Hi, I am dreamcatcher. Welcome to my 1acreyard. I am using this small yard as a place where I can take a break while looking back on the roads I have traveled, so I can find the right road to take in my life journey.
Where am I from?
Like many new immigrants, I was born and grew up in a village in East China. In my childhood and teenage, most of my fellow villagers lived in extreme poverty. Under the planned economy, villagers worked in collective farms. Private business was prohibited because it was considered the seed of evil capitalism. If one is to earn money through buying and selling, it had to be done secretively. Food and clothing were rationed. Though for those born in the late 60s or 70s, living conditions had improved somewhat. As a result, starvation was not common. However, most families still lived with the bare minimum. Most people only owned one or two pairs of shoes and two sets of clothing at most. I remembered I survived a few scorching summers without shoes. I wore my aunt’s hand-me-downs even after I left the village and went to a big city for my college education, at the age when appearance was considered most important for a young woman.
How did I come to the U.S.?
I worked several years after graduating from college. I saved aggressively and helped my parents pay my younger sister’s last year’s college tuition. For a year, after work, almost every night I studied and prepared to take GMAT and TOEFL exams in my shared employer-provided dorm. In my spare time, I logged into the web to search for information on Ph.D./Master degree programs in the US. Luckily, a colleague shared with me the privileged dial-up access to the internet, which then was still a rare thing. U.S. dollars were a very hot commodity, hard to obtain for a common citizen. With aggressively saved RMB, I went to the black market outside the bank of China to exchange for US dollars to pay for application fees to the various Master programs in the U.S. Universities. My student visa application was rejected twice by U.S. Consular office. Finally, tips from a fellow Chinese student in the department where I was going to pursue my degree helped me better prepare visa application documents, I finally obtained my visa after half a year’s delay.
Where am I now?
Long story short, after getting my Ph.D., I now work as a professor in a university in the US. The first time I was able to visit my home country was eight years after I left home and came to the U.S. I was like someone who had been in a coma for years suddenly regained his/her consciousness; the eight years of lives and changes were slipped away from me, falling into a black hole.
Reconnect with my past.
As I visited my hometown more frequently, the eight-year void gradually emerges vaguely like a misty morning. I realize my old-time village is forever gone, so are many old-time villagers. Fellow villagers of my parents’ age are now old men/women, while in my memory they are still in their prime age. For years, both grandmas who passed away while I was in the U.S. had been my frequent dream-time visitors; many nights I regretted I did not provide more financial support to them so they didn’t have to wear clothing made of stuffy fabric in summer, and didn’t have to live in a drafty darkroom in winter. Only the next morning, I woke up, realizing they were both long dead; even if I wanted to help them, I had no financial means then.
How are my old friends back in the village?
Many childhood friends who quitted academia after high school owns businesses and factories back home. Hills and mountains with pine trees and ponds along the scenic 10-kilometer route I biked to high school forever disappeared. They were replaced with industrial parks where people like my childhood friends built plants. Many young and middle-aged villagers buy apartments, townhouses, and houses in the cities. Those who remain in the village are elderly like my parents. The lifestyle and standard of living of my childhood friends are close to or even better than mine, considering the social support they enjoy when living near their birthplace. Consumerism is also on fire in China, rural or urban. With sky-rocketing housing prices, many families are now in dire need of Marie-Kondo’s method to declutter their living space. My home village has forever transformed from a rural agrarian community to an industrial one. The changes are manifested not only just without such as people’s lifestyles and living conditions, but also within such outlook on themselves, their relationship with others, the societies, and the world at the large.
Where am I going? How to reconnect my present with the past?
The purpose of this site is to share ideas and experiences, link my past with the future. More importantly, I use this site as catharsis and therapy to consolidate and assimilate my two opposed life experiences thus: the east and the west, the collectivism and the individualism, the agrarian society and the post-industrialization society. These conflicts and contradictions caused much pain but also growth.
How did I fare so far?
The topics in this site may pertain to 1) How did I manage personal finance–in Techleader’s word– how to become a multi-millionaire and financially independent, 2) how did I learn and navigate through the cultural and social gulfs, and 3) How did I keep myself sane in the adapting processes.
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