Education

In 1978, China ushered in "The Scientific Spring". For two years I attended a "Science and Technology Japanese After Hours” class that was helped by the province’s “Science and Technology Association". This class was about translating Japanese scientific articles into Chinese. At that time I was over thirty years old and had left university over ten years before. My age was an obstacle and I did not know Japanese, but the biggest obstacle was no time to learn it.

Both my job and my housework were very heavy workloads. My husband often was on business trips. Two children, aged 6 and 4 years old, needed my care. However, I didn't want to give up the good opportunity.

The class was twice a week, one time in the afternoon, when my children were at school and another time from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. I had no one to look after the children for me in the evening. My mother and mother-in-law lived far away. Every time I left, I asked the children to not open the door to anyone for safety reasons and I mixed a snack of tomatoes and sugar or another snack for them. Then I rode my bike urgently to the school. Once when the bike hit a brick under a dullish street light, I fell on the road with my bike and the bike handlebars became bent. I called two teenage boys who were standing on the walkway to help me correct the handlebars. In spite of my injury I rushed to the school. I always arrived at the classroom sweaty and often immediately the class started. In the class I concentrated so hard I often had a headache. I had never studied so hard before. After class I rushed home again to be with my children.

After the children were asleep I could only have time to review and was up until midnight. I only had one idea which was to use every minute for studying. After two years of studying, I was overjoyed because I ranked first among over 100 students. Then I translated a Japanese diesel engine manual book into Chinese successfully.

Since then I got a useful idea "As long as I’m willing to learn there is always a way."