S. or not. Taking many best friends that I had made in China into consideration, I hesitated about the question to go or not to go which had run through my mind again and again.

On the other hand, all things about coming to the U.S. gave me an unreal feeling. This was because I could not believe that an average family like mine could come to the U.S. whose currency was stronger than China’s. Moreover, who could have thought that a lie that I repeated for several years was ready to become true. In fact, our family was in line for coming to the U.S. over ten years, but one day my mother told me that our immigration application was being processed. This sudden news made me astonished. Besides, I never thought that one day I would step on American soil indeed. In the end, the procedures went fast and every step of the process went well, which intensified my disbelief.

                        

In conclusion, my mother had waited for a reunion with her parents and other family members in the U.S. for fifteen years. Moreover, I have gotten a chance to study and widen my horizon in Chicago. Although my mother regrets that she did not have much time to take care of her parents, she is thankful that she could live in a big city rather than a small town. In the past, I was unwilling to come to the U.S. and complained about my grandparents’ immigration, but now I accept this unchangeable fact and thank my grandparents and my mother for creating this environment for me. I will cherish this opportunity to improve my English listening and speaking and the time I have here. As a popular saying goes, the world is so immense that I want to have a look. And now I’m doing it.