Page 14 - Tom Steyer Issue

will be gone. and how good it will be.”
much for her mother, Xia would sometimes just take one meal a day. The experience was “such an impact on me,” as she exclaimed, after only one and a half years of campus life.
Apart from her and her sister, Xia cannot find anything else that matters in her mother’s life. The longest time they were separated came in 2017, when her mother had to be hospitalized for bronchitis-induced asthma. “How can you make it when I’m gone?” Clothing, tying shoelaces, combing hair, adjusting the tilted foot...these minute details of everyday life had long imprinted on the mother’s mind. Upon leaving her daughters, she cried. Xia also shed tears, not because her mother was sick, but rather because she saw the truth: “Mother is really getting on in years. When she is no longer able to provide for us, the world will become cold and bitter to me. We have a colorful world only when our parents are around.”
She learned, for one thing, the importance of theory in creative writing, as opposed to her earlier assumption that literary works were to be read, not analyzed. Now she came to understand that allegorization in poetry is not all about adding ambiguity, for poetry by itself is multifaceted in meaning. Xia’s favorite course was An Introduction to Literature. She would also make time for courses in other grades and disciplines, in addition to several public speaking contests she attended on cam- pus. Her engagement in the academic world - and what came out of that - did not only mean academics for her. More significantly, it expanded her horizon and opened up more possibilities. Now she is able to look deeper into herself.
Xia regards her mother as a comrade-in-arms fighting in the same trench. In those two weeks when her mother was away in the hospital, Xia felt panic and phoned her many times. “Do not worry. Just do what the doctors say and focus on getting better.” She consoled her mother while thinking the worst. “Without my mother, I would die a slow death in bed. That I’d have to accept.” After she thought it all out, Xia turned on her positive side and had her mother back again.
“There’s nothing more I expect to have; I just wanted to see more of the world.” Xia wrote in the beginning of her essay “Class Notes”. As she observed people around her, she felt her existence amidst them.
“Alone Mother faces her own illness. Even I can’t share her pains, just as she can’t share mine. The difference is, this time Mother still thinks about me and I think about myself.”
“Why does that girl on the right before me seem so pop- ular? Because all professors need a response. Communi- ties are so similar to one another: one or two members take the lead and stand out while most are in supporting roles submerged thereunder.” In a life away from home, Xia found her path to sociality, but she was very much aware that her way of life would always be different. “There I have my light, my mother, my book stacks, my poems, and my dreams and fears.”
In 2019 Xia finished a 17,000-word essay entitled “A Narrative about My Mother”. She hopes to further expand the motif, when she can, to cover every memory and moment and piece them all together into a better narrative of what she really wants to say. “Every day Mother is taking us further down this road away from fears. Every detail of life marks her travail. She has put too much into this - devotion, struggle, and faith.” The road her mother tackles, Xia knows, is much longer and bumpier than her own.
More than 300,000 words of Xia’s works have been published, including two anthologies of poetry and prose respectively entitled “The Time of Long Grass” and “Meeting Life”. To her, writing is an ever-ongoing business. Every piece of writing is a new start. She doesn’t have the so-called five or ten year plans. Her sole focus is on how to transform complicated thinking into a fine choice of words. She wishes to travel to places entirely different from her living quarters, to see natural grandeur and experience local tradition. What is missing from her works is missing from her life. As she allegorized her dreams through the image of humble grass, “When signs of life show up everywhere, no one knows that the dream of the grass is the same as that of
“I just wanted to see more of the world”
In May 2015, for the first time in her life, the 30-year- old Liu Xia went to school. Self-teaching with books and online MOOC courses was not enough for her to climb out of her career bottleneck. “I was at the cross- roads. I knew my writings were not good enough, but I had no idea how to improve myself.”
the spring.”Article by Wang Yumeng Photos by Wang Weiqian
She did not know that most universities in China allow visitors to audit their courses until a net pal from Hebei Teachers’ University told her so. Later she and her sis- ter were given help and it was arranged for them to study at the university 50 kilometers away from home. Their mother accompanied them to take care of their personal needs within the school timetable and to take notes for them in class. Worried that this might be too
This story is part of a series of articles published as an exclusive editorial exchange between China Press for People with Disabilities & Spring Breeze and ABILITY Magazine
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