One of My Adolescent Photos - Personal Note/Class Assignment

Looking back to when I was twelve, in middle school, I had my best self-esteem during that period. I had a very round face, and I used to joke that my nose was the center dot of a circle. I had long black hair. Most of the time I tied my hair up as one or two pony tails or sometimes pig tails. I had a lot of hair clips which came from Hong Kong. Every one who saw these clips would say they were cute. I paid quite bit of attention to how my hair looked and I tried to catch people’s eyes. My eyes were black, and I had a single layered eyelid, which means something to Chinese people. It was traditional type we usually called a phoenix eye, like Eqyptian hieroglyph. I had a medium sized nose. The tip of my nose was round but not too meaty. I had a small mouth like a cherry. We say that people with small mouths are good at talking. My ears were not big. Chinese like big ears because all buddas have big ears and big ears are supposed to bring good luck. I have fair skin compared to many Chinese. I was told the benefit for fair skin is that you look good wearing any color. I remembered at that time, during the Mao Cultural Revolution era, we didn’t have much color for the clothes we wore. The most common was blue. I was chunky and short. I always wore baggy shirts to cover my body fat. I also didn’t want anyone to see the change of my breasts. Most of time I wore long loose pants. We didn’t have jeans at that time. By the way I always wore shoes with a medium heel to look a little taller. I really felt good at that age because I was becoming more mature. Learning seemed easy for me. I received high scores in class during middle school. I was elected Student Study Monitor, which was basically a teacher’s helper to correct papers, lead morning reading and so on. My parents started to give us an allowance so that I had freedom to choose what I wanted to buy. I spent more time with my close friends, and we would walk together to and from school.
Each day during lunch I would listen to popular music, and kept track of these singers, and I also started to collect pictures of movie stars from movie magazines. Each Friday there would be the top music hits on the radio. I had two wall posters, one of Brook Shields and of French movie star, Alain De Long. Weekends I was allowed to go see movies with my friends. At that time we had a lot of Mexican movies and spaghetti westerns. My goal was to one day go overseas. I wanted to experience life in a foreign country. I started to learn English by listening to radio courses such as “New Concept English”, English 900, and Linkphone. At that stage, I was somewhat “dreamy” and didn’t understand the intensity or pressures of life. I had few worries. Only during exam week did I feel intensity. Usually we had 6 major subjects, two big exams during the school year, two subject exams each day during exam week. I remembered I always had to stay up for test nights. Since I was the youngest I didn’t have responsibility to care for my older sister. My responsibility was simply to study well, turn homework in on time. Sweeping the floor and dusting furniture twice a week, and folding the beds were my usual chores. I grew a lot during this time compared to when I was in elementary school. Parents started to treat me like an adult.We talked about family issues, about what we hoped to be when we grew up; how to go overseas; which countries we would like to visit. Many of our relatives lived in Hong Kong, which is one reason we wanted to go abroad. I pictured of my future life as very different from the world I lived in at that time. Life was exciting and challenging. I never really liked the way I looked. I wished I could have been slimmer and taller. Probably the best was that I looked so young. I looked sweet and naïve, too. The least I liked was that I was too chunky. I tried to control how much and what I ate. I walked a lot. I connected rubber bands to form a jump rope—and I jumped a lot in efforts to grow taller, but it didn’t really help. At age twelve, I didn’t pay attention to boys yet. I still thought they were naughty and mischievous. I really appreciated that stage of my life. You start to dream of your life, and think everything is so ideal. Fortunately I haven’t experienced any of life’s bitter taste yet.