BabybetterDisney
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2018
I went to first grade in a little town in China. I remember having one textbook, which was made with unbleached recycled paper. It was gray, bumpy like toilet paper without the softness, and didn’t have any pictures or color. It contained nothing but the sayings of Chairman Mao. The first sentence I learned to read and write was “May Chairman Mao live ten thousand years!” We said it constantly in school, like “Hail Hitler“ in Germany.
(People often think that the Chinese pictographs must be more difficult to learn than the Western phonetic alphabet. It’s not. The human brain can memorize a few thousand pictographs very easily, and everybody in China does it. They have a much harder time learning English.)
In fact, bleach was such a luxury item that I never saw anything that was pure white except for maybe snow in the winter. My family of 4 lived in a little apartment about the size of my current kitchen. The apartment complex was designed and supervised in its construction by mother, an architect. It was in a U shape, with 2 stories with perhaps 20 units total, and a courtyard in the middle. There was a faucet upstairs and one downstairs to supply water, and each apartment had one light bulb. The outhouse was outside the courtyard (there was no toilet paper then).
(DH, who is in the construction industry, is most amused that I used to live in such a thing.)
My family was the first in town to own a TV set. It was about 9 inches, and there was one TV station that broadcasted an hour a day, around dinner time. The picture was very blurry, and it was always the news. There was a guy sitting there, reading the news in a monotone. It never showed scenes of the news, so all you see for an hour was one guy reading news out loud, with the camera not moving or changing angles at all. I never understood what he said. There were no TV shows, no movies, no cartoons, no nothing.
I did get to watch movies, though. Every weeks in the summer, the government would set up a black and white movie screen and projector in the courtyard, and people would bring stools to watch for free, similar to the movies shown at the Disney hotels except with much smaller screen and poorer resolution. Those movies always had the same theme: how the Japanese invaded China, killing and burning, and how Chairman Mao’s communist army kicked them out. Often, a Chinese kid would be captured and tortured for information by the Japanese, but the kid would be very tough and refused to talk no matter what. After watching such movies, I often had nightmares that I got captured by the Japanese. In my dream, I would start offering the Japanese information before they thought of torturing me. Being that I was a just kid and didn’t know any information, I made it all up.
Then one day, my grandpa, who lived overseas, sent me a bunch of kids books. Each one was around 10 pages long, with a large picture on every page. One of the books was called Princess Snow White. Another one was Bambi the Deer. They were both written by some foreign guy named Disney. The paper of the books was of the purest white, like snow, and was smooth as silk. There were pictures drawn and painted with the most brilliant colors. They were so astonishingly beautiful that they took my breath away. My mother read the books to me one time, and was surprised that I could recite each book in its entirety afterwards, they made such a strong impression on me. I read the books constantly, and my favorite was Princess Snow White. She was so beautiful, with her skin white as snow, her lips red as blood, and her hair black as charcoal, and the part of the book I liked the most was when she was lying inside a glass coffin. That glass was crystal clear, with colorful flowers all around. I wanted to die and be put in a glass coffin like that!
Then Chairman Mao died, in 1979, even after we said “May Chairman Mao live ten thousand years” so many times. The entire country went into mourning. Everyday, throughout the day, the communal radio’s loud speaker would start blasting mourning music and words, in school and at home. When that happened, everybody was supposed to stop whatever they were doing, go outside, and cry for Chairman Mao for about an hour. This went on for months. Both adults and kids would cry loudly and beat their chests. Old ladies would sob so such that they would collapse and need to be supported by their family members. I cried very, very loudly, always with tears pouring out of my eyes. (I was very good at crying on command; my dad used to call me The Faucet.) Then one time, I heard the radio say that Chairman Mao was to be laid in a glass coffin in the People’s Memorial Hall of Beijing so that people could come and look upon his deceased countenance. And many people were traveling to Beijing to do just that.
I was stunned. Chairman Mao was going to be in Princess Snow White’s glass coffin -- I wanted to see it! My family traveled to Beijing on occasion to visit relatives, so I asked my mother if we could go to Beijing. Why, she asked, you miss your aunt? No, I answered, I wanted to go to the People’s Memorial Hall and look upon Chairman Mao’s deceased countenance! My mother stared at me. Then she said no.
I was quite ashamed of my parents back then. Not only did they not take me to see the glass coffin, they didn’t even cry during Mao’s mourning. They stood there with their heads lowered, but they didn’t cry out loud and they had no tears. So I made sure I cried twice as loud to make up for their deficiency. Also, we had to wear black bands on our arm. My mom made one for me that was made of dull, coarse black cloth. Some people had bands of shiny black silk. I wanted a silk one too, but my mom refused, so I had to settle for staring jealously at this one guy‘s silk band during a mourning session.
Soon after that, my family left China. Millions of Chinese traveled to Beijing every year to look at Chairman Mao in his glass coffin, but my family never went back to China, and to this day, I never got to see it. I eventually came to the Land of Disney, which I consider the most awesome country in the world. DH doesn’t understand why I am so much into Disney when I come from a completely different culture. But Walt Disney blew my mind in my young years when nothing else did, and his books were one of the few things that were beautiful in my childhood.
