My family’s Traits

This summer I went back to China for two weeks. During my stay in China, I visited my grandma and stayed with her for 3 days.

When I was a university student I stayed with my grandma in the same house for almost 4 years so my grandma’s home is very homey to me.

My grandma is 88 years old now. She is one of my most favorite people. I respect her and love her not only because she is my grandma but also because she is one of the most amazing women I have ever seen in my life.

In China, a person is regarded as extremely unlucky if that person has 3 specific tragedies in his/her life: lost a parent in childhood, lost a spouse in mid-life and lost a child in late life. My grandma is this type of person as she had all 3 of them and had many more uneasy experiences throughout her life. She lost her parents when she was seven; then she was adopted by her uncle. She then got divorced from my grandpa in her thirties and brought up 7 children all by herself. In the last 5 years, in her eighties, she lost her two sons who died from sickness.

It is indeed a challenging life for her. She also underwent the Cultural Revolution. She was a university professor and was respected by her students. But almost all students turned into the Red Guard; they berated and humiliated teachers overnight. Some of her fellow colleagues could not face the situation and they committed suicide. Regarding her seven children, the oldest was at high school, the youngest was at elementary school. All of her children were sent to remote villages, from the city. It was the first time they left her, and they were assigned to work in fields. Her children all became sick because of the unsanitary conditions in the villages, and the children lacked the immunity so all of them were ill one after another. At the same time, my grandpa was divorcing my grandma. I do not how a young woman handled those tough situations, which seemed to come to her at once at that time.

When my father told me my grandma’s stories, it was quite hard to imagine what kind of situation she had been facing in her life. When I asked my grandma how she handled those difficulties at that time, she said had believed everything would be okay as long as one had a positive and strong attitude.

My grandma is a strong woman, who had been put into hard situations lots of times but every time she overcame them. How could she have brought up her 7 children by herself and never marry again? How could she, on a limited salary, feed, clothe, and educate her children? She had to hire 2 nannies to look after her 7 children, including 2 toddlers, as she needed to go to work. I heard from my father and aunties that their childhoods were very happy and fulfilling. My grandma even had lots of tips to make their lives interesting.  Sometimes she used two towels to make nice new pants for them, and the pants looked quite nice and unique. She made nice food from time to time with her limited salary; every child had a fish on their plates for dinner on weekends.

My grandma likes knitting; she told us that she has knitted for 4 generations. She knitted sweaters for her uncle and aunt. She knitted for her children. She knitted for her grandchildren –us. Now she is knitting for her great grandchildren. I remember I have lots of beautiful sweaters knitted by my grandma when I was a child. She also knits lots of handicrafts such as dolls, flowers and accessories.

If you think that the specialties about my grandma are all listed above, it’s too early to make a conclusion.

My grandma is a very innovative and high-tech old lady. These days for her birthday we 11 grandchildren will think about new products such as a digital camera, smart phone, digital photo frame, MP3 or iPad as gifts, since my grandma is an e-grandma.

Every morning, she will start her day by reading online news on her computer. After breakfast, she will use We chat (the equivalent of Chinese Facebook) to check posts, reply posts or share them. Then she will go to an online gaming center to play chess or games.

To have a rest for her eyes from electronic devices, she will start knitting, usually for her great grand children or friend’s great grand children.

 

I can always chat with my grandma for more than half an hour on the phone. It’s always very pleasant to chat with her.

One day, I told my grandma that I was afraid to stay at home and sleep by myself. At that time, I came to Vancouver alone and had not gotten used to staying by myself. “I could not fell asleep and always turn the light on again and again.” I told my grandma.

“ What are you afraid of? “ my grandma asked me. “Are you afraid of humans or ghosts? If you are afraid of humans, I think Canada is safe enough and you shouldn’t worry about that. Everyday you just lock your door and go to bed. If you are afraid that there is a ghost or something like that, you tell me and show me if you can catch one. I haven’t met those kind of things in my life, so you won’t, either.”

