I was taken to a village, a dark place with rudimentary houses. The language still sounded strange to me. I didn't understand anything. What they wanted from me and where they were taking me. When I saw women, I confess I felt calmer. Maybe it really is just a misunderstanding. They gave me fruit and clothes that were too flashy for the simplicity of the village and the houses. Then I started to think that maybe they were treating me well after all. Fear began to give way to amazement, but the unknown remained. I didn't understand anything that was going on. I was taken to a ceremony and treated like a... I wake up suddenly and violently. The unknown, the confusion returns. What's going on? Another morning, another confrontation with reality. I have a day ahead of me, work awaits me, the desire to be treated like a queen is left behind. The dawn takes away my dream. See you later... Yao Lin, China Study Group in Wuhan “First I thought it was all just a misunderstanding.” This is what a new mother I interviewed once told me. As a child, she always felt that her mother didn’t really love her. She would notice how other mothers were so attentive—carefully dressing up their children, accompanying them to do all kinds of things. Her own mother, by contrast, always seemed careless, always forgetting this or that. In primary school, lunch was delivered by the parents. Her mother was always the last one to bring it. She would sit there alone, waiting, long after the other children had already eaten and gone back to class. Sometimes the afternoon lessons were about to begin by the time her mother finally arrived. And the lunch was always brought with a clumsy, heavy spoon. She longed for a daintier spoon like her classmates had, and a nicer lunchbox too. But her mother always delivered food in a plain cup, which made her feel ashamed. At that time, her mother was busy running a small shop and would say she had no time to prepare and deliver lunch on schedule. There were many moments like this—things that made the girl uncomfortable, though she couldn’t really say her mother was outright “bad.” It wasn’t until she had a child of her own that she began to understand it differently. She also had work—sometimes from morning until two in the afternoon— but she always prepared meals ahead of time so that her child could eat whenever they wanted. And whenever she recalled those schooldays, sitting and waiting for her mother to bring lunch, a deep sadness would wash over her. It hadn’t been a misunderstanding after all. The truth was, her mother really hadn’t been that attentive.
86
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker