College personal statement

    My mother country is China, Canton is where I was born. When I was 13, my whole family immigrated to United States of America, but they don’t often stay for a long time. Although all of my family members have green cards, but my parents and my brother stay in China for works and school most of the time in the year, and they just come once a year. I had Chinese education for 13 years before I immigrated. I am proud of what I am. Ever since i was young, my parents wanted me to learn about Chinese culture as much as I can, which drived me tired often. I have learned how to write the Chinese Calligraphy, play the piano and chess. I spent hard works on each of them and I got awards. I had passed on the level 6 test in piano when I was in 7th grade. I had many awards for chess and Calligraphy that I won at the competitions in China.  I enjoyed my tough life in China for 13 years, and now I am looking forward for my future.
    Because English is my second language, I have a hard time on studying English. Sometimes I feel left out. I recall to my first day of America School, I was an eighth grader in Lincoln Middle school.  The only words I could say or understand are “Hi” and “thank you”, nothing else. One of the reasons is because my English teachers in China had their accents in English. This impact me had a hard time catching up on what other people were speaking. Everything is turning in a good way after the first half of the year, at least I could barely follow each word that came out of my teachers’ mouths.I took the adjustment test and tried to get into Geometry in my 8th grade, the officials in the office put me back to Algebra 1 even though i got an A on the test. Their reasons were just they did not think I will be able to catch up in Geometry since there are many word problems, and they wanted me to retake Algebra 1 even though I knew all the stuff in that book. At that moment, I noticed if i don't improve my English, I won’t be able to fulfill my dream. Later the year, I became a tutor and helped 6th and 7th graders in Math after school. Not only I could get community services hours from doing so, I could also learn more English by socialize.
    My dream is getting into a good UC, by that, I don’t mean they have to be super nice, I just want an UC that fits my major well. I love math, so I think I am going for mathemathic. I also know I have to improve my other grade on different subject by improving my English. Therefore, I am looking for more opportunities for more activities that involved socialize.










    Every Saturday, I go to FCSN for volunteering. I played sports with some mental illness kids and also take care of them. I like my job. By the time I take care of those kids, I learn that I have to be patient for everything before it comes success. The kids there always have some weird action, and their brains are slower than normal people. The leader of the program always tells us that there are still some possibilities for them to turn well and get rid of the issues they are having. Right, I became patient to those kids, I teach them how to play Pingpong, how to do a jumping jet, and how to be respectful to others. Because they are kids, and most of them are under 10, so they are innocent inside. I also learned that rushing is not the good way to finish a job as always. Once I yield at a kid who is as tall as me, but he was as tall as me. He cried so badly from my criticisms. I really felt regret of criticizing him just because he tried to messed around with me. They are kids, no matter how big their size is, they still have a small heart which is easy to break down. And it is my job to keep it safe or fix it.
    The hardest part of this job is that I need to teacher those kids the movements to play pingpong. Often time they would run away from me because they think they are not able to do it or they just don’t want to do it. So my first job is to chase those kids and get them in position. I mean it is challenge to get them on position and not to run away without yielding at them. First of all, I need to hold their shoulders and teach them the movement to hit the pingpong ball. The racket needs to be oblique because that way it is easier to hit the ball back. We always practice the same move over and over again to let them have a view of how you play pingpongSecond of all, I need to serve the balls to those kids in order to hit it back. They always miss the ball or hit it out. Some of the kids would give me a sad face. Eventually I need to comfort them and give them another easier serve. It takes skills to finish an hour practice.
    I think this volunteering job had impact me in a good way. I learned how to be patient to everything and every person, and should be optimistic to whatever that is going to happen to me. Nothing will be perfect, especially at the beginning. Our lives need decisions and improvements. By the time goes on, I feel confident to my future.
   

Final Draft of the book, "Crank" QUESTION #5

      The book, “Crank” described Kristina as a smart girl at school, but she had challenged many kinds of problems at school and her family. There are so many saddness thing happen to her: her parents got divorced when she was 5 years old, then she lived with her mom and her step-father. Unfortunately, as time goes on, there are many things happened to Kristina and changed her personality and characteristics. The purpose for the author of writing this book is that she tried to express the idea of influence from someone’s opinion is able to change a person’s fate in both ways.

     Kristina tries very hard at school to be perfect, but inside of her mind, she wants a perfect family instead of getting perfect grade in school. Her desire is to live in a family with her siblings and her parents who actually have the blood relationship with her. Unfortuanely, her parents got divorced when she was still young, and she found herself there is no way to keep a contact with her father. Thus Kristina asked to go to her father's house for a while. When Kristina went to her father and planned to live with him for a short period, her father did not care about her so much. Not only because he got so much work to do and also he does not consider Kristina as his "daughter". Thus he left her at home by herself alone. This make Kristina feels like her father tries to ignore her:

"Work?" "You have heard of work" "You couldn't take one day off?" "You don't know my boss" "Does he know about me?" "She knows you're here." "Your daughter comes to visit..." "She doesn't know." "Know what?" "That you're my daughter." "Who am  I then?" "A long-lost relative." (P30)

     Since after the divorced, Kristina's father lives pretty far away from where her mom lives, so it is not so easy to have a conversation with her father. Although Kristina tried very hard to get some free days hang out with her father, but he told Kristina that work is more important than her. Kristina feels pissed off of what her father did because she begged her mother for so long in order to get the permission of going to her father's house, and now her father expected her as a "long lost relative". I think her father is pretty rude, and it just hurts a high school student's feeling. Kristina was dissapointed at what his father did to her. The writter, Ellen used many adjective words to describe the change of Kristina's emotions. And later on the book, she talks about her marriage in her life. When people are putting a bad mood onto something, things would always turn worse. 

