Capital and Home to Newcomers

WHEN Xu Yongling firststepped off the trainfrom Henan at BeijingRailway Station in1992, she was a wide-eyed 18-year-old with a temporary resi-dence permit. The prospect of finding ajob in the capital seemed as electrifyingas the city lights."I was thrilled to be in Beijing, butbecause I was an outsider, work washard to find," she recalls. Today, 31-year-old Xu Yongling is a mother, andthe interior decor company she startedwith her husband is starting to prosper.She is amazed at how vastl…     

My Love Affair with China

MY interest in and eventual love for China began when I was a small boy growing up on our family farm in Pennsylvania. Back in the 1930's, our farm had no electricity, no running water, no paved road. We had very little access to the "outside world," but we did have a small radio powered by a car battery. In the evenings the four of us, father, mother, my younger brother     

Flower Affairs

A girl named Keyi who lived in Suzhou lost her mother when she was in her childhood, and since then on she and her father depended on each other to eke out a living. Poverty made her swear to work hard and hunger for success ever from young; she wanted to change the living conditions so as to let her father live a better life. In college, Keyi and her classmates once went to a Christmas party sponsored by a foreign company, in which she met an Englishman with who she had sex that night. Later, she found that she was pregnant and had abortion.     

Not one less——Directed by Zhang Yimou, China, 1999,106 min.

In her village, she was the teacher... In the city, she discovered how much she still had to learn. At the Shuiquan Primary School,Teacher Gao has to be away from schoolfor a month to take care of his mother. Themayor of the village finds a substituteteacher, Wei Minzhi, to take over Gao'sclass. Seeing that Wei Minzhi is only thir-teen years old. Gao protests to the mayorthat such a young girl will not be able toteach students, who are of her own age oronly slightly younger. The mayor rep…     

Lang Lang: From child prodigy to Carregie Hall

As a child, I had three wishes: to have my own bicycle, to take figure-skating lessons, and to play piano. As a young mother of 26,I finally bought a bicycle which I happily rode up and down our farm laneway. At 34, my first lesson with a professional skating teacher was also my last when I fell on the ice and popped an instant bump the size of an egg on the back of my head. To my chagrin, the only keyboard I ever mastered was that of the typewriter/computer.     

Is It Appropriate to Quote Classic Works in Court?

When a Beijing resident surnamed Zhang signed a property transaction agreement with his mother, she refused to pay for the house.Zhang’s mother, a 85-year-old woman surnamed Lu, sued her for breaking the     

Government Buys Jobs For Laid-off Workers

Lu Yun rejoices that she did not hesitate to take the job as a community patrol a year ago. "Had I refused to take up the job, there would have been no opportunity at all to find a job now," she said. In 2001, the Dalian city government bought a number of jobs of public welfare in nature, including patrols in communities. However, many people were reluctant to take them at the time, leaving several hundred vacancies. Lu Yun, 48, was laid off by the Dalian Department Store four years ago. She applied and was given the job. Although the monthly salary is only 400 yuan, she took to like it. "I can enjoy old-age insurance and medical insurance,"     

My Mother and Me

I was born in 1982, in theYimeng mountain area ofShandong Province, one ofthe poorest regions in eastChina. The local people therestill have a feudalistic mentality,and firmly believe that men aresuperior to women. Living in suchan environment, my mother and Ihave had to struggle hard to live adecent life.     

A Cozy Home for Child Patients──A Visit to Changchun Municipal Children''''s Hospital

IN a ward of the Changchun Municipal Children's Hospital, a pretty little girl sits in bed, absorbed in her toys, a happy smile on her face. It is hard to believe that only five days ago she had a heart operation. At six months of age, she was found to suffer from congenital heart disease. Her mother took her to many big hospitals, but could not make the decision to put her daughter through heart surgery. While cogitating, she read in a newspaper that the Changchun Municipal Children's Hos…     

A NEW JOURNEY

Development vision unveiled in annual legislativesession amidst lingering challenges In Zhu Guiyan's memory,two snow-fall days stand out vividly.One was decades ago,when she was exhausted from a hard day's work as a road cleaner clearing unusually heavy snow.The other was in 2018,when she was once again sweeping snow when the news came that she had been elected as a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC),the top legislature.     