After that conversation, I thought that was absolutely right. I think my biggest enemy is myself not anything else.

My grandma is also an open-minded grandma. She gave us freedom and respected us no matter how silly or naughty we behaved when we were young.

One spring festival, my aunts were all accompanying my grandma at home playing mahjong (a popular Chinese game with four players); we grandchildren went to the park for fun. But the park was closed due to the holiday so we didn’t know where else to go to hangout. Then we found there was a graveyard nearby so we went there and stayed for a while until it was dark then we went back home.

When I told my mother that we went to the graveyard on New Year’s Day, my mother was very mad at me and thought it was very stupid and ominous for us to go to the graveyard. But on the contrary, when my grandma asked us where we went, she laughed us that “What’s fun at the graveyard? You can see nothing except dead people.”  Then she said nothing.

My grandma seems to know everything although she is old. One day when I talked with her on the phone, I tried to think a trendy topic and thought she would not know what I was talking about, but in fact, she knew everything and she has a young mentality and is interested in new stuff instead of resisting it.

My parents said that my grandma’s metal age is around 50; that’s true.

I can talk with my grandma about any topic and don’t feel she has outdated old fashioned opinions. When I first stayed in Canada, my grandma often sent me messages on We chat and told me to be strong.

Sometimes when I think of moments when I never gave up in my life and didn’t take things for granted I think about my grandma. Isn’t it the same trait I have from my grandma?

When I quit my decent job and first came to Vancouver from China by myself, I went to business school. At that time, most of my friends thought I was too over ambitious to go to business school right after I came from China since my language capabilities were not that strong. I refused to listen to those negative comments and asked my grandma. She said to me that she never thought I would have any problems in that since I had been working for a global American company for so many years in China. She trusted that I could do it.

When I asked my grandma about cooking. She often gave me simple recipes but all the results turned out nice.

When I told my grandma about John’s naughty deeds that almost drive me mad, from time to time, she said that was typical kids behavior. I should always treat kids equally and praise their good deeds no matter how naughty they are. She also told me never discourage John as he needs encouragement instead of discouragement.

This summer, when I sat with her and talked about my experiences in Vancouver, she said I could count on her to support me. She said she’s always proud of me.

When I left her after 3 days staying in the summer, she walked me to the door, hugged me and said: “I am waiting for you to come next summer.”

I am not worrying about her health although she is 88 years old. Two years ago, she broke her hip and needed a big operation right away. She had to have a partial hip replacement. The doctors were very worried about her condition because she has heart problems, blood pressure problems and diabetes. But my grandma was very optimistic & strong. She told her children if the operation was successful she could live another several years, and if the operation failed, she could die and get relief from the pain. She said both results would be good.

In fact, the operation was very successful and she could walk downstairs a bit slowly by herself. Later she told me, she had more than five operations in her life. She hoped this was the last one.

I love my grandma's optimism and i hope to see her again next summer and many summers to come.

Say goodbye to my wisdom teech

August 8, 2015 was a special day for me .I had to say goodbye to my four wisdom teeth. It was a nice Saturday morning. The weather was nice. Everybody on the street was enjoying their weekend, except me – I was going have my four wisdom teeth pulled at once, at 11am.

I hadn’t dealt with dentists a lot in the past since my teeth were all relatively in good condition and they hadn’t bothered me in the past. I only visited the dentist once a year when I needed my teeth cleaned. Starting from 2013, a dentist suggested pulling out all my four wisdom teeth since they were growing closely toward my other teeth. They would squeeze them sooner or later.

Every time I shook my head and said, “I will consider it” to the dentist in reply to his suggestion; then I fled. I am not a person who is brave and bold enough to handle small operations like this. On the contrary, I always want to avoid going to the hospital, especially those opportunities of facing a needle or blood drawing as I am a person who is really afraid of seeing blood and needles.

Three years later in June 2015, I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned again. After the dentist cleaned my teeth, he told me that I had four decayed wisdom teeth.  I had two choices: either to have treatments for my four decayed wisdom teeth or have them all pulled out.