    After Kritina knows she is pregnant, she was trying to hide the fact and not to tell anyone, not even her husband. The reason why is that she does not want to distract him from his job, and also she was thinking if she should tell her parents. Once she does not feel well because she was pregnant for six months, and Adam was driving her home from a party. While Adam was driving, he told Kritina that she should tell her parents about the baby, and also fix the relationship:

"He suggested, Maybe you should talk to your mom"(P501)

            Then Kristina replied:

"What was he thinking? How could i talk to her? We hadn't really talked in years. What would I tell her now?" (P502)

         From their conversation, I can tell that Kristina was not willing to tell her parents that she is pregnant, because she felt strange to how selfish they actually are. Adam knows Kristina is just scared  to talk to her parents, so he presses the number to her parents, and give the phone to her after connected it. Her parents feel so surprise and happy after Kristina told them she is pregnant. And they started building up their relationship because of the baby.Sometimes, things will just get easier if people give more forgiveness and tolerant to each other. "I told you once before that life is full of choices, sometimes, good or bad, hard or easy, we make the right choices. When I told my mom, she cried and cursed. Then she softened and thanked me for honoring"(P525) This quote shows that if Kristina and her mom have known the misunderstanding before they are being ignoring to each other, things will get easier. Oftentime, forgiveness and tolerant could make life easier, and more success, espectially in people's relationship.

         In this book, the writer uses a lot of adjectives to describe the changing of every character's emotion, and also their thoughts. The writer also shows sometimes being stubborn would miss many chances. Throughout the experiences that Kristina had from her childhood to her motherhood period, the books shows it is very important to give understanding and forgiveness to the people who are around you, because everyone make mistakes, you cannot expect someone being perfect at you. There is no way to do so just because this is how the cycle works. There are many big lessons in the book that are relating to our life.
        All in all, I think the writer expresses the ideas of family issues by writing this book and how we can treat the problems. Sometimes saddness things just happen, and we cannot stop them. Instead of complaining whose fault is it, we should rather look forward, and find out the solutions for it. Like in Kristina's case, if Adam did not make the phone call for her, she would not know it was a misunderstanding betwwen her and her parents, and she would not be able to know the truth. People sometims might just get mad and make some misunderstandings for no reasons, but then it will cause more troubles and problems, and hurting people around them. If we can start to learn how to forgive and tolerant to people, there would be less misunderstanding between each other; if there are less misunderstanding in our life, things will just become wonderful. Each good and bad choice in one's life is  effecting and changing their fate.

Comments for rough dradt

    Here are the comments I wrote for Vanessa Berrior, shiyun yang,  Jay Pan
Vanessa:
Woow! Such a specific explanation! I like your thesis statements and some explanations, which make me have a good preview of the book. I think you need more quotes, and you also can pull out what event had actually happened during the game. And you need to cut the first paragraph of the second part of the book, it seemed like it is the second intro paragraph. Overall, it is pretty good, and I am looking for more deatails of the story on the final draft.
shiyun:
mhmm..I would say the same thing which I comment at Vanessa's post-- I think you need more details on what events had actually happened in the story. On your essay, it mostly focus on what is your opinion-- I am not saying it is unnessary, but maybe you could add more samples to support your thesis. By the way, you have strong supports of your quotes and your commentary. Overall, your essay seems great
Jay:
The third comments for "Hunger Game"!!
Well, I think your essay is going on a good way. You have thesis statements, strong quotes, transitions and supports. Like what David said↑, you need to make a better intro and conclusion. Anyway, I think your essay is ready to go

First Rough Draft of the book "Crank"

    The book, “Crank” described Kristina as a smart girl at school, but she had challenged many kinds of problems at school and her family. There are so many saddness thing happen to her: her parents got divorced when she was 5 years old, then she lived with her mom and her step-father. Unfortunately, as time goes on, there are many things happened to Kristina and changed her personality and characteristics. An influence from someone’s opinion is able to change a person’s fate in both ways.

     Kristina tries very hard at school to act perfect, but inside of her mind, she wants a perfect family instead of getting perfect grade in school. Her desire is to live in a family with her siblings and her parents who have the blood relationship with her. When Kristina went visit her father and lived with him for a while, her father did not care about her so much because he got so much work to do and left her at home by herself alone. This make Kristina feels like her father tries to ignore her:

"Work?" "You have heard of work" "You couldn't take one day off?" "You don't know my boss" "Does he know about me?" "She knows you're here." "Your daughter comes to visit..." "She doesn't know." "Know what?" "That you're my daughter." "Who am  I then?" "A long-lost relative." (P30)

     Since after the divorced, Kristina's father lives pretty far away from where her mom lives, so it is not so easy to visit her father. Although Kristina tried very hard to get some free days hang out with her father, but he told Kristina that work is more important than daughter. Kristina feels pissed off of what her father did because she begged her mother for so long in order to get the permission of going to her father's house, and now her father expected her as a "long lost relative". I think it is pretty rude, and it just hurts a high school student's feeling. Kristina was dissapointed at what his father did to her. And later on the book, she talks about her marriage in her life. When people are putting a bad mood onto something, things would always turn worse. 

