China Meets Herself (4) ---Creative Parenting
I first met Ru Sin in 1981 when she was a junior cadre in the Second Bureau of the Communist Party. It is an agency specializing in uniting and serving overseas Chinese who are knowledgeable about the world, and who also hold an unyielding affinity with the motherland. She was looking after my daily needs in my visits to Beijing and other parts of China, where I was consulted with and lectured on world affairs. She was 23 years old and very intelligent.
China was just beginning to reform and open up to the outside world. The Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four had left deep hurts and wide ranging doubts in the minds and souls of everyone in the country. People had gone through a nightmare, regardless of what role they had played under Mao’s inhuman command. They began “to pick up the pieces” and to go on the tasks of reconstruction, in personal soul, as well as in social well-being. Too many people had “struck against” their dear ones, like parents, spouse, brothers and sisters, close friends, and neighbours, to hurt them in cruel ways, just to please the “collective will”. They now need to repair relationships, and to regain trust in order to build harmony again – tasks which require surrender of pride and use of love.
On a quiet evening while we were sight-seeing at Loyang, Ru Sin confided with me of her guilt because she had hurt her mother by condemning her to be a counter-revolutionary. The accusation was unfounded. It nevertheless had caused her mother a severe punishment. She was ordered to clean the toilets in the neighborhood for eighteen months. “I was twelve years old then, and all that was important was to obey Chairman Mao’s instructions. I feared that all my friends would disown me if I didn’t.”
She was crying as she continued, “My Mom died three years later, before I had my sixteenth birthday. I was so sad, especially when I knew that she had never forgiven me. Now that I have my own daughter, I will do everything possible to guard her from repeating my foolish deeds. The gilt that I am bearing is too heavy for anyone.”
Over the next few years, as China’s economy soared and Ru Sin was promoted to an executive rank, she earnestly asked me about how to bring up her daughter every time she saw me. I told her all I could and recommended her to read books on child development. I impressed on her the important goal of parenting a free and happy child, confident to choose and to conduct her own life.
Ru Sin received me in Beijing in the summer of 1996 to consult on Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty. We went to Beidaihe 北載河 for a short rest after five days of solid work. There she told me that she and her husband had sent their 13-year-old child Rainbow to school in New Zealand the year before.
“She is a bit too young to be alone in a foreign country.” I responded intuitively, because I had known too many cases of young children studying abroad alone loosing their identity.
“We know, and Rainbow knows,” she replied. She then told me her reasons and decision. First, they had come to a conclusion that the education system in China is too rigid and non-educational. They could foresee that Rainbow would not thrive in a local school, either academically, or in personal development. “She would get a little bit better than pass marks, and have almost no chance of entering a university.” She said. “Then,” she continued, “she would become a dull individual, an unwilling follower. In other words, she would be like what I was, following the social tide, and become an unaccomplished and unhappy person in life.”
To counter the situation, Ru Sin and her husband did a lot of thinking and investigation. They had gone abroad to observe schools and communities. Finally, they decided to send Rainbow to a high school at Palmerstone, New Zealand, near the Massey University. “My husband visited the school. The principal told him that students could choose their own programs of study and, further, no student had ever failed in the school. My husband then visited the family ready to provide room and board for Rainbow. He requested that a lock be installed in the room for her. He was told by the master of the house that there was no lock anywhere in the house, including the front door. We knew then that our daughter would be safe there.”
As it turned out, Rainbow thrived in Palmerstone. She had to speak English because there were no Chinese around. She learned to take care of herself because the family where she was in shared everything with her, including taking care of daily chores. She was also doing very well in school because she chose to study dancing, drama and social studies, all her favorite subjects.
I met Ru Sin again in the winter of 2011, after a lapse of 15 years. I had stayed out of Chinese affairs for complex reasons. I did not like to see economic progress made at all costs, nor did I feel good about the prominent materialistic life style among the people. I dreaded to see, most of all, the almost total destruction of the hills and rills of my boyhood environment at Guan Lan 觀瀾near Shenzhen 深圳. Most of the fishes and birds were gone. A highway now ran through my village. The single houses were all brought down, their living space replaced by a twelve storey building which looked out of place in the once serene environment, laced by paddy fields, low hills and lush green pines.
