I vaguely remember the hype around Bejing Olympics, but I never cared about sports so… eh… don’t remember much of the actual thing, only the hype around it.
I was… um… 6 years old?
In 1st grade, public schools didn’t allow me and my brother because we did noy not have a Guangzhou Hukou so we went to some privately-run school that my parents had to pay out of pocket, which according to mom, it was worse than public schools.
We lived in some apartment in a… kinda… “slum” part of the city.
Parents was either working all the time or was looking for work all the time. Didn’t get to see them too often.
Maternal grandmother was at home to watch us.
No internet, no sure if because of our neighborhood not having it or because of money issues…
But we did have some paid subscription cable(?) tv thingy… so that was all the entertainment there was… a lot of um… I think kids cartoons(?) memory is kinda blurry.
So I’d walk to school with… usually grandmother, but sometimes, very rarely, one of my parents that somehow had free time. Probably dad because he didn’t have a stable job… but I don’t remember much.
No free lunch in schools, so you either paid for lunch or you went home for lunch…
I remember just walking home by myself for lunch time, cuz grandma thought it was fine? Cuz nobody would kidnap me in broad daylight right? Right? (👀 mom told me about the supposed “lots of kidnappings” in China, idk how serious that actually is tho)
Its like 5 flights of stairs to the small apartment unit, I don’t think this building meets western building safety codes lol.
So I had lunch at home, then go back to school like approx 1 hour later.
Then finish the rest of the school day and go back home, for dismissal, there was always someone was there to pick me up, either grandma or dad or rarely mom. I remember mom always warning me to never trust a stranger that claims to be picking me up. Cuz apparantly there’s a lot of kidnappers. That “stranger danger” thing terrified me lol
Don’t think I ever remember hearing Cantonese (the lingua franca and “dialect” of Guangzhou) used in school, not by peers, no one. Its all jusr Mandarin
Teachers had meter sticks to “discipline” “misbehaving” students
The schools used blackboards and you write with chalk. There were no smartboards anywhere to be seen. No projectors.
All instruction just using this small student handbooks that each student had their own, and teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard to teach things.
I think summers we go back to our ancestral village? Dad and mom were from different villages and I think usually I go to my mom’s village, cuz that’s where my maternal grandmother lives.
Mom told me that my maternal grandfather took me to the stores and he’d buy ice cream for me… but I don’t remember lol
In Guangzhou, I remember sometimes, my parents took us to the McDonalds near us, but its more like a “vibe” memory, don’t remember much about the food or the taste of food, its over a decade ago. But I remember having ice cream.
I vaguely remember this one school trip… to idk where lol… all I remember was being on the bus and I think I threw up… car sickness lol… we didn’t have a car and so I don’t get used to it.
I think its either this year or 2009 that I had the incident of my older brother (5 years older than me for context, its not a fair fight due to age difference) fighting me then I ran away from home for a few hours… was so scary to be alone in the city for a few hours… still traumatized…
I remember the malls…
I remember being at that store and asking my parents to buy stuff…
this one time I ask them to buy these board games so I can play with my brother… (yes that same brother that want to fight with me all the fucking time)
I remember the metro system… the platform safety door thing was so fascinating to me…
…that’s all I remember on the top of my head right now. I think that one traumatic memory kinda casted a lot of “fog” the blurriness of the memory, and my family leaving that city and the country altogther made it so much easier for my brain to just repress most of it…
Edit: Also I had zero friends… :( So yea I basically spent my early childhood with my sort of abusive older brother… 😭
Edit2: Lol, fixed phrasing mistakes that I just realized after this comment has been up for hours
I was in Guangzhou, China.
I vaguely remember the hype around Bejing Olympics, but I never cared about sports so… eh… don’t remember much of the actual thing, only the hype around it.
I was… um… 6 years old?
In 1st grade, public schools didn’t allow me and my brother because we did noy not have a Guangzhou Hukou so we went to some privately-run school that my parents had to pay out of pocket, which according to mom, it was worse than public schools.
We lived in some apartment in a… kinda… “slum” part of the city.
Parents was either working all the time or was looking for work all the time. Didn’t get to see them too often.
Maternal grandmother was at home to watch us.
No internet, no sure if because of our neighborhood not having it or because of money issues…
But we did have some paid subscription cable(?) tv thingy… so that was all the entertainment there was… a lot of um… I think kids cartoons(?) memory is kinda blurry.
So I’d walk to school with… usually grandmother, but sometimes, very rarely, one of my parents that somehow had free time. Probably dad because he didn’t have a stable job… but I don’t remember much.
No free lunch in schools, so you either paid for lunch or you went home for lunch…
I remember just walking home by myself for lunch time, cuz grandma thought it was fine? Cuz nobody would kidnap me in broad daylight right? Right? (👀 mom told me about the supposed “lots of kidnappings” in China, idk how serious that actually is tho)
Its like 5 flights of stairs to the small apartment unit, I don’t think this building meets western building safety codes lol.
So I had lunch at home, then go back to school like approx 1 hour later.
Then finish the rest of the school day and go back home, for dismissal, there was always someone was there to pick me up, either grandma or dad or rarely mom. I remember mom always warning me to never trust a stranger that claims to be picking me up. Cuz apparantly there’s a lot of kidnappers. That “stranger danger” thing terrified me lol
Don’t think I ever remember hearing Cantonese (the lingua franca and “dialect” of Guangzhou) used in school, not by peers, no one. Its all jusr Mandarin
Teachers had meter sticks to “discipline” “misbehaving” students
The schools used blackboards and you write with chalk. There were no smartboards anywhere to be seen. No projectors.
All instruction just using this small student handbooks that each student had their own, and teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard to teach things.
I think summers we go back to our ancestral village? Dad and mom were from different villages and I think usually I go to my mom’s village, cuz that’s where my maternal grandmother lives.
Mom told me that my maternal grandfather took me to the stores and he’d buy ice cream for me… but I don’t remember lol
In Guangzhou, I remember sometimes, my parents took us to the McDonalds near us, but its more like a “vibe” memory, don’t remember much about the food or the taste of food, its over a decade ago. But I remember having ice cream.
I vaguely remember this one school trip… to idk where lol… all I remember was being on the bus and I think I threw up… car sickness lol… we didn’t have a car and so I don’t get used to it.
I think its either this year or 2009 that I had the incident of my older brother (5 years older than me for context, its not a fair fight due to age difference) fighting me then I ran away from home for a few hours… was so scary to be alone in the city for a few hours… still traumatized…
I remember the malls…
I remember being at that store and asking my parents to buy stuff…
this one time I ask them to buy these board games so I can play with my brother… (yes that same brother that want to fight with me all the fucking time)
I remember the metro system… the platform safety door thing was so fascinating to me…
…that’s all I remember on the top of my head right now. I think that one traumatic memory kinda casted a lot of “fog” the blurriness of the memory, and my family leaving that city and the country altogther made it so much easier for my brain to just repress most of it…
Edit: Also I had zero friends… :( So yea I basically spent my early childhood with my sort of abusive older brother… 😭
Edit2: Lol, fixed phrasing mistakes that I just realized after this comment has been up for hours