Shengliver’s Note: The Chinese lad you will be reading about in this entry has finished high school and is in university. This entry was done when he was in the second year of high school. Life then was not easy for him. Shengliver wishes him well.

This entry features a Chinese teenager, Shane. Shane is one of my students. He comes from a county called Yunxi. I became his teacher at the beginning of the second term of Grade One. He talks little, smiles rarely found on his face. His hair is not regularly shampooed, and dandruff is a daily occurrence. In the beginning, the boy was a puzzle to me. Little by little, as time went by, bits and pieces of his life story came out through his journal entries and completed the jigsaw in my mind.

A Scholarship

The authority has established several scholarships and grants to support the academically excellent and to assist those whose families have financial difficulties. Shane lost his father as a kid, and later his mother remarried. It is clear that the family have difficulty keeping him in school. He should have got a scholarship or a grant, but he hasn’t so far.

Last term, a scholarship opening was assigned to his class. It meant that one candidate would be entitled to it. His class director granted the scholarship to one of the boys who had done well in exams. Shane confided in the journal that he should have been the recipient because he found that what little money his mother provided could not last him for the term. If he did not stretch his allowance, he would have to live on air towards the end of a term.

Even though the scholarship had not been awarded to him, he did not whine. Even though the boy granted the money had spent it on birthday cakes and gifts, Shane did not hate him. “Life is hard on me, and I must hold on. My difficulties, if they do not kill me, will only make me stronger,” Shane vowed.

Rain

“Shengliver, I know you are a rainman. Why?” he asked me one week in the journal. Shane likes rain too. The reason he provided made my heart skip a beat.

When Shane was a young boy, he lost his father. His mother raised him and his younger brother on her own for several years. It was a hard existence. As a boy, Shane cried a lot when stuck in a difficult situation. He came to like rain this way. One day after a fight with someone in the school, he was running home, crying. On the way, a shower came on. Tears were salty, and the raindrops that splattered on him made the salty liquid taste better. “I like rain because it tastes sweet,” the boy explained.

A Tie

Suit and tie is not the Chinese national costume. Most people in China do not wear a suit and tie on a daily basis. When Shane was a kid, his father made a promise to him. Every year, the father left home to find jobs elsewhere in the country. Before the father set out on a new journey one year, he promised Shane that he would bring the son a small tie as a gift for the Spring Festival.

Shane got excited for he had never owned a tie before. He could not wait for the father to come back home sooner. The father normally returned days before the Spring Festival.

The father did not come back at the end of that year; instead, he came back earlier than usual. When word came that Father was on the way, Shane got happy. His anticipation, however, turned to shock and grief, when Daddy came home in a wooden box, carried by some people.

Father laid to rest, Shane did get the little tie that the father had promised him. “I cannot remember what Father looked like, but the tie will tie us two for ever. Anytime difficulties weigh me down, the tie will buoy me up,” Shane penned in the journal.

A Call

A boarder at the school, Shane does not go home until summer or winter holidays come. He does not have a cell phone, so he keeps in touch with his mother on the pay phones installed on campus.

On Mother’s Day this year, he called his mother up during the lunch break. He got through and started to talk. The talk had not gone for a while when the call was discontinued suddenly at the other end. The last thing Shane heard on the phone was a shriek from the mother.

A few days later, he called his stepfather, who told Shane that the mother had happened to be working on a mountainside when Shane called. The mother missed her footing and rolled down the mountainside. Luckily, she was not seriously injured, and she was recovering fast.

If we use an adjective to describe Shane’s life, it is bitter. Despite the bitterness, the lad never gives up on life. On the contrary, he is growing stronger and maturer.

Good luck, Shane.