LETTERS

The Internet is such a marvelous thing, bringing us thelatest news worldwide and keeping us connected with family members and friends far far away. A colleague of mine recalled when her husband was assigned abroad more than 20 years ago, she waited for nearly two months before getting the first letter from him. The moment she had the envelope in hand, she broke down in tears in the presence of her two-year-old daughter. When I studied abroad five years ago, my son, then four, held online video-talks with me everyday.     

Saved by Science

正Beijing conference shows why science literacy is critical in an age of technological advances The gigantic screen in the hall packed with university students shows an image of Dolly snuggling against her "mother." Dolly, the most famous sheep in the world, became a celebrity even before she was born as she was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell in 1996.The image leaves viewers puzzled. Why isn’t     

How a Tibetan Shepherd Boy Receives His Education

The hero of this story is Xiaochuan Ouzhu, male, of Tibetan ethnic group. He was bom in 1946 in Meishe Cuoba, a town in the upper reaches of the Xiangquan River in Ngari-Prefecture, Tibet. His father was called Dawa Duojie, who was bom of a rich herdsman＇s family. His grandfather was once a low-rank tribal chief. Ouzhu＇s mother, Qu Ni, lost her parents when she was still a baby and was brought up by others.     

My Pantheon of Chinese Teachers

正On my Chinese language learning journey,I have encountered several invaluable teachers. When I first started learning Mandarin in my native United States, I took classes at an international language center near my home.My first teacher was Fiona, an immigrant from China’s Taiwan. Fiona made it her mission to fine-tune our ears to the phonetic pitfalls of Chinese. She had a beautiful soprano voice and taught us the Chinese phonetic alphabet song.The sheet music to the song had a cartoon of a little horse clutching a microphone and singing karaoke.     

Fledgling Millennials

正The post-90s generation pursues more diverse careers and lifestyle While many university graduates are inclined to choose stable and well-paid jobs,Ge Mingzhu opted to be a volunteer primary school teacher in rural areas when she graduated in 2014.This year,her two-year volunteer stint ended.In the run up to graduation,Ge had no idea what kind of job she should look for."I was struggling and confused about my     

The Hakka Women──Deng Ming and His Paintings

A dozen years ago, Deng Ming went to Meizhou, Guangdong, where he stayed with a local Hakka family. When a Hakka girl, 15 or 16 years old, offered him a cup of tea, he noticed that her hands had been roughened by hard work. The girl was neither pretty nor lively, but her smile was pure and innocent, reflecting her sincerity. This touched the painter deeply. "I felt that the girl was just like the tea she held in her hands: clear and sweet," Deng reflects. He later created a painting depict…     

What the Nation Expects!

IT was precisely 50 years ago that my parents put me,a skinny but carefree eight-year-old kid,aboard an aeroplane at Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport and sent me away to a boarding school in England.Unlike Rudyard Kipling,who was destined not to see his mother for f ive years after he had been sent from India for a dose of English schooling,I was reunited with my family at least once every year for the next 10 years.I was one of the lucky ones.     

Temporary Home

Supplies can ensure the survivors in the camps are well fed and clothed The old woman,carrying a baby on her back,wandered around a sports field among long rows of tents built to shelter earthquake survivors."I just had a bowl of porridge for breakfast and I'm taking my grandson out of the tent for a morning walk,"she said.She was an evacuee from Anxian County,close to one of the worst-hit areas of Beichuan County, Sichuan Province."I miss my home so much,but I cannot     

The Truth Must Be Told

IN 1943, Li Shuxian was driven out of her home in Changchun City, Jilin Province in northeast China by Japanese soldiers and as a result had a miscarriage that deprived her of the ability to bear another child. Two years later, she adopted a 3-year-old Japanese orphan, and renamed her Xu Guilan. Says Li Shuxian, "I had mixed feelings at first. What decided me was knowing that Xu Guilan would die if I didn't adopt her, so I overcame my hatred of the Japanese and raised her as my own." Now 81, Li Shuxian     

The Mystery of Beijing

The first time I stepped off a plane into a dry Beijing night I was 19 years old,which meant that I had lived away from home only for two years.I barely spoke a word of Chinese and had only a vague idea about what it would mean to live in a new country.