    After Kritina knows she is pregnant, she was trying to hide the fact and not to tell anyone, not even her husband. The reason why is that she does not want to distract him from his job, and also she was thinking if she should tell her parents. Once she does not feel well because she was pregnant for six months, and Adam was driving her home from a party. While Adam was driving, he told Kritina that she should tell her parents about the baby, and also fix the relationship:

"He suggested, Maybe you should talk to your mom"(P501)

            Then Kristina replied:

"What was he thinking? How could i talk to her? We hadn't really talked in years. What would I tell her now?" (P502)

         From their conversation, I can tell that Kristina was not willing to tell her parents that she is pregnant, because she felt strange to how selfish they actually are. Adam knows Kristina is just scared  to talk to her parents, so he presses the number to her parents, and give the phone to her after connected it. Her parents feel so surprise and happy after Kristina told them she is pregnant. And they started building up their relationship because of the baby.Sometimes, things will just get easier if people give more forgiveness and tolerant to each other. "I told you once before that life is full of choices, sometimes, good or bad, hard or easy, we make the right choices. When I told my mom, she cried and cursed. Then she softened and thanked me for honoring"(P525) This quote shows that if Kristina and her mom have known the misunderstanding before they are being ignoring to each other, things will get easier. Oftentime, forgiveness and tolerant could make life easier, and more success, espectially in people's relationship.
         So I think the writer expresses the ideas of family issues by writing this book and how we can treat the problems. Sometimes saddness things just happen, and we cannot stop them. Instead of complaining whose fault is it, we should rather look forward, and find out the solutions for it. Like in Kristina's case, if Adam did not make the phone call for her, she would not know it was a misunderstanding betwwen her and her parents, and she would not be able to know the truth. People sometims might just get mad and make some misunderstandings for no reasons, but then it will cause more troubles and problems, and hurting people around them. If we can start to learn how to forgive and tolerant to people, there would be less misunderstanding between each other; if there are less misunderstanding in our life, things will just become wonderful. Each good and bad choice in one's life is  effecting and changing their fate.

Rough draft of book

First Rough Draft of the book "Crank"

"Crank" Question 5

            Finally finish reading this kind of thick book! The book, "Crank" has a very deep meaning base on family's problem. The main character, Kristina, is a perfect girl both at school and family. She is quiet, talent, and friendly to people; however, her parents got divorced when she was still little. Therefore, she has problems that deal with her family. At the beginning of the book, Kritina claimed that at the beginning, she thought her father betrayed her mother, so she started to hate on him. By the time pass on, she found out that her mom is not as nice as she thought she is, and started to hate on her and does not like the way she is. Thus after she has a job, she moves out and lives by herself, until she marries to Adam. By the time she moves out, she does not have a good contact with her parents.
           After Kritina knows she is pregnant, she was trying to hide the fact and not to tell anyone, not even her husband. The reason why is that she does not want to distract him from his job, and also she was thinking if she should tell her parents. Once she does not feel well because she was pregnant for six months, and Adam was driving her home from a party. While Adam was driving, he told Kritina that she should tell her parents about the baby, and also fix the relationship:

"He suggested, Maybe you should talk to your mom"(P501)

            Then Kristina replied:

"What was he thinking? How could i talk to her? We hadn't really talked in years. What would I tell her now?" (P502)

         From their conversation, I can tell that Kristina was not willing to tell her parents that she is pregnant, because she felt strange to how selfish they actually are. Adam knows Kristina is just scared  to talk to her parents, so he presses the number to her parents, and give the phone to her after connected it. Her parents feel so surprise and happy after Kristina told them she is pregnant. And they started building up their relationship because of the baby.
         So I think the writer expresses the ideas of family issue by writing this book. Sometimes things just happen, and we cannot stop them. Instead of complaining whose fault is it, we should rather look forward, and find out the solutions for it. Like in Kristina's case, if Adam did not make the phone call for her, she would not know it was a misunderstanding betwwen her and her parents, and she would not be able to know the truth. It is glad that "Crank" has some meaningful lessons to share with the readers.

First Part of the Book "Crank"

       The book I picked to read is called "Crank", and it is written by Ellen Hopkins. Kristina is the character of the story--she is a perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never make any trouble at school. The only thing that makes her life becomes imperfect is her family's issue. She had a step-father after her mom got divorced with her father, and lives in a 5 members family-- Kristina, her mom(Marie), her stepfather(Scott), her big sister(Leigh) and her little brother(Jake).
       Kristina tries very hard at school to act perfect, but inside of her mind, she wants a perfect family instead of getting perfect grade in school. Her desire is to live in a family with her siblings and her parents who have the blood relationship with her. When Kristina went visit her father and lived with him for a while, her father did not care about her so much because he got so much work to do and left her at home by herself alone. This make Kristina feels like her father tries to ignore her:

"Work?" "You have heard of work" "You couldn't take one day off?" "You don't know my boss" "Does he know about me?" "She knows you're here." "Your daughter comes to visit..." "She doesn't know." "Know what?" "That you're my daughter." "Who am  I then?" "A long-lost relative." (P30)

     Since after the divorced, Kristina's father lives pretty far away from where her mom lives, so it is not so easy to visit her father. Although Kristina tried very hard to get some free days hang out with her father, but he told Kristina that work is more important than daughter. Kristina feels pissed off of what her father did because she begged her mother for so long in order to get the permission of going to her father's house, and now her father expected her as a "long lost relative". I think it is pretty rude, and it just hurts a high school student's feeling. Kristina was dissapointed at what his father did to her. And later on the book, she talks about her boy friend and business in school.

Family History Response

       After publishing the family history and reading the wonderful stories that my friends wrote, I found some similarities and connections between few of my Asian friends' families.  After reading a bunch of readings, I got some quotes from Jay Pan, Andy Lau, and Shiyun Yang. All of the stories have one connection, which show that how strict Chinese family is, and how much hard work their mother had experienced back to their childhood.  First of all, this is a quote from Jay Pan:

When my mother was young, she went to an “advanced” math class at her school. She was an extremely studious and hardworking student that never slacked off or screwed around in class, (according to her anyway). She was apparently so hardworking that she was a well respected person in her village. They respected her as a student and as a hardworking member of society.

