National Adult Literacy Database

December 5, 2005

The following story was composed by Ting, from Red Deer, Alberta. The story was dictated by Ting to Michelle Cook, Coordinator at the Red Deer Adult Literacy Program, and typed into the computer for him to use as a literacy exercise. Ting felt no one would want to read his story. When you have finished you will not be able to look at another new Canadian again and dismiss them as anonymous and inconsequential. We have all heard these experiences, but none of us growing up in Canada have any realization of what motivation brings new Canadians to come and to try to fit in to an entirely new and foreign society. Ting takes every opportunity to include himself with Canadians, in Canadian activities. Below is part of Ting's story.

My Recollections (Part 1)

by Ting

I didn't go to school. When I was three years old the Japanese were fighting in China. We lived in the country. My father was a farmer. I do not remember as a four year old, or a five year old. I remember as a six or seven year old.

We lived in a town. Farmers are different in China. In my country a hundred farmers live all together in a small town. A hundred families live in one town and the land is close to the town. Everyone has land outside the town. I remember, six years old, my family worked on our farm. The Japanese came to my town a couple of days a week. They went through the town, taking some food, pigs, chickens. They told people to go make building for them to live. They took the men to build roads for them. Sometimes they hit the men. Sometimes they killed the men. Because the Chinese soldiers, maybe in the night, broke the road during the day the Japanese soldiers come, angry and made the men fix the road. Everybody was scared. They came many times to my town until 1945.

They left China in 1945 when the WWII ended. America dropped the bomb. After that the Japanese were broken. They left China, back to Japan. I was ten years old then. I never went to school. When the Japanese were fighting the farmers, no school. I just played. After the Japanese were gone Mao Tse Tung and Chain Kai Shek were fighting until 1950. Close to the town, 10K away, there was fighting, fighting in the mountains. Soldiers were sometimes hiding and shooting, very often. All of China was fighting. I lived close to the sea. My province is close to the sea. The ships would stop there and the soldiers would march through our city and then march out again.

The fighting was until 1949. Chang Kai Shek went to Taiwan and all the country was left for Mao Tse Tung. I was 15.

After Chang Kai Shek was gone I went to school for 2 years. The town had one house for the school, for all of the town. The town picked somebody to pay to be the teacher. Grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3. everybody was together. One class. I went to school, and everybody was in one class. It was a big room. Maybe there were more than 50 students. Eight year olds started school. But everybody was older because everybody grew up when there was no school. Most students were 10 to 13, all learning from the same book. Easy book.

After grade five we went to another town, a bigger town. It had more students. Grade 5, 6, 7, all together went to "middle school".

Part 2 | Part 3