{"id":290,"date":"2023-12-16T14:04:14","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T19:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/?p=290"},"modified":"2023-12-16T14:04:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T19:04:14","slug":"in-defense-of-my-actions-telling-my-side-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/fall-2023\/in-defense-of-my-actions-telling-my-side-of-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of My Actions: Telling My Side of the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first two words I ever learned were \u201cXiao Lan\u201d – Little Lazy. That was my parents\u2019 nickname for me ever since I was a baby. Apparently when I was little, all I did was sleep in my mother\u2019s arms. Since then, that name kind of just caught on with the rest of my family – my parents always thought I was lazy because I didn\u2019t do as well in school compared to my little sisters. I\u2019ve always hated that nickname. I wasn\u2019t lazy – I just wanted different things in life! Everyone in my family thinks that attending some prestigious university in the city is the sole path to success because my father is a famous teacher in our village, but I\u2019ve never really believed in that. My best friend tested into the Beijing Aviation and Aerospace University, and despite his family going into debt to support him through college, he now only earns 100 yuan a month at a research station in the middle of nowhere. I don\u2019t want to put my parents through that. So, entrance exam after entrance exam, I deliberately chose to score worse and worse in the hopes that my parents would catch the hint and let me pursue my own dreams, but entrance exam after entrance exam, the result is the same – they make me take it again. The only difference is that I can see their faith in me drain from their eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The real money is in running my own business. Instead of being paid by some greedy employer who wants to pay me as little as possible, I am the employer. Instead of being a means of production, I am the producer. I knew that to make it big, I had to start my own business. And I wanted to make it big. So everyday, I scraped every mao I could get my hands on so that eventually, I could buy some merchandise and start my own merchandise stand. But, no one really believed in my ability to start my own business in my family. When I told my dad about my genius idea to sell merchandise, he gazed at me with reluctance. \u201cTake the entrance exam again\u201d, he ordered as he dismissed my dream, just like that. No one in my family believed in me: they thought I was this lazy, good-for-nothing bum who could never be successful on my own. I never really felt like I belonged in my own home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s why when I first met Spring Grass, I felt the need to lie about who I was. I was ashamed of who I was. I wanted her to believe that I was who my parents wanted me to be. But when she accepted me for who I was even after she found out about the truth, I realized that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. I knew that I didn\u2019t have to pretend anymore. She respected me for my values and dreams in a way my family never did, and I knew that my entrepreneurial dreams might actually come true if I stayed with her. So after some long and hard convincing of Spring Grass\u2019s parents, we finally got married in 1985. The happiest day of my life. Together, I really thought that me and Grass could have it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

And for a brief moment, it really felt we did have it all. Grass and I moved north to sell silk in cities where supply was scarce. At the time, it was a smashing success! Within a few years, we became a ten-thousand yuan family, something that was nearly unheard of for people who came from the countryside like us. Grass was pregnant with a set of twins – a boy and a girl – exactly how we dreamt our family would look like. And best of all, I was proving my parents wrong. They didn\u2019t believe in my dream, but now I was living it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But everything changed for us one evening when I tried to convince Grass to put our money in a savings account at a bank. Her initial reluctant look when I proposed this idea reminded me of the exact face my father shot me as he rejected my proposal to pursue doing business. I could feel the judgment, the condescension coming from the one person in this entire world that I thought believed in me. Even now I can\u2019t fully describe what I felt in that moment – I was confused, I was shocked, but most of all, I felt severely betrayed. Though she eventually acquiesced to my request, I knew that our relationship was different now. She showed her true colors – she didn\u2019t respect me. Maybe she looked at me the same way my parents did: as some stupid lackey with stupid ideas that could never make it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since that day, Grass started treating me and the business differently. She started calling our silk shop \u201cher business\u201d, not \u201cour business\u201d in front of customers, our friends, and even our family. That wasn\u2019t just embarrassing – it was insulting. Who gave you the idea to move to the city for business in the first place when you were insistent on staying in Ho\u2019s Cave? Who gave you the idea to sell silk as a business venture in the first place? This wasn\u2019t \u201cher business\u201d, it was mine! It was all mine! But fine – if she wanted to call the business her own, she can have it! I wanted something that I could call my own too, so I decided to leave Spring Grass back home while she was pregnant and start a new coal selling business, where all the real money was. And I thought when I became rich, there was no way she would be able to take credit for MY successes. \u201cI\u2019ll show them, I\u2019ll show all of them!\u201d, I thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when I lost it all. All of our fortune.<\/span><\/p>\n

