3 My childhood

I didn't have a very healthy childhood. I intend to blame the lack of food and nutrition but there were obviously other childs who had no more than I did but grew up fine.My mother counted that I was sick 360 days in a year.

I grew up playing in a dirt yard in the area, which was a little smaller than a soccer field. It doesn't exist anymore and Beijing is now all congested with buildings. Where do kids play now? I do not know.

I started playing accordion at the age of 4. We couldn't afford a piano and accordion was apparently the closest thing my parents could find. My parents always had long-term goals for me which I am very thankful because I never missed a chance in my life to develop civilized skills. (Parents and authorities.) And under their influence, I grew up to be an ambitious young man. But as the US foldlores go, Chinese are inscrutable, I don't easily show them.

I also played soccer a lot. From kindergarten kids to university boys in the neighborhood played soccer in the dirt yard. I started off play goal keeper and I guess that's what you are capable of doing when you are the youngest. Then somehow, I worked my way up from letting other people kicking the ball into my face to kicking the ball into other people's faces.

I went to this back street primary school. Our district was full of professors and intellectuals but my primary school was famous for sending students to this hulligan middle school that you have to be beat up when you enter to beat other kids in other middle schools up. We had a playground though and I now realized how luckier I am compared to some of the Hong Kong pupils (My feelings about Hong Kong(under construction)). Our teachers were mostly city shrews and I remember in the 6th grade, I somehow made my math teacher cry because she couldn't solve linear equations with two variables. And of course, she sent me to someone else who made me cry. I was just a kid. I would cry if I lost a transformer toy that I could only get one after I recover from a bout of sickness. But I was sick a lot, so I had many toys. My father was never thrifty on spending money for me, even at the hardest days. But he would never indulge me either. He has always been the traditional strict Chinese father who doesn't talk with their kids too much but only cares about them deep in their hearts. And that's probably another proof how we are inscrutable to Americans.