I had to seriously think about my wisdom teeth this time. It seemed that I couldn’t flee anymore, as I had to do something about them this time. After two days, I decided to have them pulled out so I would be worry-free forever.

In July, I visited the dentist and he took a full picture of my wisdom teeth. After that, I made an appointment with him for August 8 to have the minor operation.

The week before the operation, my colleagues told me several horror stories of their experiences. I also remembered that my colleague M had a full week of soup after having his four wisdom teeth pulled several months ago. He also had low-grade fever and stayed at home for several days.

“Oh you can’t come to work on Monday since you will feel weak and horrible after this operation. You’d better rest at home or work at home.” My manager said. Would the operation be that bad? I was wondering.

Two days before August 8, I announced on Wechat (an equivalent of Facebook in China) that I was going to eat 4 meals the day before August 8. I didn’t know how soon I could eat normal food after the operation. After the post, lots of my friends replied me and they said: ”How can you get your 4 teeth pulled at once? It is too risky for you to do it. You should get 2 pulled at once and another 2 next time.” “We haven’t heard of any people having four wisdom teeth pulled in China; you’d better check with the dentist if it could be too risky.” “Pulling wisdom teeth is also a type of operation; you’d better be careful instead of being bold….” My husband was strongly against it. He thought I was crazy.

I already had a full week’s nightmare because of those kindhearted suggestions and feedback. I felt stressed. I was thinking to cancel the appointment. Should I cancel the appointment instead of taking a “risk”?

Finally I decided to keep the appointment.

Gladly I had 3 friends who had similar experiences and they all did quite well. Their stories gave me lots of confidence. When I told my friends in my bible study group, the group leader Jin told me that a couple of years ago, her four wisdom teeth were pulled out by an intern in Taiwan. Everything turned out great.

Finally the day came. I went to Cora to have a nice breakfast to fill my stomach. Then I headed to the dentist. I was telling myself that everything should be fine since this was a great dentist recommended by my friend.

I parked my car and walked into the office. I said hello to the receptionist and then I talked with the receptionist for several minutes .I wanted to make myself less nervous.

Then the dentist and his assistant came .They welcomed me to the room. After I lay down on the chair, I looked around and noticed the instruments in a tool plate, they looked sharp , shining and rigid. I suddenly felt my body becoming stiff and my blood stopped flowing after seeing them

Several minutes later, the dentist came to me. He smiled at me and told me that I would be all right since my teeth looked not bad. He told me that my case should be a simple case. After I signed a paper, he started to inject anesthetic into my mouth.

At that time, I hoped that I could fall asleep and not know what was going to happen. But unfortunately, although my mouth was becoming numb, I was still very awake. I could know exactly what was going to happen.

“I am going to pull your upper teeth now.” the dentist told me. Actually at that time I was very nervous. My whole body was shaking, my hands were shaking, and my legs were shaking. Maybe my teeth were shaking too; although I could not feel them. I listened to music and repeated one of my favorite old songs “Affair of Half a Lifetime,” I realized that I had had a half lifetime affair with my wisdom teeth as they only stayed with me for half of my life or less.

After the four teeth were all pulled out, I became much more relieved. Although I could not speak because of my numb mouth, I used hand gestures and hand-written notes to communicate with the dentist and receptionist. He gave me a paper with simple instructions, as my case was a very straightforward one.

After I left the dentist’s office, I decided to buy some congee to take home since that seemed to be the only food I could have at that time.

I went to a congee house then gestured for their menu.

“Do you want to take eat in?” the waitress warmly welcomed me to the restaurant.

I looked at her and shook my head.

“Do you want to take out?” she asked me.

I nodded.

After I ordered the two congee dishes, I sat there and waited for the food. Several minutes later, the congee was ready. Another waitress came to me and asked: “Is that you who ordered the two congees?”

I nodded my head.

She looked at me and asked again: “Are you OK?”

I nodded again.

