My dear children Shiva and Aditi,
It’s now the summer of 2021, in the month of June. In east bay, California, where we are currently residing, the weather is dry and hot. On some days it feels parching and toasty outdoors, but on some days it cools down swiftly when there’s a breeze from the Pacific, like today.
Actually, this whole week’s been cool and humid because of the incoming Pacific wind which is blissful in the torrid summer.
Due to global warming, ocean currents exhibit much more irregularity and disturbance, resulting in unpredictable and extreme weather in lands. We have been experiencing the impact first hand - years of drought in California, months of forest fire and smoky sky, earthquakes, and tsunamis…
Your preceding Earth dwellers haven’t taken good care of our home planet, more severe weathers and catastrophes are yet to come, however, you and future generations shall face the consequences.
It’s not fair, I know, but all you have to do is to understand and accept the reality, be strong, and start to cherish our beautiful Earth, like none of the predecessors could ever imagine. It’s going to be the sole life task for many generations to come, and I believe you have the will and means to succeed.
Mama and Shiva are sitting on the balcony of a cafe after dropping off Aditi at her old preschool where the summer program is going on. In this year's summer, Aditi has summer school on some of the weeks whilst Shiva has no school to attend in the morning. In the afternoon, Taekwondo, music, horse riding, and gymnastics classes are continuing as usual.
Mama has signed you up for some summer camp programs, two weeks of intense ice hockey training for Shiva, and one week of horse farm experience for you both, all of the camping weeks had been planned to be in July and August.
This is the first year for either of you to attend summer camps, hopefully, you will enjoy and learn something, we will see how it goes.
Besides summer school, summer camps, and hanging out with mama in a cafe or library, till now we have already visited uncountable attractions since the end of spring. Almost all of the weekends we’d been out, on some beach in the north or south of California, digging sandpits, building dams, and feeding birds with sand crabs.
We had just completed a 5-day road trip and camping tour to the Grand Canyon at the beginning of June and had visited our extended American relatives who are living in Las Vegas.
Right now, Mama is working on her writings on a laptop, Shiva is solving maths problems in his own journal. Mama is trying to focus while Shiva keeps trying to converse with mama.
The Maths level that Shiva’s currently at is equivalent to grade 1 to 2 at the time when you just finished Kindergarten. Mama and papa are hardly anything like those “tiger parents” who are eagerly in pursuit of mathematics or science advancement for their children, but somehow Shiva himself is really into mathematics and science.
We are merely led by your own quality and interests to guide you. Solving math problems and learning about science makes you happy, thus we have been making sure to provide you with enough resources for learning and growing.
I think this should be the essential rule for guardians: give guidance but not restraint, foster independence but not reliance, grant the children freedom as well as the skills to thrive with freedom.
I am confident that it won’t be proven wrong in the future. For children, they are from you but owned not by you, they house their own souls that belong to tomorrow but not yesterday, they are their own entities that embody the disposition of the free will and individual liberty as naturally as any human being or conscious organic body.
Both of you, Shiva and Aditi are such great kids, we all are feeling utterly blessed to be able to have you with us and watch you grow.
Shiva, you are extremely kind, gentle, and thoughtful, you feel what others feel and are compassionate about others’ sufferings. Mama had told you once that “our family does not need free lunch, if we don’t take it, it should go to someone else who is in need”, you have remembered it since and never taken home even once the free lunch school’s been giving out. Even on days when you were feeling famished after school, you were still able to resist the urge to pick up the food bag on the table, because you couldn’t bear the fact that someone else in need might lose a meal if you took one.
Due to covid, there were a lot more children who fell into hunger, both of you felt sad for them and actively helped mama and papa in charity work. We had donated to various international and national organizations, as well as local charities, each time you both were attentively following through the procedures and earnestly trying to know it all.
You both have a strong sense of community, understand the individual's responsibility in building up a vibrant community, and have never hesitated to participate in related events and activities. You have always made your best efforts.
Besides being generous and kind, Aditi, you are exceptionally passionate about anything you do. There is always excitement and exclamation in your speech.
You are a natural leader, constantly try to lead, try to be the first and the best. You are like a ray of sunlight, wherever you go, the dark ends and light shines in.
Because of the sweetness in your amicable nature; because you have never failed to show respect and regard to anyone you encounter; because you are most definitely the ones who make extraordinary efforts regardless of gain or pay; because of the strong self-control and resilience you exhibit, both of you are without fail always very much favored and cherished by teachers and coaches. Therefore all of the classes or training of any sort that you attend, you have never even once come back home saying that you didn’t enjoy it to the full.
Mama is so proud of you two and couldn’t stop herself when she’s thinking about how amazing you are. But today, in this letter, I actually want to write about myself, to tell you about my story.
I grew up in China, a place where there were some serious attempts to push the society through the transformation from a feudal and imperial kingdom to a people’s republic in the 10s and 20s in the 20th century. But till now all of the attempts had failed and the place stayed under multiple authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that have almost nothing republic but mostly feudal and monarchical with the extremely centralized-to-the-emperor power structure and stolen and tampered Communism/Marxism ideology and doctrines.
Before the import of Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Atheism and Materialism, Confucianism and Legalism (Fajia) were the two prominent philosophical doctrines in China, they are still the most important social values and norms in current China.
Confucianism and Legalism were established purposefully by the emperors of imperial China to control its people. Confucianism was formed before the first dynasty (Qin) of imperial China, after Qin, it had been altered to be a set of cultural values that taught about obedience and conformity.