From Jay's quote, I can tell that Jay's mom was a "4.0" student in China back to the period, even though Chinese schools don't count GPA for their grade, but yah. The main point is that, although Jay's mom had a hard class and fortunately do well in the class, but she still had to get some times to do her housework. Going onto shiyun's quote, she shows the same connections of her mother's situation when she was young:

My mom would wake up at seven in the morning and head to school. When she comes back, she would be asked to do chores by her parents. Each of her siblings were assigned to do a different job. My mom had to take trips to the wells or to faucets to gather water for the family. For each bucket they got, they had to pay a cent. Back in the day, they had no access of water at homes.

   And this is Andy's quote:

Andy's quote:She described these as dirty and filthy places that she hated going to. Instead, my mom knew a friend who had a bathroom in their house with running water. She would go shower and use the restroom of one of her friends who was wealthy and had numerous bathrooms in their house. She said that she was very lucky and her parents and sister envied her because she got to shower in a clean and safe place.

    So, three of their quotes show an important connection in between Chinese families. From shiyun's quote, it basically shows how hard her mom's school life was, and how she was still working hard; from Andy's quote, it expresses a hard situation that Back to the time when their moms were still at school, I can see all of them were struggle on their familt situation while China was developing country. Thus its economic was not that rich compare to United States, so people owned a very low paying job, or even no jobs for them at all. So, their kids must to be mature early, and started doing housework. This is what my mom always tells me. I think this is what exactly the connection is showing: Back to our parents' childhood time period, kids are working hard to earn a good grade and having too much housework. These experiences are such alike what my mom told me she had before, and I think the memories are valuable because it shows a big different comparing to today.

The Joy Luck Club cyclical element writing

     Finally finish reading the Joy Luck Club, I think it is a great book which expresses the ideas of Chinese cultures in Chinese family. And it also shows an idea that is cyclical element between the family members, and how it effects their relationship. For example, the motherhood has a big impact on the daughters' life and the mothers led their daughters having a unique view to their life.
     For example, in the story, The Rules of the game,  Waverly Jong's mother pushed her so hard to be perfect on playing chess. Her mother is very strict at her, she pushed Waverly to learn how to play chess after she found her had such talent and gifted on playing chess. Also, she required her to lose as least as many pieces she could in the chess tournament. "Lost eight piece this time. Last time was eleven. What i tell you? Better off lose less!"(P97) This quote is from Waverly's mom, which is really mean and strict. As a chess player, I don't know the purpose of losing less is better than losing more, as long as you win the game at the end. The only purpose of doing that is to satisfy the desire from Waverly's mother of showing off to other people that Waverly is actually professional on playing chess. However, Waverly does not really like how the way her mother treat her as a way to show off, which make her dislike chess so much.
     Later on, after waverly grows up and has her own children, she tried to teach her child to have a good personality espectially not always want to show off. There is one quote that Waverly said" And My mom loves to show off a lot, like one of my many trophies she polished. she used to discuss my games as if she had devised the strategies" (P170) This is what Waverly really think about her mother while she was little. Because of her mother's bad personality influenced Waverly had a bad mind of what is going on in her childhood, she started to teach her daughter to be modest and respectful. This is how the cyclical relationship is--Waverly's mother pass her view of life to Waverly, and then Waverly gives a better view of life to her daughter as a mother. I believe this cyclical will turn better and better by the time pass by.

Family History

         There is a complicated relationship in my family history. I immigrated to the United States when I was about 13 years old, but my parents told me that they turned in the application forms of immigration to the staff before I was born, actually both of my parents did know my mom was pregnant at that time. That means it took 13 years to get a stamp at my immigration passport. I always feel funny about how my parents turned the application form in before I was born, since they don’t have any information of me yet and it took such a long time to add my name onto the list after I was born. Sometimes, I feel special somehow about the time it took to work on the immigration passport on me.

       Start with premise of how a person has his or her qualification to apply for immigration to the United States. First of all, the person needs guarantors that are in the United States who also have stable income every month, which means it is impossible for a person to apply for immigration if there are no guarantee on the other sides. “Having a stable income” prevents the case of people immigrate to United States, but don’t have an enough income for their life, and ask the government for relief money. The nation fears that people will do such things, so they publish a law of having guarantors in order to apply. So then the guarantors need to relieve if the people they guarantee for 10 years if they cannot make money in any cases. Second of all, there is a very complicated procedure to check if a person’s health is good, but this is not really relating to the story.

Well, back to the idea, who are the ones guarantee my family 14 years old in order to provide an opportunity applying to the staff? I asked this question to my parents last week, and they told me it was my uncle who is on my mom’s side, apply my family to United States; and when I asked them who apply my uncle to United States, they told me to ask my uncle. Later at the night, I called my uncle(I have no blood relationship with him because he is my aunt’s husband.), and asked him how he got to United States, and he has been silence for a while, and started to tell me his history:

