Who She Was: A Sudden Change For My Mom

Who He_She Was

In 1978 China passed a policy that would change the way families and males are seen in the Chinese family. It was a policy aimed at the controlling the population of China, and it is a policy that is still in affect to this day. The One Child Policy officially restricted families to one child and any family with more than one would be exempt from many privileges and taxed heavily. My mom recalls the affects that this policy had on surrounding families in her province. She was born in Wen Zhou, a small farming province that recently has undergone urbanization. Her family was not directly affected by this policy because she and her siblings were born before the one child policy took affect; however, later on in her life she would be directly faced with the consequences of the one child policy.

My mom gave birth to my brother in 1986 in Hong Kong and I would be born five years later in 1992. From the beginning my mom knew this would create many problems for our family. My mother’s family was never a rich family and was struggling to keep their farm. She decided to send me to my grandmother’s farm for her take care of me, as my mom decided what to do. My earliest memories were of my grandmother and it was not until I was three years old that I met my direct family. The encounter was abrupt as my mom snatched me from my grandmother’s arm and dragged me to the airport to quickly board the plane, this was my first encounter with my mom. I thought she was a cruel woman to steal me away from my grandparents. The plane was heading for the United States and for most of my life I had believed that the move to the United States was a curt decision.

It was only recently in this interview with my mom did I discover the true decision for sudden change in my life. My mom said that her family was negatively affected by the one child policy. The government had exempt our family from many privileges such as higher education and increased our taxes dramatically. At the family’s current state they could not afford to have a second child. In fact she had claimed that she never intended to have another son and had in fact wanted to stop at one child. At the time Hong Kong was exempt from the one child policy and she told me that our family moved to Hong Kong briefly. During my stay with my grandmother my mom formulated a plan to move to the United States to avoid the one child policy. It was a decision that would dramatically change her life and our family’s life as well. Her life was based in China and her entire family was there as well. For her to move would be a huge sacrifice. It truly takes a large amount of character for anyone to agree to throw away more than thirty years of his or her life to start a new one in a foreign land. My mom told me this was an about face moment, where she pushed herself to do something she never had the courage to do. For much of her life she had been a traditional person that relied on the bond of family to help her thrive in life. During the moment of her decision to move, she said that she felt a new courage she did not know existed in her. She said when she got on the plane she pushed our family to quickly go on and not look back because our family would be starting a new life.

Even during her stay in the United States her courage stayed with her. My said adjusting to an American life style was difficult and often she felt like people were mocking her because she could not speak English. My mom said she had to deal with people that simply did not care where she came from. But in the end she kept on searching for a place to settle. She eventually came to settle down in Flushing, where she was able to build a tight nit Chinese community. My mom claims that she brought a bit of China with her and turned the neighborhood all yellow- that was my mom’s attempt at joking. It was quite difficult for her to move away, but if it was not for her sudden change in character our family could be in the streets by this point.