Biwei's Literacy Autobiography

Biwei's Literacy Autobiography

I grew up in a village in China. I don't remember if I had ever read or touched a book before I began school when I was 7 and half years old. My grandma who took care of me at home could not read or write at all and was completely illiterate besides knowing how to account for money. Neither my grandma nor my parents had ever told me a story or promoted reading books when I was growing up. During the time of "The Great Culture Resolution" in China and through the first 7 years of my youth, my whole family was just trying to survive. My family belonged to a subservient social class because we were land owners so we were oppressed at the time. The major concern of my parents during my youth was to avoid oppression from the society and ensuring enough food was available. I received no formal education at home. I also did not pursue literacy unless as required by school. My literacy development only consisted of education received from school.

I owned my first two books (textbooks) when I started first grade at the age of 7 and half. The topics of the textbooks were Chinese literacy and Elementary Arithmetic. That was when I first started to learn how to write words in Chinese character including my own name. My Chinese literacy score was average throughout the first six years of school while I was in the village. Due to my average performance, I never really developed interested in the Chinese literacy. The teachers only taught story inserts from the text book, which were based on the view points of Marxism. They praised socialism, the parties, and Marxism, just as Shen had mentioned in his article. I didn't find these kinds of literature appealing. Even at a young age, I somehow knew that the values I was learning were in fact the reason my family's land was taken away and our social class oppressed. I didn't like the social study courses for the same reason. During composition training, my teachers never encouraged us to "just write what you think". Instead, our thinking and writing was directed singularly to praise the party, the leader, and socialist values. Needless to say, I developed an inhibition towards expressing my own views. Unlike Shen, I did not learn much of the writing styles that pertained to Marxist ideology. I simply put in a minimal effort towards such courses. During that time, my math score was always outstanding. I got first prize in most of the math competitions for all the years I attended school in the village. I performed well in the Sciences as well. My outstanding performance in Math covered my weaknesses in the arts. My school thought of me as a good student and I also thought of myself as a good student. However, my literacy development was limited in the arts to a minimum of reading the mandated Chinese literature text book and doing the Chinese literature homework assignments. I didn't read any other story books because they also had Marxism ideology. My slow development in reading comprehension made it difficult to focus my thoughts in writing assignments.

My literacy development continued to progress as my family moved back to live in the city after I finished my sixth grade due to the political change in China. China started to open up its boarder to the Western World and opened up to more new ideas. The school facilities in the city were better than the schools in the village. I started to read some Kung-Fu novels imported from Hong Kong at that time. I found the novels were interesting to read, and they didn't involve any Marxism values in them. The characters in the novels lept out while I was reading and could fight similar to the fighters pictured in the movies like "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon". The story lines were fascinating and entertaining. My literacy level started to blossom because of my interest in reading that did not contain any Marxist values. I also started to read some magazines such as the Chinese version of Reader's Digest and occasional newspapers. Although I started to develop my interest in Chinese literature and started to do more reading and writing, I still focused on and enjoyed math and science classes because I was very good

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