“Do you have a toothache?” She was curious and concerned and asked again.

“I …had my teeth… pulled…” I spoke slowly and with difficultly as I could not feel my mouth at all.

When the waitress saw my mouth, it must have been full of blood; she cried out and ran away. At that time, I realized that I was not wearing a mask and I had scared her away with my bloody mouth.

I felt great as I found it can be fun to scare people.

After I went back home, I felt very weak and exhausted. I looked at my watch and recalled that the doctor said the anesthetic drug would not be effective after 3 hours. I was quite concerned what was going to happen after 3 hours. I chose to watch two movies to spend the 3 hours so that I would not be too nervous and watch the clock ticking.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t even take any Advil; I slept through the whole night peacefully.

Today is almost one week after my dental experience. Everything is fine except I still feel a bit sore and uncomfortable in my mouth.

But the experience was not as scary as I thought. The best part is that I no longer need to worry about my wisdom teeth the next time I get my teeth cleaned. I also learned a lesson not to ask too many people before making a decision, as everyone can be different.

After reading Kaifu Lee’s book – Every Breath You Take Is a Step Towards Death

Kaifu Lee – the founder and CEO of Innovation Works in China, has an outstanding profile. His doctoral thesis was published in The New York Times when he was 26. He has held executive positions for Google, Apple and Microsoft – the top IT companies throughout his career. He established “Innovation Works” in 2009 to help people to start their own businesses. He has been a very successful entrepreneur. He has been a very popular person on Weibo – a Chinese Twitter platform: He has over 50 million followers.

I have heard about him a lot of times from newspapers, magazines and media because he’s such a famous celebrity and a very influential person in the IT industry in China. He has written several books. However, it’s the first time that I have had a chance to read his book –“Every Breath You Take Is a Step Towards Death”, which is a new book and was published in July 2015.

It is not a book from a successful entrepreneur who shares experiences how to do a great job in your career, nor a book about how to start a business. I believe Mr.Lee can easily talk about the two topics for days. This book is about a successful entrepreneur who shares his personal journey after he is diagnosed with stage 4 lymph cancer in 2013, at age 52. His doctor told him that he had 26 malignant tumors in his belly.

In the past, I heard a lot of times that people would realize what were the top things that they truly needed in their life when their lives were threatened and their life ending were approaching.

Living in a fast pacing era, it is not easy to be clear about our priorities since people are much busier than their parents’ generation was. I happened to watch a movie called: Men, Women & Children on the plane this July. It describes the current lifestyle that everybody has or has not been aware of – the Internet is dominating people’s lives. People spend approximately an average of 4 hours on the Internet on a PC, and approximately an average of 2 hours on the Internet with a mobile phone, according to social media statistics in 2015.

Mr.Lee – as a celebrity and a blogger with over 50 million fans - no doubt his schedule was a hectic one everyday. He promised his staff he would reply to their emails in 10 minutes in the daytime and 2 hours at night whenever the emails were received. He sent 10 tweets everyday on Weibo. Before his diagnosis of cancer, he published 5 books, posted 10,000 tweets, held over 500 lectures – for each lecture he required an audience of over 1000 -otherwise he felt it was not important enough for him to give a speech. He has been a public mentor to lots of young people and coached them how on to do better in their careers. He has been recognized as a workaholic who runs everything perfectly with no errors everyday without stop. His schedule was broken into minutes for maximum efficiency since he had a long list of to do things in his 24 hour day. He set priorities by importance only from a business angle.

He was in the spotlight, until one day he was told that he had cancer. He realized that he had been pursuing a colorful bubble for half of his life and put his priorities in the wrong order. He realized that in front of life everyone is equal no matter how successful he/she is.

According to Mr.Lee’s self-reflection, everything happens for a reason. His sickness has told him that although he is a winner in his career, he has to learn a brand new course named “death” to understand life deeper. Good for him is that he has turned his new journey into a learning experience and shared his experience through this book.

