Wang Resilience

A First-Generation Chinese-American Woman's Life Living with Bipolar Disorder
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-9199-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 194 Seiten

'Resilience: A First-Generation Chinese-American Woman's Life Living with Bipolar Disorder' is a breathtaking story about one woman's inspiring life. Shirley Wang's memoir gives readers a glimpse into how life changed in China post-Cultural Revolution. It also shares her story of living with bipolar disorder while maintaining a family and career. Life has not been easy for Shirley, but she is resilient. Every time she fell, she got up strong. This is her story.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wang, Shirley

Leseproben

Chapter 8 When it was time to go to Shanghai for college, my father left for Yemen as a member of a team of doctors from Anhui province to provide medical aid to the people there. China had been sending doctors and other aid workers to Arab and African countries at that time. Those were good assignments for the doctors, because they could earn U.S. dollars and buy things that were luxury goods in China at the time, like color TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, and high-end stereo systems. My father would be gone for two years. I took the crowded train with my friends and went to Shanghai to start my college life. My cousin in Shanghai met me at the train station and later took me to my university. The university was located in downtown Shanghai. We went to my dorm. It was located on the first floor of a five-or-six-story concrete dorm building. Eight girls of the same class were assigned to share one dorm room. There were four bunk beds in each room. My cousin helped me to set up my mosquito net on my bunk bed, which offered privacy more than keeping the mosquitos out. Three of the eight girls in my dorm were from Shanghai, one girl and I were from Anhui, one was from Shandong province, one was from Zhejiang province, and one was from Inner Mongolia. We soon became good friends. There were 40 students in our nursing class of 1986, all girls. Most of the girls were very good-looking and attractive. Soon, boys from other classes or even from nearby universities started to have parties with us. After college began, interactions with boys were no longer taboo. Soon a lot of the girls in my class started to have boyfriends. There were many student clubs in the university. I joined several, one of which was the literature and writing club, and another of which was the psychology club. I was interested in psychology. Apart from regular lessons, there were also a lot of social science lectures given by popular speakers from other universities or institutes. I attended many of those. At that time, China’s colleges and universities were open to western democratic ideas. I was interested in those ideas and bought a lot of books by famous western philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell. I also read Sigmund Freud. Those books shaped my developing mind. Before long, I developed a crush on a young man from Beijing. He was vice president of the student counsel at the university. I met him through my involvement with those clubs. He was tall and very handsome. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. He was four years my senior. Every time I saw him on campus, my heart would beat fast. I interviewed him and wrote an article for the university’s internal newspaper. If I got a glimpse of him one day, I would be happy all day long. But I never dared to tell him that I loved him. I could not handle being rejected. One day, I attended an event held in the university’s auditorium. As I sat down in my seat, I saw him sitting next to a beautiful girl wearing a scarf. They seemed to be close. I did not know if she was his girlfriend or not. I was so shocked, it felt as if my heart almost stopped beating. I nearly fainted. Towards the end of my second year at college, the boy was about to graduate. On most weekend nights, the university’s gym would be turned in to a big hall for ballroom dancing, which was popular among Chinese colleges or universities at that time. On the night of one such ball, he invited me to dance for the first time. He told me he was not good at dancing. I was so nervous that I stepped on his feet several times even though I was good at ballroom dancing myself. One day, he found me in my dorm and exchanged photos with me. He also gave me his address and phone number in Beijing. That summer, my father came back from Yemen, and my step-mother and sister and I all went to Beijing to welcome his return (as his flight landed in Beijing). We had never been to Beijing before. We stayed at the house of one of my cousins. We visited tourist attractions such as the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall. I also gave my crush a call and visited his home in Beijing. Later on, when college started again in the fall, I received a letter from the boy telling me he was going to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies. Studying overseas was a popular goal among Chinese college students at that time. I took a 30-minute bus ride to go to the telecom building located in People’s Square