by Miles Xu
Twenty three years ago, a boy came to the world in Wuhan, a beautiful city along the Yangtze River. The father named him Min which is the abbreviation of the father's hometown Fujian Province since the father left there for years and missed it very much. But the life didn't offer an easy start. The boy was thought to have the deficiency in his legs and he could not stand stable like other kids. It made the parents rather anxious. Luckily, it was proved that the symptom was the lack of calcium, a major element for composing the bones and could be easily cured. Later, the father decided to move the family back to Fujian. In most Chinese people's memory, Fujian is a southeast mountainous land without rich natural resources compare to its neighbors. But the people there were favored with the sea to connect to the outside world. All of these make the people ---- the ocean's offspring possess the characteristics such as hardworking, bravery, smartness and adventuring, which are also applied to this boy. This boy is me.
Fujianese are often identified as adventurers. My life journey started in Wuhan, then move to Fuzhou, and later in Nanjing for my higher education. And now as you know, I'm here in Beijing to start my career.(I will show them a map.) Believe me, in the past 23 years of my life I had stayed in the universities for 22 years. Since my parents are university faculties, when I was a little boy, the campuses had been the playgrounds for us ----- my little friends and me. Compared to most of my little buddies who were forced by the parents to learn instruments, calligraphy or fine arts after class, I was lucky. My parent provided a world with fewer regulations. I could act as a happy wild boy in the muds, bushes and river banks. But wild doesn't conflict with knowledge. I love the nature. The nature taught me the knowledge that I could hardly learn in the house. One advantage of having teachers as your parents is that you can own abundant books with many subjects at home. Though I'm an IT guy currently, geography, history , sociology and biology are my favorite. I should thank my parents for satisfying me with those books, which greatly increased my curiosity of the outside world. What you can't imagine is that I was completely addicted to them at that time.
When I grew older and stayed in the middle school, I had to spend much longer time in finishing the tremendously increased school-assigned homework in order to pass the exams times and times again. In China, it's the reality that we should face. Yep, I passed them while some of the contemporaries failed. But it was not the kind of life I could enjoy. I saw no meanings to repeat the similar exercises just to increase the stabilities of scores in taking exams. So I decided to go on my way. I just finished part of homework and not attended the extra classes in the weekend. At first, my teachers blamed me for not finishing the exercises and worried my decisions might affect my grades. But later I still kept a front pace in the exams since I could enjoy enough time for sleeping, and for some more meaningful work. From then on, the teachers acquiesced in my actions. The books and maps that I read in the childhood couldn't satisfy my need any more. I started to seek the geography, history and sociology knowledge on the Internet. In the vacations, I traveled around China with my parents. Even more, during the time as a university student, I was admitted into a computer contest's global final held in the US after the hard work. The half a month's stay provided me a good chance to experience this nation on my own. And a dream rooted in my childhood became stronger and stronger.
Now the little boy has become a young man. But the dream in my heart never fades away. I have a dream that one day I can take on the backpack to travel around the world. I have a dream that one day I could stand on the top of the world and dive in the water with the beautiful coral reefs. I have a dream that one day I can roam along the ancient Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon. I believe that the true meanings of life could be illuminated through experiencing the nature and the civilization of the world. That's me.
