My dad’s name is Denwen Xu. He was born in a small village in Zhanjiang, Canton, China. It was a hot summer in 1966.
At that time, my dad lived in a big family. My dad, my grandfather, two older sisters and a younger sister lived in a tiny house. When you looked at the house, you will learned that there have lived an ordinary Chinese poor family in 1960s.
Every day, they only had 2meals. My grandfather was so weak and he had to take care 4 kids, so he couldn’t look for a job to earn money. Sometimes my grandpa picked some dead fish which other fisherman left by accident on the seaside. Unfortunately, my dad had to eat sweet potato every day. Everyone got a small piece of the food. It wasn’t enough for the kids who were growing up. If they were lucky, my dad’s uncle visited them and brought them some delicious corn. And that was a big meal for the whole family.
That time, grandpa didn’t have money to pay for school. So dad played with his friends in the lakes. That’s the reason why my dad is good at swimming. At the age of 12, he got a wonderful opportunity to be an athlete and practice water polo. On sport teams, athletes could eat anything they wanted. At least, my dad had clothes to wear, had food to eat.
Finally, my dad met my mom and got married.
My dad always say’s “most of the people have the same situation like us. Some of them were even worse off than us. After all, I was the lucky one. Wasn’t I?
by Li Xu
April 22 , 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment