My name is Chen Shunsheng, I am 15 years old and I am from Qi Zu Camp, Luomei Village, Mingyin Countryside, Yulong County in Lijiang City.
My home is situated in the mountains, our source of income is difficult, and the transportation is not very convenient. Our family situation has not changed drastically and our medical condition lags behind. People can only travel by walking. My family relies on planting crops and feeding livestock to earn money.
Our living conditions are tough, and our source of income is limited. We rely on planting crops, such as beans, potatoes etc, to support our family. The money remaining is used to support my brothers and my education. My family members are also not doing very well: my grandpa is almost 80, yet he still goes looking for pigweed everyday. He is restless at home, and he always tries to find things to do. My father is almost 50 years old, and he still has to support the whole family. His health condition is not very good either. He cant eat many things because of his illnesses, and for the past 1-2 years, he has been taking medicine everyday. Despite taking medicine, I still hear him occasionally complain about the pain. My family members do not get along with each other; my dad and uncle used to have a good relationship, but since my grandma passed away, my uncle and my dad got into a huge argument. Ever since then, my uncle says that he wants to live separately. Now he doesnt with us anymore, and it has been almost five years. He hasnt contacted us since then, and I have no idea how his life is like right now.
I have studied in school for almost 10 years now. In primary school, especially in grades 1 and 2, I was fooling around all the time, and I did not know how important learning is to me. When I began grade 4, I slowly realized some principles of life, and understood the importance of learning. When I was in grade 5, I wanted to strive for a better education, so I left my old school and transferred to another school to study.
In my new school, due to various reasons, I had to walk to school every week. Every Saturday, I would walk home, knowing that I had to walk back to school on Sunday. At the time, my school was about 20 kilometers away from home. When I arrived at school, because of the change in environment, I felt a bit uncomfortable talking to my new teachers and classmates.The natural environment was also drastically different: it wasnt very cold in my old school; however, in this new school I felt very cold. I still remember the first year of attending my new school, my hands were covered in frostbite, and it made me very sad for the entire winter. However, time passed by very quickly, and soon I graduated from primary school. Because of external changes and my own personal reasons, I only placed 4th in my entire administration. So I decided to attend Yulong No.3 Middle School, which was a secondary school nearby. It was in this school where I began my first years of junior high, as I quickly got used to the school life here.
In my secondary school life, especially in the first year, it felt like nothing really changed, I was still having a lot of fun. However, in my second and third year, seeing my parents working so hard just to support me and my brother, seeing the wrinkles on my parents face getting deeper and deeper, I felt a strong desire to change my familys situation. I knew that the only way to change the situation is to gain more knowledge, so I tried to learn just a bit more everyday. Even if it is just to ensure a better life for my parents, a better life for myself, I felt motivated to learn and to enrich my own knowledge. These reasons explain why this middle school was so important to me. So whenever I face any obstacles in my life, these reasons push me forward to never give up. It allowed to me use more of my time solely on my studies. All the external problems and difficulties disappear when I study, as the knowledge I gain become a part of who I am.
This is me; a person who grew up amidst all of the difficulties; a person who is still in the process of learning new things; a person who is pushing through the ocean of knowledge.
[font=OpenSansRegular, arial, sans-serif][img]/images/user/28679_16566835081856739336.png[/img][/font][font=OpenSansRegular, arial, sans-serif][img]/images/user/28679_815920778412714663.png[/img][/font]
08 JAN 2016