So, my uncle’s father was a mayor in Zhongshan, a big city in Grangzhou. During the Cultural Revolution in China during 1966 to 1976, under Mao’s leading, the upper-officers tried to find out the corrupt in every city with every kind of torture. So, they not spared to get information from different city and people, to find out the Corrupts. As I know, many loyalty workers also die during that period, because the governors did not give so much patients or trustings on them. Unfortunately, my uncle’s dad got attention from those people, and getting into a big trouble—those people wanted information of how people corrupted each one no matter you did it or not—of course everyone would say they never did so, which the officers would use torture on the mayors, until you make something up and they have enough evidences to “kick” you into jail. This is what really happened to my uncle’s family, when he was a teenager. It was impossible for his father to escape anyway, at the end; his father asked one of his best friends brought them away as far as he can because he feared that his family would get involved into it. Thus, my uncle follower his two brothers, from China, then shipping to Macau, to Hongkong, and lastly took airplane to United States. However, after he was going to United States, the government considered him as illegal immigration and did not give him any identity at all. Since they did not know when the Cultural Revolution would be ended, so they started to work in the United States. My uncle started his first job in a Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown and he lived in downtown Oakland. He had a very low paying job because he did not have any identifications or ID. So he struggle and struggle everyday—thought when he could go back to China at the time the Revolution end, and learned English at the same time. After 10 years, the Revolution started to get decreasing, and my uncles were deciding whether stayed in the United States since he already adapted to it. At this time, he finally got identification from the government somehow, but I heard that he paid a lot of money for getting it. And after three’s decisions, all of them went back to China—my uncle’s two brothers stayed in China for their rest of the lived, but my uncle, married my aunt, and brought her back to United States. He started his new life in Oakland. He injects the restaurant he worked for a long time, and became one of the bosses.

Later on, they have their first children, my second oldest cousin. So, he considered as “ABC”, American Born Chinese. And at the year he was born, 1993, was the day my aunt and my uncle apply my family for legal immigration. When my aunt was having the second baby, they went back to China. So, my older cousin started to get education from United States back to China, of course, his grade was bad because he cannot catch up on every subject. After 4 years, my aunt decided to bring both her kids back to America, because they were not really trying their best on their schools. Fortunately, both of them were doing well in United States, so my aunt chooses to stay in the America, and goes back to China with her family in the summer every two years. And after many years, when I was 14, they received a letter, which asked my family to get an interview for the immigration.

I think this story is really important to my family history because it shows the matter of immigrations in my family and how it effects to my family. And it also expresses how terrible and bad the Culture Revolution was in the past. It is just so hard and meaningful to my uncle of his life.

 The first year I came here was 2008, after about 10 years of staff organizing and working, my family finally had the permission to immigrate to the United States. My parents bought a house in Bay Farm, in order to offer me to go to Lincoln Middle School for the first year of School in the United States because there are ESL classes available in the school. In addition to recompense to my aunt’s family, my mom invited them to live with us, and they can have more income by renting their house in Oakland. Thus, now there are 2 families live in my house. And this is my AMAZING family history.

Joy Luck Club--Motherhood writing

     I think that there are many similarities and connections between the motherhood in the Joy Luck Club, and the article, Tigher Mom. First of all, both of the authors are Amy Tam. In the Article, Tigher Mom, Amy was saying how strict her mother was-- to push her to become genius in everything, and doesn't allow her to watch too much TV, and hang out with people outside too much. This made Amy feel like she does not have any freedom in her life.
    And in Third Chapter of the Book, The Joy Luck Club, all the stories express how hard the mothers push oh their daughters. For examples, like Waverly, her mom forces her to be good at playing chess which she does not like that at all. She thinks her mom requests too much on her, and gives up her chess after having many chess tournaments. Waverly has too much pleasures from her mother, which makes her gave up everything she wants to gain from playing chess. Just like the article, Amy's mom pushed Amy to learn everything and also had to be good. This kind of pleasure finally leds to the end of Waverly's chess life.
   However, not all of the pleasure is unnessary. Motherhood always has more personal-experiences than the daughters since they are older. Therefore, the motherhood always see things that are dangerous before they happen in the book. Like in the story of "Rice Husband", Lena's mom always notices things are going wrong, but she never give protentions because she wants her daughter, Lena, to learn something by her failures. Many bad things happen to Lena, which struggle her a lot, but anyway, the experiences that the motherhood has should be considered by the daughters sometimes.

Second part of the Joy Luck Club

      The beginning of the chapter 2 of the Joy Luck Club, has expressed the severe of the Chinese Families and the kids were challenging themselves. In the story of "The rules of the game" and "the voice of the wall", both of them show the pressure that the family had given to their children. Both of the families in the story wanted their children to become better and better. For example, in the story of "The rules of the game", when Waverly Jong's mom found out that Waverly had special gifted intelligent to play chess, she forced her daughter to have more tournaments and she always got the first place. However, during her practice, her mom always require her to win as perfect as she can, and this is what she asked her to do in the tournaments. Waverly did not really get the differences between winning by 10 pieces or 2 pieces, and why her mom wanted her to be perfect as well; what her mom response is that something like it is shameful to win with few pieces.

"Lost eight piece this time. Last time was Eleven. What I tell you? Better off lose less!"(P97)

     This is one quote from Waverly's mom which she is criticizing her daughter, Waverly, that she loses too many pieces in the game even thought she still won. Although Waverly was ignoring her mother because she noticed that her mother just used her as one of her tools to show off to people. This is not really what Waverly wanted by winning the tournament. So, my opinion to this story is that the idea behind that Waverly tried to say is that she got tired and annoying of her mother, and wasn't favor on what her mom did. Waverly just want to have a normal life like others, unfortunately, since her mom had a different view of Waverly's life, it changed Waverly's personality, characters and thoughts a lot.

