Their Fulfilled and Unfulfilled Dreams
Due to last-century’s economic and cultural turbulence, the older generations of Chinese cannot talk straightforward about dreams. Preferring to interpret world through concrete visuals, however, I am easily wired by pile of albums back into the history tunnel shaped by those fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams that an outsider can barely perceive. By analyzing three pictures of my grandmother, mother, and cousin, I have formed a vivid image of dream chasers who are selfless, persevering, and excel at dancing with environmental tides while staying true to themselves.
For my grandmother, Fen, responsibility outweighs personal dream. As the observation lens moves from me, a shorthaired preschool dancer, further into the background, it captures a warm and relaxed smile resting on a deep-lined face. With a posture of half sitting, half lying in a coarse-textured sofa, Fen is holding a cup of tomato juice specially prepared for her dancing granddaughter. The plastic cup is worn by years of usage. Yet in an era of material scarcity, the very sip of juice squeezed manually by my grandmother at each falling of summer dusk tastes like heaven, which lives on the tip of my tongue for decades. You can hardly tell by appearance that, forty years ago, Fen gave up the opportunity of studying in a top university of Kuomintang China so as to take care of her five younger sisters.
Unlike grandmother’s sacrificing her dream school for families, my mother enlightens me by balancing vision with reality. At the center of stage, a curly-haired lady in her 30s stands out as a water lily in an elegant ivory-white gown. With an imperceptible smile, her face is shining and eyes sparkling. Being in the middle of a solo “I Love You, China,” she exudes a tiny bit of nervousness partly from the dramatic makeup, partly from her dream somehow coming true. As the daughter of a capitalist and intellectual family, Fang was deprived of the right to obtain the first-class training in the National Academy of Music for the Cultural Revolution. Nonetheless, her singing dream never fades away. This picture seizes the moment she performs on behalf of her work unit – the Municipal Bureau of Finance.
The last photo of my cousin reminds me of the dream-chaser spirit. On a treeless Gobi desert in northwestern China, a young man wrapped in a multi-layered coat is riding a brown horse. Despite a weirdly inverted water-chestnut-like hairstyle, he is confidently poised with a mischievous smile on his tanned face worn by sweeping sandstorm and blazing sunshine. As a junior in the Shanghai Academy of Theater, Toto earned 30,000 RMB from this first film-shooting experience to fully cover his tuition thereafter. Moreover, bearing a dream of film-direction, Toto ran errands, bore with unfair treatment, and survived his mother’s sudden death. Now, he finally steps onto his dreamland after thirteen years of tears and cheers.
“Dream” was a vague concept for me until I witnessed my families’ trans-generational struggling with it. Under varying contexts, my grandmother chooses to let it go for a faith in family, my mother reshapes its size to fit the mold of life, and my cousin persists in it by treating every obstacle as an opportunity to advance his competency. Getting inspired by these dream photos, I am more determined to lead a productive life with love, reason, and courage.
For my grandmother, Fen, responsibility outweighs personal dream. As the observation lens moves from me, a shorthaired preschool dancer, further into the background, it captures a warm and relaxed smile resting on a deep-lined face. With a posture of half sitting, half lying in a coarse-textured sofa, Fen is holding a cup of tomato juice specially prepared for her dancing granddaughter. The plastic cup is worn by years of usage. Yet in an era of material scarcity, the very sip of juice squeezed manually by my grandmother at each falling of summer dusk tastes like heaven, which lives on the tip of my tongue for decades. You can hardly tell by appearance that, forty years ago, Fen gave up the opportunity of studying in a top university of Kuomintang China so as to take care of her five younger sisters.
Unlike grandmother’s sacrificing her dream school for families, my mother enlightens me by balancing vision with reality. At the center of stage, a curly-haired lady in her 30s stands out as a water lily in an elegant ivory-white gown. With an imperceptible smile, her face is shining and eyes sparkling. Being in the middle of a solo “I Love You, China,” she exudes a tiny bit of nervousness partly from the dramatic makeup, partly from her dream somehow coming true. As the daughter of a capitalist and intellectual family, Fang was deprived of the right to obtain the first-class training in the National Academy of Music for the Cultural Revolution. Nonetheless, her singing dream never fades away. This picture seizes the moment she performs on behalf of her work unit – the Municipal Bureau of Finance.
The last photo of my cousin reminds me of the dream-chaser spirit. On a treeless Gobi desert in northwestern China, a young man wrapped in a multi-layered coat is riding a brown horse. Despite a weirdly inverted water-chestnut-like hairstyle, he is confidently poised with a mischievous smile on his tanned face worn by sweeping sandstorm and blazing sunshine. As a junior in the Shanghai Academy of Theater, Toto earned 30,000 RMB from this first film-shooting experience to fully cover his tuition thereafter. Moreover, bearing a dream of film-direction, Toto ran errands, bore with unfair treatment, and survived his mother’s sudden death. Now, he finally steps onto his dreamland after thirteen years of tears and cheers.
“Dream” was a vague concept for me until I witnessed my families’ trans-generational struggling with it. Under varying contexts, my grandmother chooses to let it go for a faith in family, my mother reshapes its size to fit the mold of life, and my cousin persists in it by treating every obstacle as an opportunity to advance his competency. Getting inspired by these dream photos, I am more determined to lead a productive life with love, reason, and courage.
