The Changer
Xiaorui (Miranda) Tong
GWRT 103
From Individual to Global changes
What makes a nation proud and prospers? Is it the advanced society or the fast-growing economics? The correct answer is people, the primary components of a nation who're the reason behind the raising or declining of a nation. It is always the people who determine the social and economic status of a nation by making changes, first in themselves, then to the entire nation. The changes an individual make might not be enough, but millions of changers would definitely make an impact in their nations. Individuals benefit from their nation; similarily, nations benefits from their citizens. The accumination of “Personal and private changes” made by individual changers would eventually evolves into bigger, global changes, that bring peace and prosperity to the nations. One the changers is my mother Qiongyao, a tiny woman, only five feet tall, who made a big difference greater than her size.
My mother is a changer who transformed and influenced her own world, a world surrounded by beloved family members, through education. She is the first, the dazzling head light, who pointed out a victorious pavement for her beloved ones. Education unlocked her door to foreign nations and opened her as well as her families into new insights, new cultures, and new perspectives.
It is not uncommon to see many Asian students walking around the campus, and many students have grow accustomed to it. But what most people probably do not realize is that most of the Asians passing by are coming from Hongkong, Shanghai, or Beijing, the most distinguished and wealthiest parts of China. Receiving passports to foreign nations is a process that takes little effort for people coming from Hongkong, Shanghai, and Beijing, but it certainly is not easy for someone who hails from a less developed city. Sichuan certainly is not an industrialized area, and its province Zhaohua is even less than undeveloped. Zhaohua’s beauty relies on the antique buildings that dated hundreds of years ago. Yet, it still doesn’t change the fact that Zhaohua is an obsolete and antiquated town, an area where poverty and deprivation reign. Zhaohua is a remote and isolated town surrounded by hundreds of miles of rural areas and mountains. It wasn't until recent years that mud roads were replaced by cement pavements and modern and tall building started to appear on Zhaohua's market streets. That's where my mother came from: a society that became relics. Many people believe the countryside is a paradise where nature can live freely without any humans destroying its natural habitats, but starving and worrying about foods are the actual pictures of reality, especially at the time from 1949 to 1976, which is widely believed to have caused the deaths of between 40 to 70 million people.
Knowledge is power, which my mother firmly believed; she puts great pressure on the value of education. Literacy is a bridge between the "outside" world as well as staircase between difference social classes. It is the education that enabled her to jump out of poverty and the illiterate cage and into the brilliant and colorful "outside" world. "I want to go to college," my mother said, she was only ten years old. Day to day, year after year, she studied assiduously while others were enjoying their lives. Education awarded my mother a chance to experience new cultures, make new friends, and furnish her family a new home, a better living standard, and a promising future. She knew that getting an education was her only way to acquire a better future for her children and her family.
"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. .... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential"(Koli Annan). My mother made her dream a reality though education, the only way possible to break the cycle of poverty her parents experienced. Instead of living, marrying, dieing in the small town like most country girls did, my mother wanted more than just a bread to eat, a shelter to live, or a life too tedious without passion. She wanted a life better for herself as well as for her family. She attended Beijing University, received a Doctor's degree at Nagaya University School of Medicine in Japan, and worked in Washington Unversity School of Medicine in St. Louis and VCU School of Medicine. She was able to improve her family by enhancing their living standards and offering them better opportunities in distinguished parts of China, Japan, and the United States. With my mother's efforts, her parents moved out of the old house into a new home with modern technologies of the twenty-first century; Because of my mother, her younger brother, an originally incorrigible street boy, is able to earn a Doctor's degree in the top four Medical School in Japan. Today, he is currently a professor working in one of China's most prestigious universities; because of my mother, I am currently here, in the United States pursuiing my dreams. My mother is the role model, the inresistable headlight that altered hers as well as her family's lives forever.
Every individual has a power to change virtually anything and everything in his or her life in an instant. My mother is an example of a changer who funds her way out of poverty and the feudal and small town through education. She changed her way of living as well as her family’s forever. She made promises to herself, and she eventually fulfilled them by giving her family a better future and a better tomorrow. A girl from a remote and isolated town has crossed the borders of China, Japan, and the United States. She is a rope that pulled her family out of the isolated well into the border and imminent sky.
My mother might be the one individual who made changes to her private world surrounded by families, but millions of changers like her would transform the "small and private" changes they made into a global change in persuit of a strong and proud nation. China is a nation at a stage embroiled in an epic battle between old China and moderization.But with world changers like my mother, more and more Chinese people would step out of the comfort zones of old China into the global and modern world. After decades of study aboard, Chinese elites are welcomed home, along with advanced science and modern technologies they abtained from developed nations. With their effort and Chinese propensity for saving, a still growing livingstandard and development of high technology, electronics, fast food, automobiles all aglimpse into China's future. In a slow but accumulating process, China is transforming from an agrarian society into a major world power. Our generations and the generations after us are bonded to vitness the raise of a nation, a miracle that is accomplished millions of changers in China.
Work Cited
Koli, Annan. Quotes Daddy, QuotesDaddy.com, 2008-2010
http://www.quotesdaddy.com/quote/1049748/kofi-annan/literacy-is-a-bridge-from-misery-to-hope-it-is-a-tool
This work, for which I received, no unauthorized assistance, complies with the JMU Honor Code. Miranda Tong