The Joy Luck Club

        Quickwrite 2:
        "Family and honor should take priority over the rights of the individual family member", I think Popo would say this is true, however, I think for An-mei's mother, she would say it is false. In Chinese traditional, old people always think faces are everything for them. For example, in An-mei's mother's case, the family feel shame of what An-mei's mother did-- she married a man who already had few wifes. So, as I know, this is called depriciating herself because in Chinese family, the oldest one is the head, and the latest one should always be respectfull and polite to the older people. So, in her mom's case, she is the youngest one and she needed to be respeact to the rest of her husband's wifes. And this is one of the reasons why the family feel shamefullness on her.
        And also, in the traditional, Chinese family does not want their a woman marries a man with many wifes because that sounds like betray. So, I think this is one of the important facts that the family is really hating on at An-mei's mom, like what Popo said, it just made her feel shamefullness. So, back to the point, I think I agree to that Family and honor should take priority over the rights of the individual family member because Family is compose with a group of people, not only just individual. Family menber should be supporting to each other and make everyone become successful.
        By the way, I also think that it is pretty mean and I feel sorry for An-mei that she has to marry to a guy who is younger than her, and she doesn't like him at all. Unfortunately, because the disaster, it destroyed all the plants her family had, and made her family mush move out and left An-mei by herself. She could not do anything even thought she feel upset about it. And this is why I think it should not work this way of putting family menber individully.
      

Response to Chinese Mothers are superior

          Haha, I like this article so much! Someone had finally said my thoughts of my family. Amy Chua, who wrote this article, had described her family as well. I like this paragraph that she is describing her family:

 A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

 • attend a sleepover• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

    I recalled when I was little, my mom forced me to learn piano, chess, and Chinese calligraphy even though I did not want to. The meaning things that my mom always did to me was that she drove me to the schools,  dropped me off, and left without being looking back. This is why I fail every time I tried not to go to outside class schools. And if i don't go learn, she won't pick me up. There were  no rights between me and her-- she is always superior of me, and she decided everything for me.   -_-  However, at least I can feel the way these three habits are really helping my life.

           I think that my parents own me a better childhood, but I think it is worthy though. At least right now I have more habits to do outside of school. And I also thinks that even though most of the Chinese families are strict, but at least they all want their children to become successful. Even though I cried many times when I was little becuase my mom forced me to do things that I did not want to do, but now, I feel glad that I had learned these things in order to make my life becomes better.

        

The quickwrite of the animal farm

   I think that there are many similarities and differences between the Animal farm and the Egypt wars. In my opinions, first of all, the Egyptians are like the animals in the book, and the government is like the Human population in the book. All the animals gather together against to the stronger side, and they did won the battle. It is mostly like the Egyptians, no matter how many troubles and problems they are going to have, they won't give up  until the last second, and they will keep their rights going. The animals finally success at the end, just like the Egyptians were having a revolution against to their President. One thing I learned from this case is that if a government lose supports or credits by the people, it is going to fail one day.
   The difference I can see is that the Egyptians were separated from many places in order to get the president down. However, in the Animal Farm, the animals are gathering together and attacking the farm. The only thing they tried to do is use their own hands to turn the humanity over and took control of the farm. It is pretty difference because the Egyptians did not concentrated together, they separated out to ask more people to participate in their acts. However, at the end, both of them were won the battle and have their own rights.
    In conclusion, both of the facts show that people should have a limit level of doing something. When a big environment cross over the level, it will lose controls and supports, and which lead them to failure.
   

Animal Chapter 11

                                                                  Animal Farm, Chapter 11
By Alex Tang, Peter Chen

   
    Late at night Moses, Clover, Benjamin, and the rest of the animals were fast asleep, but a loud roaring sonic boom sound broke the eerie silence. The ground began to shake and the farm began to fall apart. The chickens flew up from their cumfy sleep and ran around in search of a way to get out. The ground shook more violently and the roof fell leaving most of the animals injured or dead. Among the dead were Moses and Clover.
“Clover? Moses?” Benjamin cried out, but there was no response. Benjamin walked down the barn looking for survivors, but very few survived and of the few survivors, many were injured.
    The earthquake, as bad as it was, was not the end of the disaster. The sun had arisen, but clouds covered up and seems to ate up the sun. Thunder rocked and shattered the ears of many of the animals. Rain broke through the clouds and crashed on the ground. Rain poured and poured for on and on. Water puddled all around the farm and the remains of the farm began to wash away along with the bodies of the dead. The animals ran towards where the humans were staying. They had no option. They ran outside, and saw the humanity are having the same situation as they do.
   "We have to fight it back! Let's do this together!" The human population invites the animals. Once enemies, and now allies trying to fight for their survival against the elements. Together they went to the ruins of was once the farm. Water as up to the ancles of the humans and it was quickly rising. They pulled all of the boards and remains left to build a boat. Quickly they all hoped on, just in the knick of time. An immense wave carshed and hit the boat. They have been escaping successfully, but the boat is so small that could not fit all the animals and the human-- many got fallen into the sea, and some of them are dead in sickness.
    After all, many animals die, same do the human. The boat reach to their new destination-- New Animal Farm's Land. They got out and the pig, Napoleon, announced that the animals should work with the human in order to help each other survive. And most of the animals did listen to him, and they start to cooperate together. 
    After two months fighting to the disaster, everything is gone. Napoleon sadly and slowly count how many animals were left that were under his control-- they lost 90 percents of the animals in the earth, so do the human! "Oh my lord!" said the pig "why you take away our people! What we did wrong?!" And all the Animals follow him to cry. The human populations lost many people, too. They start to clean up the dead bodies, and through the dead bodies into the sea. The human population lost almost 80 percents of their people.
    The earth become crack-- There are only 3 percents of land, and 97 percents of water. Therefore, there is very less lands in the earth.
    Everything is pretty over right now. And after all, the animals finally learned a big lesson in these days: they are shameful and feel pointless that they fight to the human before and cause many animals die. From this moment, they start to have their reconstruction--The humanity were builting up their houses, and the animals were farming food for them-- they actually cooperate with each other. The leader of animals--the pig, Napoleon, had comminucate with the humanity that they should have their rights. 
    After like a two months, everything is mostly settle down, the animals and the humanity had a very important meeting-- Throughout the disaster, both of sides learn that they should help each other out instead fighting for their territory. Therefore, they have  a pretty good suggestion, they make up a contract, which both of them sign their names on it, and it will work forever:
1. The Humanity won't be allowed to eat Animals ANYMORE! Vegetable is good for your health -_-
2. The Animals will have two days off every week since they work really hard in farming.
3. The Humanity have to be respect to the animals, the Humanity have to call them politely. For example, you CANNOT call Napoleon "pig", you should call "Mr. Napoleon" or "Mr. Pig" if you cannot identify what is the name for that animal...
4. Whenever the animal die, the humanity have to offer a big funeral for the animal.
5. Every Animal should not work more that 10 hours a day.
And there is the signature by the human population: Human
and the Humanity had these in their contract:
1. The animals will forever not to have a revolution.
2. Each of the animals should not leave its owner.
3. The animals must help the humanity whenever they have problems.
And there is the signature by Napoleon:  *%^%$&><._+      (Animal Language)
    And because Both of them are really doing what they should do in the contract, so that all the population in the earth are really having peace in their life.
    One day, when a child asks his parents why they should get alone with the animals, the parents said: 1+1 will always more than 1 which means that cooperation and teamwork are always better than a person's work in most the time and it also means that if all the population could be concentrated together and help each other out, they will be able to solve every problem. It is like in the chess game, why does the King always become the most valuable even though it is powerless compare to other pieces? Becuase it is unique, and no one could be substitue it, and other pieces have to help it out of every situation everytime. This is the point of the game.
     The child seems to understand something, he walks to the farm, and helping the Ox farming.

