Dear Grandma,

It was not until I was fifteen that I first knew you used to study in Japan for college. Do you still remember the night when I called you and told you that I wanted to study abroad, and you blustered “why would you ever want to do this?” For the first time in my life hearing you so emotional, I was startled.

You warned me that studying abroad was never an easy task, especially at your time when few Chinese have gone abroad because of poverty and arrogance—two factors that contradicted each other but rooted deeply in people’s minds at the same time. In Japan, You didn’t have any relatives to accompany you. What’s worse, mailing a letter to China would cost you nearly one-month life expense, so for the entire four years, you never wrote any letter to your family or expected to receive any from them. You said that you could usually endure the pain of nostalgia. However, during festivals when everybody was staying with their family and enjoying a delicious feast together, you suddenly felt isolated. You had nowhere to go but to your little apartment. For dinner, you would just boil a bowl of noodles with a small piece of ham. You dare not treat yourself to a big dinner because you had to save the money for your family whom you always felt guilty to for they literally devoted all their money to support you. Therefore, the pressure of having to work hard in order to repay their kindness always alarmed you to exhaust all your energies.

You said that you were exhausted to bear all those heavy loads. Others’ expectations echoed in your mind, like a reminder comforting you that you were not alone, and meanwhile, a nightmare urging you to study harder and harder so that you worth their love and kindness.

You would never forget how your teacher, the person who changed your life, popped into your house and asked your parents to let you study abroad. At that time in China, however, parents would always hesitate to send their kids to college even if they were boys, not to mention that you were only a girl. Girls like you only showed their values when they work and breed like mules. It was the unyielding teacher who kept yelling “What an honorable thing it will be for you to study abroad!” for two weeks, ignoring the door smacked heavily in front of his face, altering your parents’ opinion. Eventually, your parents pulled out all the money they had on a table and shoved all the coins and banknotes into your arms. “Take it,” Your father gazed at you determinedly, “I would give whatever I have to you even if I starved to death.” You then soaked yourself in books all days and nights when you arrived in Japan because you knew that you represented the honor and the hope of the family. Therefore, when everybody was picking gorgeous clothes, you passed them without even a peek. When others were hanging out in the amusement park, you were working as a tutor to teach high school students biology. You said those rough days made you doubt the decision to study abroad. “The most terrible thing that could happen in the world,” you exhorted me, “is nobody stays by your side to support you when you sink down into the abyss.”

However, after all, you never regret studying abroad, right? Our history shows that society used to oppress women, and they had no basic rights or freedom. If you did not go abroad, you would just be an ordinary girl who married an unknown guy, gave birth to several children, and kept laboring until you died from overwork. When you were studying at Tokyo University, discussing your unrestrained thoughts at class, and publishing papers on Biology, there might be an eighteen-year-old girl in China, as old as you at that time, breastfeeding her third baby while scything wheat in the scorching sun. When you were meeting different people around the world and exchanging your ideas and beliefs, there might be another girl in China being abused and beaten brutally by her drunken husband who was twice her age and she had never met before until the night they got married. When you were enjoying a traditional Japanese dinner with your new friends, there might be a girl who was starved by her husband’s family just because she couldn’t give birth to a boy.

Could you say that you did not feel grateful for studying abroad? Without this experience, you would never know how large the world was, you would never meet and make friends with different people from other countries, and most of all, you would never know how significantly your life changed.

Even when you found yourself alone in another country, even when you couldn’t find anyone to pour out your feelings, even when you had to work hard and saved the money to your family, you still made a breakthrough to change your life. As a highly educated woman, you would not be treated like those girls—those victims of the wicked old society. You widened your view and improved your knowledge by studying abroad so that you wouldn’t be captivated by norms.

I remembered that one day after I came back from America, your friends gathered at your home and said that you were so lucky for having a granddaughter like me who worked hard and behaved nicely. However, you didn’t say anything in the beginning. Your eyes became dulled as if the praise bewildered you. “I don’t know...how can it be a good thing...” You sighed and lowered your head. Then, as if the thought that I am studying abroad panicked you, you trembled like a leaf in a sudden and began to wipe your eyes. “Grandma!” I shouted out with a high-pitch cracking voice. I ran out of words because it was the first time I saw you crying. You made no noise at all as if you had cried a lot before and had already mastered the skill of crying silently. “I have never expected her to make any big progress nor have I have dreamt her to be the honor of the family. I just want her to feel happy and do whatever she likes when I still have time to protect her under my wings. I feel guilty for not being able to make it now.” You stuttered, “I know how tough studying abroad is.”

But, grandma, your protection won’t do me any good. How can I grow up and take care of myself if you cover me with your wings all the time? I know you are afraid that studying abroad alone will be too harsh for me, but I want to learn more, mature, and fulfill my life. Just like How the Steel was Tempered has said, “ People’s dearest possession is life. It is given to them but once, and they must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past.”

Grandma, I have never regretted studying abroad at a young age. I don’t want to become a caged bird that stays safe from threats but can never sing freely in its world and show its innate beauty. I want to learn from you and become a strong-willed and independent woman like you who never just drift with the current.

Yours,

Anni