A Book Dedicated to Our Youth - Tong Hua

Chapter 10: Those Bright Colors

. Simple Life

The genesis of a person's personality can be chased back to the family they were born and raised in. In this world, there are only bad families, not bad children.

Since the first day of high school, my life has become very simple. Everyday, I repeated the same cycle, going from school and back.

During winter break, I would sleep in everyday. When I rose, I would make a cup of green tea and read an hour of English. Then, I would eat breakfast, read and watch TV. I pretty much didn't step out of the house and if I wasn't in the living room then I was in my bedroom.

When my little sister practices the keyboard, she doesn't like to close the bedroom door. In the past, I wasn't at home so it didn't affect me but now, it really affected me. I didn't argue with her about it though, but rather, I changed the perspective to solve this. Apparently when Sun Yat Sen was young, he would specially find noisy places to study in order to train his concentration skills. Hence, I used this as a training opportunity. As the days past, even if someone played rock music, it wouldn't affect me doing geometry questions.

During high school, I pretty much left home early and came home late everyday. But it's as if my life now compared to back then was lived by two people. My mom however, didn't feel comforted and instead was a bit worried. She persuaded me to go out and play more. My dad also said that children should play more with their friends.

I found it amusing, they were probably the only parents who would persuade heir children to go out and play more. I told them to not worry about me, I knew what I was doing.

My mom and dad could only care for me from a distance. Luckily, they still had a younger daughter who had all the problems a normal child would have. She tried to get out of playing the keyboard, wanted to watch television rather than do her homework, admired the pretty clothes other classmates wore, thought her own shoes were ugly, tried to haggle the amount for her pocket money, when she helped mom buy soy sauce, she would secretly take the change, when mom helped her set up an alarm clock, she would secretly disable it, she refused to get up in the morning until the very last minute so it was like she was at war every morning......next to her, mom and dad experienced the joys and frustrations of being parents.

I however, was a completely different case.

Once, when my aunt came to our house to stay, she slept in my room and I moved to my little sister's room.

It was winter and the electricity had been cut off so the heater couldn't be used. The house was dark and cold and everyone huddled in their blankets. However, I didn't use the electricity cut as an excuse to sleep for half an hour longer. Instead, I got up as normal and lit a candle to practice English.

My aunt probably had not adjusted well to sleeping in a new place yet so she woke up early. When she heard voices, she opened the living room door and saw me standing on the balcony, cloaked in my dad's cotton coat, practising English under the candlelight.

The scene at the time gave my aunt a great shock and many years later, she would still constantly talk about how she has never seen such an obedient and responsible child.

Actually, in my eyes, I was just following the game rules I had set for myself. The electricity and heating cut was too insignificant for me to break my own rules. But my aunt didn't think this way. She spread this around to our relatives who spread it further until I became a 'good child' in the eyes of my relatives and elders.

Sometimes, my little sister would get very jealous of me. She was annoyed that I won so much praise. I was somewhat confused, in my memory, it should be me getting jealous of her, the adults shouldn't like me, how did it turn like this in the blink of an eye?