 

Rebutal

         So, in Alex's opening statement, he mentioned that in our society, network problem is getting more and more. People were using Myspace, Facebook, etc, as the social networking, to socialize with others. However, in Alex's point, he thinks that this is harmful and unsafe, which will probably bring up a bigger problem in our society.
         People could use difference networking to get some imformations about a person. There is an example from Alex's statement said that:

For example, even if you are not friends with a person they can still send you a message or poke. My friend just recently put up a status stating "Getting poked people who are not even on my friends list... F***ing creepers bro". This shows how people you may not even know can communicate to you. What is so bad about this that random people can send harmful, provocative, or inappropriate messages. The only way to stop this is by blocking the person. Another issue with Facebook's security and privacy settings is that when using certain applications or games you have to allow access to some of information.

    Many tennagers always do this such thing, they think that adding more friends will be better than no friends even though they don't really know who those friends are. This is one of the points Alex had mentioned about his opening statement, but I don't think at this way. I think as a tennager, we are old enough to justify what is good and what is bad, what is right to do, and what should not do. I think networking is very helpful in our society, and Alex should give more explannations of how bad the result is if we continue our networking.
      Meanwhile, there are still some dangerous that are in the networking which like what Alex said. My opinion to his statement is that even though this is a good beginning, but I think he shouldn't put so many his opinions into the discussion, and should suppose to show his evidences for the debate.
      This is a pretty good beginning for his opening statement.

First part of "Animal Farm"

     Promt 2--
     In the article "Politics and the English Language" by George Owell in 1946, and these two paragraphs in the prompt show that Owell is upset and mad at those people who are not using English in a right way. For example, people might use it to say some bad words and hurt other people's feelings, or change words' definition, and furthermore, it will change the language culture. At time goes on, Owell expected  people will change back to a good way in using English.
      Owell tried to prove that not using English in a right way could bring up a big impact of our culture. Because there are many English learners in this country who had just immigrant to here, and that will make they easily get some misunderstandings of vocabularies, and this will be passing from people to people. Here is one of the examples Owell had given to his article "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be failure, and then fail the more completely because he drinks."  Owell uses analogy to express the insult of changing English is like a disease of drinking wine. There is no way to stop it if this problem get worse, so it is like a man who kept drinking and never want to stop. And I think this example is reflecting a lot of things-- a man who fail his life, not only that he kept drinking and drinking, he totally gave up his life and lose confident to do everything. If a person who never struggle or failures in his or her life, how could this person grow up and stay in this society? If the language is going to change, I think the culture and the people's characteristic will also absolutely change, too.
      Owell thinks foolish thoughts could always make the language become inaccurate. And then he leads the yopic into an example of writing. He also expresses that an unclear thesis or topic(which he calls "foolish") could easily make the audiences get into the confusions. He calls this kind of language" Modern English", especially writting   in English essays. "Modern English, espectially writter English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble." This quote tells me that everything should start at a basic, and built up into avenge. Nothing will start perfectly, and ends up perfect, it just happens like that.
      Owell asked the audiences to have their actions to save the language. He clearly explain what will happen to our culture if this problem keep going in a bad way, and we need patient to change. "If one gets ride of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and that is not exclusive concern of professional writers." So here, Owell divides into two parts of the English Writers-- ones are badly changing the language, and ones are professional in writing.  Addition to that, he hopes there will be more professional writers in this society who could lead people to speak a right language.

Opening Statement

   Hi, everyone. Today, our debate topic is "how could humanity control the population increasing in the world". And, before the debate, this is my opening statement for this topic.  These are the numbers of human populations in the top 5 of countries: 1.China(11.3 hundred million) 2.India(8.5 hundred million) 3.United States(2.5 hundred million) 4.Indonesia(1.78 hundred million) 5.Brazil(1.5 hundred million). These data's had been updated at June 22nd, 2010.
   As you can see, the top country that has the most human population is China. And also, China is in one of the four longest history nations. First of all, let me explain why some countries had a bounch of people, but some did not. As a Chinese who had stayed in China for about 10 years, I had felt the way Chinese family usually force the younger marry in an early age, and have babies. For example, in the Ancient China, most of the Chinese were farmers, they plant and grew stuff that could be sale or used. By this time, because farm works need a bunch of people and time, so the family tried to have babies as many as they could, and then they would have more people to help. This is one of the reasons why China had so many human populations. Also, some Chinese believe that having a child would bring lucks and peace to their families.
   And this is about the standard of the couturiers that have the highest human population. And, we will be discuss how we could control the human populations.