to make a long-distance call. (At that time, nobody had cell phones and there were not many places where one could make a long-distance call). I called him and wished him well. I never heard from him again from then on. Academically, we were studying basic medical courses like other medical school students. The medical model taught was still pretty much a disease model, nothing close to the bio-psycho-social medical model the school touted. Some of the courses were difficult. Luckily, I never failed a course. I disliked the nursing courses shortly after I started to take them. The teachers placed a lot of emphasis on performing nursing skills and procedures perfectly following a specific order. No creativity was encouraged. I had to learn how to do an IV injection a certain way, strictly following certain steps. We also had to practice making beds; we had to fold the corners of the sheets at a certain angle. Everything had to be perfect. I happened to be a very clumsy person. I was awkward in doing those things, and at the same time, I was not allowed to use much of my brain. I hated it. However, I was actively involved with other activities on campus. I paid to join an extracurricular English class. The lessons were given by an old teacher from outside of the University. He was very funny and taught us some interesting things. He picked an English name for me after Shirley Temple, the beloved American child star. Shirley also sounded similar to the Chinese name given by my father. I liked the name and have been using it ever since. I also learned many English songs which were popular on campus then. One of my roommates often played many beautiful English songs. I can still hear the song lyrics “How much is the doggy in the window? The one with the waggly tail…” in my mind to this day. At one time, some of the girls in my dorm stared to knit sweaters. I also learned to knit. I made myself two nice sweaters. When I went to college in 1986, my father gave me a bank book with 2000 yuan (Chinese currency) deposited in the account. That was a lot of money at that time. I was getting 50 yuan monthly from my father, and that could cover my living expense at the university for a whole month. My father got that money from my aunt in Nanjing; my maternal grandparents had left the money to me through my aunt. That money was for me to spend, so I spent it on buying nice clothes. Since my step-mother seldom bought me clothes as I was growing up, I tried to make up for it then. I frequented Huating Market, a clothing market located on Huating Road near Huaihai Road, the Champs-Elysees of Shanghai. There were a lot of clothing vendors at the Huating Market selling fashionable clothes at reasonable prices, and we could bargain with the vendors to get even better prices. Initially, I did not know much about fashion or how to mix-and-match clothes. I bought fashion magazines such as Elle, which had newly become available. After some trial and error, I found my style. Among the clothes I bought, a plaid light coat was my favorite. I also had a red shirt which I would wear with a white puff sleeve sweater I knitted. With some help from those clothes, I became one of the beautiful girls on campus. Soon after I started my college life, I learned ballroom dancing, which was very popular at that time. I loved the waltz the most. I loved spinning all over the university gym to the music. I frequented the balls there on weekends. Shortly after my third year of college started, I met a young man at the university ball one night. He invited me to dance. He told me he was a teacher at the nearby Jiao Tong University (one of the top Chinese universities) and that he had graduated from Beijing University, another one of the most prestigious universities in China. We talked and danced until the ball ended, after which he accompanied me to my dorm building and said goodbye. We started to see more of each other, and he soon became my first boyfriend. He certainly loved me a lot, but I did not really love him as much. Because of the lack of love I received growing up, it felt good to be loved. I rode on the back of his bike, and we went to many parks in Shanghai. He took a lot of nice pictures of me. Then, at the end of spring in 1989, an anti-corruption and pro-democracy movement erupted in China on college campuses. The students were excited. They posted pro-democracy posters on campus bulletin boards. I became involved as well. I read those posters every day and also joined street demonstrations. We marched on the streets of Shanghai. Lessons were disrupted on campus. Students in Beijing plus those came from all over China occupied the Tiananmen Square. Finally, Deng Xiaoping ordered the army to clear the students out of Tiananmen Square on June 4th. Tanks drove on the streets of Beijing and on to the Tiananmen Square. Soldiers opened fire on the unarmed students and other civilians there. People died. It was known to the western world as Tiananmen Square Massacre. As events evolved, I got more and more excited; my mind started to work very fast with all kinds of fleeting thoughts. I lost sleep at night. I recorded messages on my Walkman recorder and asked a friend at the university who had graduated from the same high school to...