In his book, he mentioned Bonnie Ware’s blog. Bonnie Ware has been working in the palliative care field for years. Bonnie said , When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again . The most common five are:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me;
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard;
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I am fortune that I have had an opportunity to read Mr.Lee’s book and have been inspired by him. After reading his book, I am also reflecting on my own life. My top takeaways from the reading are:

1. Reprioritize the to-do list. I need to look at the to-do list and ask myself: “Are there any items I should delete or could I reprioritize them in a different order? What are the top 5 things I really want to do?” I remember that I was been teased as “one of the busiest women” by my colleague.

2. Do I have a healthy lifestyle? I know the importance of eating healthily, doing exercises at least 3 hours per week and sleeping before 11 pm in order to stay well. But how far have I done according to my plan? .

3. Live every day to its full. Lots of people have a habit of waiting: “I will wait until I have time. I will wait until I have money, or I will wait until I have time and money”. Try to live every day to your fullest. Don’t leave regrets. I read a story that a husband found a beautiful and expensive scarf in his wife’s closet after his wife passed away. Before she always told her husband that it was such a beautiful and expensive scarf she would wait for an important occasion to wear it. Before she passed away, she didn’t have that important occasion to wear that scarf.

4. How to utilize social media? Lots of people including me are addicted to social media nowadays. I check my social media when there is a new message alert, even during the time I am writing this blog. I check my social media when I wake up in the morning, before sleep and whenever I have a minute. Does social media control us now? Social media is supposed to be a channel to help us be social and be connected with our friends. But if people are addicted to social media, we are using the social media in the wrong way.

5. Handle pressure in the right way. Lots of people have pressure in their lives. Such as people who need to pay the mortgage, grow a career, feed a family and be successful. Overstress is bad for the immune system and it will affect health. When I came to Canada 5 years ago from Asia, I went to school before I was ready for it. I felt pressured since at that time, my English comprehension level was not very good. Later I realized that I should have slowed down and taken one course each semester instead of three. Or I could go to school a bit later after I felt more comfortable.  Mr.Lee shared with us how to handle pressure. One suggestion is “When you are unhappy and life is stressful, tell yourself that nothing is worse than having cancer.”

6. Family is very important. Mr.Lee said when he was accompanying his family, he was checking his email, answering phone calls and posting tweets at the same time. One day my son told my husband and me that we check our mobile phones from time to time when we were accompanying him in park. When I visited my grandma this summer, every one including my aunties and I, checked tweets from time to time and engaged with our friends online instead of talking with the people who were sitting beside us. I love my grandma and enjoy accompanying her when visiting her each summer. After 4 days’ stay with my grandma this July, I found that the best part I remember was the several conversations when we put the computer and mobile phone aside. My mother missed me a lot and always asked me to call her more. I realized that if I had spent less time on emails, the internet and tweeting when I was in China, I could have accompanied my mother more and had a better quality time with her. What she needed from me was just to sit there and have conversation.

7. Be healthy and safe are the most important and basic things compared to anything else; without health, you can have nothing. No matter how successful you are, health is the common thing every single person should take care of.  Steve Jobs was a very successful celebrity and a great leader. He created the Apple Empire and grew it. There are over 80 million people in the world who are using IOS –Apple’s system. However, Steve Jobs still could not conquer cancer and passed away in 2011.

8. Time allocations; Mr.Lee shared us his view of timing allocation between work, charity, family, friends and leisure. None of them can be reduced to zero. Work keeps us mentally active and helps us realize our self-value; charity enables us to have a chance to give back to the society and not to be self-centered; family, friends and leisure are ways for us to be loved and love others, enjoy love in family, friendship and having fun.

9. Lastly, Mr.Lee’s attitude is “blessings in disguise”. Let us always think positively and learn to appreciate. Mr.Lee has become a person who knows life deeper and better after his journey back to health.

I am glad that Mr.Lee has a deeper understanding of life after his experience. He is not a person who only lives only on fame and under the spotlight .His feet are on the ground and he has reprioritized his list and is living a real life.