Obedient to husbands, fathers, elders, higher class, rulers, but most importantly, the emperor. Compliance with all social norms is the only way of life, uniqueness and boldness should be suppressed and discouraged at all times.
Legalism was first brought out and served for Qin’s brutal unification of China, a philosophy which was created to serve expansionism and imperialism, its core value was about conquering, oppressing, and controlling in the most ruthless way.
The funny thing is, before Qin, there were numerous ideologies and various schools of philosophical thoughts, as well as multiple states which held almost equal power to each other. The land of ancient China did enjoy a period of diversity and tolerance. What do you think then? History is about Chance or Necessity?
Anyways, as you can imagine, education for me, who grew up under an authoritarian regime, was largely allocated to thought control and brainwashing. Almost all of the childhood lullabies and school songs were so-called “red songs”, propagating party ideals such as “our motherland is the strongest in the world even though she went through hundreds of years’ humiliation”, “I love Yellow River because her water was the milk that nourished my body and soul”, “Yellow River is the most beautiful river in the world, thus Han Chinese is the best race in the world”, “revolution runs in our blood, we are the successors of Communism, ready to be sent to war at any passing moment”, “fight to the death against foreign evil forces to defend our great motherland” etc.
Through years of grooming in a repetitive style, there were a lot of triggers ingrained in our general emotions unknowingly. Most of them were opinions, even just attitudes or sentiments that were different from the doctrines and propaganda guidelines.
The worst of all was criticism of either the nation or the party or the government or the society, actually, these were merely some abstract concepts melted into one body - The Motherland. Everything in there was shapeless, vague, and intertwisted.
And your love for the Motherland should be equal to your unconditional love toward closest family members like your mother, father, or siblings.
Thus somewhere the slightest gesture of disapproval to the government could trigger an individual’s emotional avalanche, instantly putting oneself into “victim + survival mode”.
At first, the feeling of humiliation would flood in, then came the uncontrollable anger. With the anger fueling up, one could swiftly switch from “victim mode” to “fighting and attacking mode”, using claws and teeth to bite off any offensive attempt of criticizing any notion that was put into that big mixed pot called “Motherland”.
However, on the eve of almost bankruptcy of the current regime, they decided to go under disguise and open up for business, thus a window of 34 years or so had opened a crack, letting in some light that shone on my thirsty soul.
I was born on the 7th year mark; on the 11th year mark, brave college students went to the square asking for freedom but ended up being killed and murdered, thus mercilessly strict control on all colleges started to unfold for the decades to come; I graduated from undergrad and left China on the 29th year mark. One of the luckiest who benefited from this fleeting window of sunlight, in the ocean of boundless darkness.
More than one year after I got out, I started to realize that on the surface of my almost-dried-and-fixed square-shaped mind, there were marks made by branding irons, signs and names of the place I was born. Some of them had turned into scars, some of them were still bloody wounds.
So I started to dismantle it, my whole mind. In shame, humiliation, and anger, I took a wrecking ball and knocked down every old structure, smashed them to ashes.
Where did I get the strength? Ultimately the credit goes to the innate human nature that longs for freedom and liberty.
All of us went through immense amounts of oppression, most of the time we felt like clusters of ants on the edge of a moving tank, never knowing when it was our turn to be swirled in and crushed to dust. But I have never given in, I have never allowed it to be killed by cruelty, hopelessness and anxiety, the desire to fly, to someday see the outside.
The books I loved painted me a faint picture of a possible parallel universe, I hid my longings for that universe in all the books that I loved.
With this strength and the love from my family, I was able to escape that prison, not only physically, but I was able to rescue my soul too.
Rising and rebuilding from ashes was not easy, but thanks to all the circumstances, I’m more or less there now, after almost 15 years. 15 years, it’s never too long or too late. Every passing second I am grateful for what I’ve been able to achieve, from an often-manipulated-and-used brainwashed maniac to someone finally in the process of building up critical thinking. I’m grateful for where I’m able to stay and have my new life, the free world that you two belong.
And all these years I have been online, like a lonely and aimless drifter who was trying to find her sanity. Endless self-expression filled my void, sometimes would even make me forget about the pain and shame. I vowed to myself years back: each word I speak shall be with honesty and integrity. And that’s exactly what I did.
Gradually, I had found some purpose, I had seen some faces with gratitude, I had felt some warmth in the responses. So I continued my self-expression, continued with honesty and integrity.
However, speaking back into that prison, with 100% honesty and the goodwill to let in some light and hope, even though you knew the rules and played by them, there was surely going to be a cost to your openness and kindness.
For some people, the cost was as high as their lives, for some people, the cost was their complete freedom, for some people, the cost was their family. The more I got to uncover along my way, the more I realized how crucial it was for me to stand tall and strong, to stick to what I truly believed in, carrying myself in blood. Because that was what hope was all about.
However, I have always been cautious about what I was willing to put on the table, either my life or my freedom or my family, the impact could all come back to you two. I would never let anything happen to you, not in a million years. For the longest period of time, I had felt my sole meaning of life was to give life to you and bring you up.
As of this moment, I have healed and gained several inches more strength, as well as have obtained several yards more clarity. I have found faith in faith. I have recollected my breaths to move on.
So this is my story that I want to share with you, a story that I am still writing with my days.
I have carried myself in this way, always telling myself "If not me, then who?", because I refuse to live a life with regrets. If freedom is truly the most important thing that we value in this life, then we shall as well guard it and fight for it.
Will write to you soon.
Love mama
July 2021
