Roughly 6 months ago, I left the school and intended to go study abroad in New Zealand. This decision could only be characterized as abrupt, because even I myself didn't have the slightest inkling of what's going to happen.
But it's suddenly there, one Friday when I returned home from school, I announced to my mother that I no longer wanted to study for the College Entrance Exam, and that I needed a different way to approach life, and a different life. Maybe my mother was dumbfounded, she didn't object to my decision.
Nothing goes as expected, so did my decision. As it turned out, I vastly underestimated the complexity of applying a college abroad, and at the meantime vastly overestimated the condition of my family. Though reluctantly, I had to embrace the fact that education is an investment, is a beginning of an even longer career, it is not an end but a means. So I changed and changed my plan. First from New Zealand to United States, then from New York University to Dartmouth College. I wasn't thinking about sitting an SAT test until I discovered that I can easily score more than 1900 without any preparation.
It's not that easy. I woke up every day at 7, and sleep at 10, except for meals, I was basically doing practice problems and reading, reading, reading like a madman. I couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees required of SAT training, so I had to do everything myself. There's no explicit explanation on how should I ready myself, so I followed only vague guidelines on Spark Notes that I should read. I read Wired, Vulture, AEON, New Republic, and gradually I secured my score around 2200. That was a monotonous, tough, and extremely off-putting process, because I'd never considered myself to immerse in literature, let alone literature in English. I matured so I felt not too concerned about the outcome, when I was distraught, I went to the bathroom and asked myself in the mirror, "Did you make progress in the past several days? Did you realize that without this somewhat imprudent choice you might never possess the trait and manner you have right now?" And I always nodded and smiled.
Now that I think about what did motivated me, to make such a daring move, without any consideration of the potential failure, and the answer is my father. Albeit subconsciously, I was influenced by him.
When I'm walking down the street with my father, people's first impression in mind won't be son walking with his father, but with grandfather. My father is 66 years old, and divorced my mom when I was little.
Because he believes that money means nothing and fails to conceive that most other people on this planet yearn for it. He's a really skillful at what he did for living, foreign clothing trade, so that as a little kid I experience what some might call the life of superiority. I never had to worry about things, I just asked for them, and they'd appear. There's even a huge company in Nanjing whose setup was inspired, or for a lack of better word, instigated by him, the boss calls my father Shifu.
When the enterprise became dramatic in size, for no particular reason my father resigned from the company and refused the share from the boss. I wasn't with him, but that day when he returned home, he argued vehemently in the dining room with my mother. When the war ended, he walked to me and said "I needed to do something more meaningful, I wanted to live, but not 'life'." - As he wished, he became a farmer, or peasant, more precisely, since farmer denotes a degree of dignity, wearing well-worn clothes that made him look even more well-worn, and living in a shabby shed in suburban Wuxi City.
Certainly I complained about him being arrogant about financial issues, but I don't resent him. In fact, every time when I went to visit, only a feeling of safety remained - after all, he's papa, and only by staying around him, could I become oblivious to my problems, I saw a strong man with strong hands when I was a kid, I saw a strong man with strong hands out of the old figure when I grew up.
I don't see him very often. We don't have a car in the family, and I keep losing my transportation discount card, and moreover it takes around 2 hours to travel to where he lives. But I'm confident and assured that there's someone at a distance loving his son, regardless of all his own miseries, loneliness, dirt, fatigue of long working hours, weakness of getting old, whatever. He doesn't do anything that might hurt me, or he doesn't intend to, even though it's encouraged me myself.
He is not chatty. Since the very beginning of my memory, I've been trying to not to let him down, and he's never said a strong word to me. People like my father can't get along with anything well, because in their minds, there's no space for what common people deemed desirable. It's a pattern that he's obeyed for decades, selflessness. His insistence on doing his own things in his own way often incenses people around him. And though people would sometimes admire him for being a really nice person because of his idiosyncrasies so rarely found in the modern-day China, they don't recognize his success - he only succeeds in his own way.
I lived with my mother after their separation. Because my mother was just so typical a housewife, and she's got me to feed, which was quite troublesome, she introduced me a new guy, other may call stepfather or downright father, but I insisted uncle till this day. She told me that I had to keep distance from my father, because he's a weirdo and in case his "stupid thoughts" have an impact on me. To her disappointment, I didn't. Then that I wasn't blamed but my father, again. He made no sound, I made no sound too. He taught me that life cannot be measured by wealth of social status or anything external, but living one's own way of life. It's not the result that matters, but the process, and the mood. He did impact me, but I agreed with him, truth resonates louder than pedantry.
I don't discuss serious topics very often with my father, because there's not that much to be uttered, and for a great portion that is, both me and my father are not entitled to utter. He's a friend of mine, it's a coincidence that he's also my father.
When I was little, my father used to bring me to various places. This is how I learnt that the world is big. And that brought consequence too. I broke my arm during a visit of a military exhibition, which obviously isn't suitable for people like me. He was railed again, and stopped bringing me out since elementary school. But I've been to those places, I don't recall where I'd been, or what it looked like, or how I felt about it, but I've been to those places, and that's enough of it.
After several years of hard labor and futility in the farm. He picked up doing business with my uncle. That was when I'd told my father of my little plan, and this man at his 60s, began to struggle again for his son's dream, which clearly differed his. But there's no confrontation due to the divergence of opinions, he knew who I am, and knew that I was going to do it. He didn't understand that what he's doing might still not of considerable help, but he's doing it, and I don't mind him.
I'm setting off a very long journey, a journey that is unfit for the age of my father. But I inherited his history, and I think it's time to create my own. I want to thank him, and I want to wish him a happy late life that he should take a break, but I also know that he won't accept my gratitude and that he won't stop working till the end.
So I have nothing to say, because I don't have to, and he knows it.
P: The first article of the blog I take seriously has been finished, and as a rule I'm not satisfied with its quality. But I understand this might be the place where I should be writing on for decades, so quality is not the focus but the documentation of my life, and the creation of my own legacy. I'm currently 18 years old, and in most cultures this age is deemed as the beginning of maturity. So here's the evidence of that journey.
