Al Jazeera has some surprisingly good China reporting
Reporting on the urbanization's effect on the countryside.
This loneliness is familiar, yet different. After moving here, my parents are always present but ever distant. Perhaps gripped by uncertainty while dealing with the lost of security back home, something like seeing a bridge start burning on both ends while three quarters of the way across. You need to experience it to understand.
My mother is a doctor who would have done well had she stayed in China. I think she dealing with her lost must have be harder than myself dealing with my descend from perfectionist to mediocrity. I just realized that it is no surprise that after coming here, I stopped receiving praises and encouragements and instead only admonitions and terse reminders to do well. So it merely took one year, 3rd grade to fourth grade, for me to transform from a energetic and talkative trouble causing child to a shy and quiet person. Finer points of parenthood was lost somewhere.
Time grew, and inevitably I became detached from my parents emotionally and intellectually. There was nothing I saw in the admonitions other than they being the only efforts that can be afforded from emotional exhaustion. And there is no way I can intelligently tell them what how I think since I refuse to speak to them in English out of habit. Eventually, I just wanted to get away from it all, the choking weariness and the lack of encouragement. But after four and a half years in school I have come to understand what it feels like to have your ambition atrophy and be on life support. Now I appreciate what it feels like to be weary and tired.
Some of us only do well in the most optimum environment, that might be going to the right college, or just having parents around. It is not so much regret as a loneliness.
