My beautiful hometown

Oct. 11th, Cliff Changchun Zou

    I’m a Chinese who came here from China three years ago. I grew up in a small town near Xi’an, a historic city in the middle of China. As I was growing up, I witnessed the fast development of China and the dramatic changes of the people’s lives.  In early 1980s, my parents earned in total only about $35 per month; and now, about twenty years later, their salaries together are around $350 per month ¾ that’s the typical case for most ordinary Chinese. When I was a little kid in early 1980s, our family had very poor lives. In order to support their three children, my parents tried hard to spend every penny in the right place. However, I enjoyed my childhood and I have rich memories about my life in our small hometown. Our poor lives didn’t matter to me back then. One reason is because as a small kid, I was too young to understand that my family was poor and I had no mind to worry about making money for living; another reason is that my hometown was beautiful and there were many things to enjoy without money.

     My small hometown was in a narrow, long valley, surrounded by small mountains on three sides and there was only one way out to the big city nearby. The mountains around were the paradises of children in the town. From spring to early fall season, green trees and colorful flowers covered them. After I was free from school in the afternoon, I often ran out with several friends into these mountains. Those yellow, red unknown flowers; astute squirrels with funny big tails running in and out of our sight; swallows, sparrows and some birds with red beak twittering over the roof of trees ¾ all these appealed and lured us into this natural world. Besides, no parents were watching us; we were free to do anything we wanted.  We ran around trees, playing hide-and-seek games. We plucked strawberries, apricots, and some other wild fruits. Then we used hands to simply brush off the mud and ate them immediately with satisfaction ¾ no adults could shout at us to wash these lovely fruits before we ate them. The wild fruits were smaller than those planted by farmers, but they were sweeter, or if we were unlucky, more sour. Sometimes we would compete to see who could find the biggest and the sweetest fruit. Our shouting and laughing sound would be left behind as we ran, resounding around trees and rocks.

     One small mountain nearby had a flat top where we could run around easily. During spring season, my friends and I would climb up to this place and fly kites. It was luxury for us to buy kites, so most of us made them by ourselves. We collected thin bamboo strips from used bamboo curtains, using them to construct the backbone of kites. Then we pasted paper on them to finish the work. Usually I would also draw some colorful pictures on my kite to make it beautiful. The mountaintop, with steady strong mountain wind and no parents around, was an ideal place for flying kites. I would hold my kite, waiting for wind patiently. As soon as the wind came up, I ran against it and fly my colorful kite high onto the blue sky. Usually the wind took our kites far away from us, blowing them onto the top of our hometown. Though sometimes we shivered under the cold spring wind, we felt proud and powerful once we thought that some other pathetic kids could only stand on the ground in the town and raise their head to watch our colorful kites flying on the blue sky.

     Another paradise for kids was the small river winding across our town. Not like Amherst, where there are almost no exposed stones, the small river in our hometown was covered with millions of big or small stones ¾ most of them were round and smooth after years of washed out. Some parts of the river were wide and we could easily walk, or to say, jump across it from one stone to another; some other parts had deep water and we would swim there in the summer. I had great time on the river during my summer holiday ¾ swimming, fishing or playing with the water. The river was fresh and clear, with many small waterfalls to play with when I went swimming with my friends. After tired of swimming around, we would stand on one side of the river and throw small flat stones along the surface of the water, watching them jumping up and down the water surface for several times along the trail. I was good at it and sometimes a good pitch could make the stone jumping seven to eight times before it sinks!

     There were many small fishes inside the lively river, too. At that time we didn’t have the luxury to buy fishing poles, instead we made the fishing poles by using thin long bamboo rods. We walked along the riverside, fishing here and there in order to find a good place. After long time waiting at one place, when I finally saw that the bobber was polling up and down by an unseen fish under the water, my heart would suddenly beat faster. I grasped my breath, watched the bobber closely and pulled up the rod quickly at the right time; then the heavier feel of my hand spread to my head and I saw the fish popping out of the water at the end of my fishing line ¾ that was the greatest moment during my fishing.

    There were many other wonderful memories about my childhood in my small hometown. Now I have come here in America, a modern, developed country and a quite different world.  But I still miss my hometown, the paradise of small kids, even though people there once had very poor lives during my childhood. Those thousands pieces of memories of it will stay inside me, sparkle from time to time, remind me of my pleasant child life.