(People often think that the Chinese pictographs must be more difficult to learn than the Western phonetic alphabet. It’s not. The human brain can memorize a few thousand pictographs very easily, and everybody in China does it. They have a much harder time learning English.)
In fact, bleach was such a luxury item that I never saw anything that was pure white except for maybe snow in the winter. My family of 4 lived in a little apartment about the size of my current kitchen. The apartment complex was designed and supervised in its construction by mother, an architect. It was in a U shape, with 2 stories with perhaps 20 units total, and a courtyard in the middle. There was a faucet upstairs and one downstairs to supply water, and each apartment had one light bulb. The outhouse was outside the courtyard (there was no toilet paper then).
(DH, who is in the construction industry, is most amused that I used to live in such a thing.)
My family was the first in town to own a TV set. It was about 9 inches, and there was one TV station that broadcasted an hour a day, around dinner time. The picture was very blurry, and it was always the news. There was a guy sitting there, reading the news in a monotone. It never showed scenes of the news, so all you see for an hour was one guy reading news out loud, with the camera not moving or changing angles at all. I never understood what he said. There were no TV shows, no movies, no cartoons, no nothing.
I did get to watch movies, though. Every weeks in the summer, the government would set up a black and white movie screen and projector in the courtyard, and people would bring stools to watch for free, similar to the movies shown at the Disney hotels except with much smaller screen and poorer resolution. Those movies always had the same theme: how the Japanese invaded China, killing and burning, and how Chairman Mao’s communist army kicked them out. Often, a Chinese kid would be captured and tortured for information by the Japanese, but the kid would be very tough and refused to talk no matter what. After watching such movies, I often had nightmares that I got captured by the Japanese. In my dream, I would start offering the Japanese information before they thought of torturing me. Being that I was a just kid and didn’t know any information, I made it all up.
Then one day, my grandpa, who lived overseas, sent me a bunch of kids books. Each one was around 10 pages long, with a large picture on every page. One of the books was called Princess Snow White. Another one was Bambi the Deer. They were both written by some foreign guy named Disney. The paper of the books was of the purest white, like snow, and was smooth as silk. There were pictures drawn and painted with the most brilliant colors. They were so astonishingly beautiful that they took my breath away. My mother read the books to me one time, and was surprised that I could recite each book in its entirety afterwards, they made such a strong impression on me. I read the books constantly, and my favorite was Princess Snow White. She was so beautiful, with her skin white as snow, her lips red as blood, and her hair black as charcoal, and the part of the book I liked the most was when she was lying inside a glass coffin. That glass was crystal clear, with colorful flowers all around. I wanted to die and be put in a glass coffin like that!
Then Chairman Mao died, in 1979, even after we said “May Chairman Mao live ten thousand years” so many times. The entire country went into mourning. Everyday, throughout the day, the communal radio’s loud speaker would start blasting mourning music and words, in school and at home. When that happened, everybody was supposed to stop whatever they were doing, go outside, and cry for Chairman Mao for about an hour. This went on for months. Both adults and kids would cry loudly and beat their chests. Old ladies would sob so such that they would collapse and need to be supported by their family members. I cried very, very loudly, always with tears pouring out of my eyes. (I was very good at crying on command; my dad used to call me The Faucet.) Then one time, I heard the radio say that Chairman Mao was to be laid in a glass coffin in the People’s Memorial Hall of Beijing so that people could come and look upon his deceased countenance. And many people were traveling to Beijing to do just that.
I was stunned. Chairman Mao was going to be in Princess Snow White’s glass coffin -- I wanted to see it! My family traveled to Beijing on occasion to visit relatives, so I asked my mother if we could go to Beijing. Why, she asked, you miss your aunt? No, I answered, I wanted to go to the People’s Memorial Hall and look upon Chairman Mao’s deceased countenance! My mother stared at me. Then she said no.
I was quite ashamed of my parents back then. Not only did they not take me to see the glass coffin, they didn’t even cry during Mao’s mourning. They stood there with their heads lowered, but they didn’t cry out loud and they had no tears. So I made sure I cried twice as loud to make up for their deficiency. Also, we had to wear black bands on our arm. My mom made one for me that was made of dull, coarse black cloth. Some people had bands of shiny black silk. I wanted a silk one too, but my mom refused, so I had to settle for staring jealously at this one guy‘s silk band during a mourning session.
Soon after that, my family left China. Millions of Chinese traveled to Beijing every year to look at Chairman Mao in his glass coffin, but my family never went back to China, and to this day, I never got to see it. I eventually came to the Land of Disney, which I consider the most awesome country in the world. DH doesn’t understand why I am so much into Disney when I come from a completely different culture. But Walt Disney blew my mind in my young years when nothing else did, and his books were one of the few things that were beautiful in my childhood.