To those who doubted me – Grass, the rest of my family – I proved them right. There was no way I could return home now – I didn\u2019t need their patronization. So I decided that I wasn\u2019t going to return home until I earned all my money back. I knew I could make it all back, I just needed time.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, as I was returning home from work, I stumbled into the silhouette of someone who looked eerily familiar. \u201cGrass?\u201d I couldn\u2019t believe it. I hadn\u2019t seen her and the kids for so long I\u2019ve almost forgotten what she looked like. I\u2019ve missed her so much, and as she approached me for a hug, for a moment I forgot about all our worries, all our fights, all my insecurities. I became that little boy who met Grass for the very first time again, and I truly believed that everything will be okay again. Now that the whole family is together again, we can regroup together and create a good life for us and our kids again. Or so I thought. Even though she looked happy on the surface, Spring Grass wasn\u2019t as enthusiastic about the future as I was, and gradually, she started spending much more time with this other guy she called \u201cBig Brother Lowe\u201d – she would go to him for business advice and have dinners with him here and there – and spending much less time with me. She even told me that she didn\u2019t want to tell him that she\u2019d found his husband in the city! Why? Was she sleeping with him? Was I not enough for her anymore? Out of everything that I thought I might lose, I never thought I would lose her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And from that point on, she lost complete respect for me. To her, I wasn\u2019t the same person she adored when we first met. She didn\u2019t tell me anything. She wouldn\u2019t even tell me that her mother, my own mother-in-law, was diagnosed with cancer before sending her more than half of our savings to her for surgery. Did she think I was going to say no to sending that money back home? How badly did she not trust me? And when she broke her leg, I suggested that we hire a helper from the market just for her to not even give it a second thought before rejecting my idea. But of course, when our landlord gives her the exact same suggestion, asking her to hire his niece, Penny, as her helper, she agrees without hesitation. I felt like she didn\u2019t respect me anymore. And maybe she shouldn\u2019t. I felt like a fool. A fool who didn\u2019t really belong in the family that he helped create anymore. It was just like I was back home, where everyone around me mocked me and refused to take me seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I guess when this Penny girl came along, I wanted Spring Grass to feel exactly how she\u2019s been making me feel. So everyday, I would go spend time around the city with Penny, ignoring Spring Grass the same way she has been doing with Big Brother Lowe for years now. Penny and I would spend hours each day at the stock market, even though Spring Grass heavily objected to it. Penny told me that her uncle put a lot of his life savings into the venture, so obviously I was going to listen to her over Grass who doesn\u2019t even know what a stock is. But part of me also wanted to do this so Spring Grass can feel how it feels to be ignored the same way she\u2019s been ignoring me for all these years. I wanted payback for all my hurting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, the stock prices started to rise: I was making hundreds and hundreds of yuan every single day! I started to see glimpses of our former glory days flash before my eyes. I wanted that lavish life back, and I wanted it back now. And that Penny girl, oh Penny, she made me feel like I was everything that I wanted Spring Grass to see me as. Day after day she would flower me with compliments, telling me how capable I was, how clever I was for putting money in the stock market, and I hadn\u2019t felt that kind of love from Spring Grass in a long time. So of course I followed what Penny told me to do. I really thought that this could be my break. This could be our break. With that, I put all of our kids\u2019 schools funds into playing the stock market. I wanted to strike rich, quick.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then it happened again. I couldn\u2019t do anything but watch as it all started crashing down right in front of my eyes. Everything that we worked so hard for, gone within a split of a second. What was wrong with me? I have always promised to the old man in the sky that I would do right by my family, no matter what. But this time, it doesn\u2019t even matter whether Spring Grass still loves me or not, I\u2019ve let the kids down. Now we\u2019ll have no chance of paying their tuition on time. And for what? To get payback for some petty internal conflict that Spring Grass and I were having? To get a quick ego stroke from someone who I didn\u2019t even know 2 months ago? To satiate my greed because we weren\u2019t living the most luxurious life? I knew this was all my fault, and I realized that everytime my family had some sort of a major downfall, it was always caused by me. I was a parasite in this household, reaping the benefits of everyone else\u2019s labor and leaving damage and destruction behind me everywhere I stepped foot. So for the sake of protecting my family, to keep my promise to the old man in the sky, as much as it pained me to do it, I had to protect my family from myself. That very same night, I packed my bags and moved far north with Penny, the only person who still had the smallest shred of belief in me. Calling Spring Grass that night was honestly the toughest thing I\u2019ve ever had to do. I was so ashamed, the words barely escaped my mouth. And when I heard Grass\u2019s desperate pleas for me to stay with the rest of the family as I hung up, time stopped. My heart was a piece of china that was just smashed onto the floor, and I could feel each and every piece of it gradually leaving my soul. I knew I could never ever face Spring Grass ever again, so I told myself no matter what happens, I can never return to the city. I can never see Grass and the kids again.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m now working in Xinjiang, but I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m happy. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll ever be happy. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first two words I ever learned were \u201cXiao Lan\u201d – Little Lazy. That was my parents\u2019 nickname for me ever since I was a baby. Apparently when I was little, all I did was sleep in my mother\u2019s arms. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3014,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/chin427-springgrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}