Essay Example on Summer Vacation I was supposed to be enjoying this Vacation

Summer Vacation I was supposed to be enjoying this vacation in Taiyuan China but the only special things I could see were the heat and the surprisingly unsympathetic merchants who my mother was trying very unsuccessfully to lower the price on their produce which was about equivalent to 3 USD an apple as they realized we were tourists even though we looked Chinese and Mom spoke it fluently With a start I realized my mom was talking to me Shoshana Can you hear me We re leaving Oh sorry mom I said quickly catching up to her Fourteen years old and still has the listening skills of a second grader my mom muttered I pretended not to hear When we got back to the apartment my grandmother Lindo started to unpack the ingredients to make fried rice For some reason she seemed angry and I heard her asking my mom Waverly Where are the onions Oh I forgot Mom Waverly answered Aii ya did you just drink Meng Po s potion Go and get the onions Blushing with embarrassment my mother complied In that moment I saw myself in my mother This exact scene had played out countless times with me and my mother when I had forgotten something in school or mixed up two things my mom wanted me to bring I immediately pushed away the thought I didn't want to be the same as my mother Wasn't she supposed to be better than me at her age As my mom left for the market again my grandmother sighed and sat down again and asked Do you want me to tell a story Sure Here we go A long time ago in the era of the Warring States lived a man named Leytangtsi 

He had a wife whom he admired very much because she was very virtuous and a perfect wife and he loved and respected her One day when he was coming home he found a large piece of gold by the roadside He picked up the gold and rushed home to show his wife their good fortune When she saw the piece of gold she sighed Husband the gold is beautiful but how can you take that which is not yours You must immediately go and put the gold back where you found it Leytangtsi was unhappy but he listened to his wife s advice and replaced the gold The next year Leytangtsi went off on his own to study for the Civil Service Exams in the hope of becoming an important government official He was to study for a year to be able to pass the examinations However his wife saw him after only a few months She was confused by why he was there He said he loved her very much and became lonely without her so he came back His wife became very angry and took a knife and cut what she had been weaving off of the loom Then she told her husband Stopping something halfway is just like cutting this cloth off of the loom Something done halfway will be a useless mess as your studies are right now Leytangtsi was greatly inspired by his wife and did not return home until he had accomplished many great things This is how it was with your mother She went to buy food but she forgot the onion so it was halfway useless She was part Chinese part American two faced but she didn't put them together into a whole She first wanted to be all American and she did but then when she wanted to get back her Chinese part it was gone forever and now she is only halfway complete Because she is not Chinese because she has cast away her Chinese face I must ask you to carry on our heritage and remember our ancestors I saw the look on Grandma's face Although she kept her voice completely even her face was pleading with me to listen and do what she said And then it struck me how big the gap was between my mother and grandmother that this conversation was being held with me and not my grandmother 

My mother must have disliked everything Chinese so completely that she became completely American and my grandmother believed it was too late for her to change There is still time for you You must take my Chinese face and your mother s American face and put them together Then you will be whole I tried to do the same with your mother to give her American circumstances and Chinese character but I failed on the second part I will do this I promise Grandma I said and I knew I would I would do this for her because I loved her but also because she had taught me many important things that my mother did not and I now understood that my mother had not because she could not because she cast away her Chinese face and she did not know these things like the art of invisible strength and I was in her debt When I was obedient when I showed respect to my mother when I looked up to her she was almost surprised as if these were foreign concepts to her and I knew that she and I were not alike that I was like Grandma like the powerful wind not like Mother who was like stagnant swamp air I was mostly American but there was still a part of me that was Chinese handed down from my grandmother and I would expand that part balance the two like yin and yang and then as Grandma said I would be whole