My First Blog - About My Life

Hello, everyone. First time to write a blog. Let me start with introducing myself to all of you.

I was born in Shenyang, the major city in northern China, which used to be the center of Manchuria when the Japanese occupied the region during the WWII. I was a regular Chinese kid except one thing about me was a little bit different from everyone else. That one thing was that my grandma of my father's side is Japanese. All I could remember is that my mother would comment on my grandma being Japanese once in a while, other than that my life was nothing different from those of my classmates and kids in my neighborhood.

About my Japanese grandma's life, there is quite a bit to talk about it. Sometimes I think I should write a book about her and her family's life. It was real life but it was like a super human drama. Quite unimaginable for me and people of my generation. My grandma was born in a poor but average Japanese family. (It's a shame that I don't know much about the details in terms of where they lived, what her parents did for living and all as I have not contacted my grandma for several years now. So I'll have to go on with what I know.) When the Japanese started their invasion to north China in the 1930's, they wanted their people to go to China, live and develop the new land. So basically they advertised to their own people how great life it was or could be in China, food and land available everywhere in order to encourage them to go to China. This sounded very attractive to the poor people since at the time, Japan had scarce source of food and materials as well. So my grandma's father decided to go to the new land in the hope of having a better life there. Little did he know that this decision would later bring a series of tragedies to his family.

Once they arrived in China, it didn't take so long until they found out how much the Japanese government had lied about the new land. There was nothing except the cold weather which doesn't make this land grow that much of food. They ended up living in a place much more like a refugee camp where they gathered all Japanese civilians, where diseases and deaths took place in front of their eyes due to lack of food and poor living conditions. Even at a camp like that, they couldn't stay for very much long as they also had to escape from fighting took place between Japanese and Chinese. My grandma had four siblings. She was the oldest one. All four of them (between age of five to ten years old) died along the way while they were wandering and escaping from bullets and wars. By the time my grandma reached the village where my grandpa lived, she was moving forward by crawling as she had no energy left for walking. She was 13 years old at the time. My great grandma and she were the only ones still alive but nearly dead. (My great grandpa was with the Japanese army and was apart from them.)

The Chinese villagers took them in and saved their lives. Later at the age of 16, my grandma married grandpa who lived in the same village. A year later, at the age of 17, she gave birth to my father.

As much as I could remember, I never thought of my grandma being any different than other old Chinese ladies. She spoke perfect Chinese as she had been speaking Chinese for four decades already by the time I was around. I never liked my grandma that much since my mother had a poor opinion about her. I was mama's girl. Whoever my mother liked, I liked. The same goes with whoever she didn't like too. I never liked my father either. Almost amazingly, until this day, I still have not much emotional feelings towards him. In my mother's and many others' eye, he was an incapable man who has little social skills. Also my mother told me that when he was younger, he had minor psychological problems which seems to run in the family too. He would behave in strange ways with little common sense. One particular thing that I remember about him being weird was that he would lock the door, but in worries it might not have been locked properly, he would go back to check the door for four five times.

My childhood memories are mostly cheering ones. I did good in school. Teachers liked me. I liked singing, performing, and giving speeches. Every event took place in school, I was always part of it. I enjoyed being in the center of attention and in the spot light. My mother was proud of me all the time. I was proud of myself too. I was secure and confident. I loved school and enjoyed everyday of it.

As I already mentioned, I never liked my father. He was different from other kids' fathers. They were normal, but he was not. Other kids had father's love, but I didn't. There was no love between my parents either. My mother didn't marry him for love. She married him for practical reasons. She made a lot of mistakes in her life as I am making my own mitakes as well. Again, maybe you can say that it runs in the family.

My father was insecure about his relationship with my mother since she was very attractive and popular among men. They would fight for little things that my mother did such as talking to another guy. One time when I was around age 5, they fought so hard and my father raised hand on her. She ran away back to her own family which was in Heilongjiang Province, even northern of China, close to Russia.

My mother didn't come back for a whole month. I was never away from her for such a long time. While she was gone, I was being taken care of by my grandma. I remember they would ask me from time to time if I missed my mother, and I would say no. I probably did that because I thought I had to talk like that since they were saying bad words about my mother all the time.

Then one month later, my mother came back. I still remember that very moment when she held me in her arms. I then realized how much I had missed her, how much I couldn't live without her, and how much I lied about not missing her.

Since that day my mother came back, I became insecure about her. If I didn't see her at home after I came back from school, I would look out the window crying and worrying about her. I would also be a pain in the neck to her if she tries to go to anywhere. I would cry and beg her not to leave. I even had a picture that was taken in my kindergarden after I cried because I didn't want to go to the kindergarden and being away from my mother. I think the kindergarden was taking pictures for the kids for some reason I don't remember. They saw me crying and not wanting to let my mother leave, so the guy took a picture of my mother with me together just to cheer me up. But you can clearly see that I was crying before the picture was taken. I often thought that I would die if my mother died.

Later, all my father side's entire family including us would emmigrate to Japan. And that will be the turning point of my life....