Ru Sin and I had a hearty chat. She was eager to tell me the exciting story about Rainbow. “We located an ideal place for her in America after she had finished high school. She was doing so well at Palmerstone that her principal issued a letter of recommendation to help her apply for university. It said that Rainbow would be a sure asset to any community, enriching it with her happy and caring personality, and helping everyone to be happy with her artistic expressions. She studies well and she is a natural leader.”
“She must be speaking and writing English very well then.” I said.
“She got A marks for English and Public Speaking”, Ru Sin continued showing increasing pride. “Then, we took her to Kirksville, Missouri and enrolled her to the Truman State 
University. She chose to study business, majoring in marketing. Rainbow and her father went there two weeks before school opened, so she would have time to get familiar with the new environment. The surprise thing was that she got elected President of the Asian Students’ Association, even before school opened. There were only thirty some Asian students on campus, about one third of them new. The Student Counselor was very keen on getting them organized. So he had them meeting to form an association. Rainbow’s leadership shown and she got elected. She got re-elected again and again in the four years that she spent there.”
“You should be mighty proud of her. China can use that kind of leader when she returns. Congratulations.”
“Well, she hasn’t returned yet, and she is unlikely to return. She has been working for five years now, in New York, for Johnson and Johnson, as Associate Marketing Manager. She told me that she had never felt so rich, free, confident and happy. I can understand that. She would not have the same opportunity in personal development, schooling, work and social relations, if she had stayed in China. She would be begging all along, for entering university, obtaining a descent job, or just getting on in life.”
“But her roots are certainly here in China.” I interjected and quickly felt that I was too subjective. So I added, “China certainly needs her talents. There are plenty of opportunities.”
There was a pause, as Ru Sin searched for a true and reasonable response.
Then she said in an impassive voice: “Might we say that our roots had been destroyed in the long years of the Cultural Revolution? The Chinese identity had been traded for Mao’s ideology, and our parents and teachers were shamed and hurt by us kids, simply because we were taught to be foolish and ruthless. You see, people young and old were conjured to belong to whatever position assigned to them, and nothing else, not their families, not their literature and history, not their native land, nothing they were used to belong.” She stopped to catch her breath, as she was choking with emotions.
“I am sorry,” she began again, “It took my husband and I a lot of deliberations to send Rainbow to New Zealand when she was only thirteen. We also swallowed a lot of pride to send her to Missouri. Most other parents were boasting about sending their kids to Harvard and Boston. They laughed at us, asking where Kirksville was. That was OK. You know very well, Professor that we only have one child and we would like to do anything to keep her with us. But we live in this society at this time. We strongly feel we must guard her from falling into the pit of guilt and sorrow that we are still bearing. To date, my husband still has occasional nightmares about his bad deeds. He was a dedicated Red Guard, and spent five years touring the country, to destroy old monuments, and to strike against teachers and professors. Deep in his heart he knows that he and his comrades had caused many people death or disability, for fun. Many a night when he wakes up from a bad dream, he weeps helplessly in my arms. He was a teenager when he committed those crimes. But he could not excuse himself because of that, or in the name of foolishness. He cannot hate Chairman Mao, because hating him could not lighten his own guilt.” Ru Xin was crying as she was revealing these innermost secrets to me.
I had no word of comfort for her either. We just sat quietly, sharing a most sorrowful event, an epic of the past, with repercussions which will affect individuals and history for years to come.
In my own mind, I regret to accept an almost certain fact that Rainbow will not return to live in China, and her parents will join her in America. Of course China can afford to lose many good sons and daughters like them. But the point is, can she afford not to make fundamental changes, like education and a basic respect for traditional culture and personal freedom? There are billions of others whose only choice is to live and thrive in the motherland.