Free write On Wednesday

    I think that if the political power corrupt people could actually attain it. A strong goverment needs people's support in order to make it "strong". So what happen, if a country of people had decided to overturn that country, they will make up a revolution to throw up the goverment. So, basically, in the book, "Aminal Farm",  the animals have their special abilities to speak to others, which in the real world, it is impossible, because they don't have Broca's Area in their frontal brain. However, the main purpose is telling that if a leader or a leading group did something that the majority of people feel disgusted about it, and then it will lose supports of people and money, which leads to failure.
    In the Animal Farm, all the animals lead by the pig, and plan to control the farm becuase they think humanity don't have their rights to force other animals do stuff for them. However, even though they keep planning and planning for it, they did not realize how they would have their rest of their life. For example, no one is gonna give food to them, and at the end, they would eat each other-- the stronger eats the weaker. Futhermore, there will become less animals in this world.
    In another way to answer this question, I think good leaders should care more about other people to make people contribute more to others. No one will listen to a boss that is selfish,or useless, and we need more loves in this world.

response post

   There is one quote in Sutherland University Home Page that I always want to say something about it. This quote is from Abraham Lincoln, and he said:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first hour sharpening the axe."

-- Abraham Lincoln

  The main idea of this quote is telling that we should have a good preparation for everything that we are responsible for. In school, students should have a good practice of speech before every presentation. Espectially for High school students, every single homework and project is really impacting grandes, therefore we as high school students should do out personal best for every assignment.
   A good preparation could always make a good result. I recall the two science projects me and my group mates did this year. The first one is about the alcohol, and the second one is about the STD dissease. Me and Jay were partners for both of the prejects. For the alcohol one, me and Jay started it very late, we did not put so much time into the background and the coloring of the poster, so it looked so "white", and monotonous. This cause us got a B-, which we expected more. And the second time, me, Jay, Elijah worked for the STD project, and we really spent our time on the project, this leads us to get an A- on the project which we think what we should get.
   So, in conclusion, just like what Lincoln said, get a good preparation, and you will do thing faster than planning.
  

The most persuasive of debate evaluation

    After reading a bunch of articles about a debate topic "Attempting  college is impact to a man's good life", I found a most persuasive article for myself. "Numbers Favor Top Schools" by Richard D. Kahlenberg, there is a quote somewhere in his first paragraph, he records down there was a girl whose name is Esther said that "Dad, we're not here for those classes," she replied,"we're here to meet each other." Esther was graduated from Harvard, and by the time her dad asked her why she did not do her homework, she proved that to go to elite school is not to learn-- is to meet more rich friends in order to ask for helps in the future.
   Richard's response to that is "The richest colleges require students on average to pay just 20 percent of the total cost of college, compared with 78 percent at the least wealthy colleges. At selective institutions, a student is surrounded by talented and high achieving peers." I agree with Richard's view of what the girl said. A person is always effected by his or her friends, families and the people who are surrounded by. I think friend could help a person to be success, or to put a person into failure. Therefore, paying a high price  to attempt an elite school not only could get a better education, it also connects to some important friendships which will easily impact a person's life.
   Anyway, I think this one is really depending on what you think about a good life is. For example, if a student just finds out that he has a cancer, and he just has 10 days, why would he go to an elite college to waste his 10 days and his life already has no hopes? I am not saying that college classes are waste of times, but I feel like if you want to make more money, you probably would choose to go to college and graduate.
   One more post to go!
   

Tuesday Night

   There is something happend to me this Tuesday night that make me feel sad. My mom had left and back to China after my aunt attempt to California. At the very last second that say "good bye" to my mom, I was upset and sort of want to cry, but I did not. I know this will happen from the time my mom had came to California for taking care of my big family, and this wasn't the first time she left me-- therefore two days later, now, I already forget the pain.
   First of all, let me introduce my famiily's "treatment". Because my big family members all immigrant to California from China, so the olders in my family do not really want to stay in United States for their rest of the lifes(you know what the Chinese olders feel)-- struggle in language, not so many friends as in China, and here isn't where they were born. Anyway, from the time my aunt applied my family to United States successfully, my mom bought a house in Bay Farm and invited my aunt's family to live with my family. And later on, my mom also invited my another aunty to live together since they all had helped us immigrant to United States somehow. So, there are three families that live in my house. Then after all the children in my house went to school, my mom, and my two aunties said that one of them stay in United States taking care of all the children, and the rest of the two could stay in China, and each time, one needs to stay in United States at lease half year. This is why my mom was back to China on Tuesday, because she did her job in the "treatment".
   My father and my brother are still in China, this is one of the reasons why my mom was going back to China. And by the way, my dad is working in China, that is also why my brother did not come to United States not because he is still too young-- if my brother immigrant to United States too, that would be only my father and mother live in China. However, my brother is still coming next year.   By the time my mom left on Tuesday night, I did not say so many things as before, because I know my mother will come again soon, actually after a year. I do not want to be  the way my cousin did two years ago-- while my aunty was going into the airport, and said "good bye" to my cousin, he cried, he just couldn't stop it. ehh, my family is just having too many complicated stuff going on.
   Two more posts to go, Yeah!