Born in the central part of city Beijing, China and lived there until early 2000’s, I moved to Nova Scotia, Canada.
I grew up in a big family with parents, grandparents (mom’s side), uncles, aunts and cousins. It was common that three generations living together at that time in Beijing. Although everyone played certain roles for my growth, Grandpa and Grandma influenced me the most.
Here is an old family photo taken in 1960, including Grandpa, Grandma, Cousin Lily and me (front).
One of Grandpa’s hobbies was gardening, so flowers, bushes, trees, flying insects and creeping creatures were my natural friends in my childhood. The background in the photo was a huge mock orange bush, fully blooming in a corner of our courtyard, hummed with all kinds of insects. Grandpa told me when I was two years old I often carried a tiny water can while following on his heels in the garden.
Grandpa was also a well-organized person. He showed me all garden tools, after used, must return to where they were kept. After grocery shopping, any change, even a penny, must be recorded in his accounting book. His influence benefits both my personal and professional lives.
Grandma was a housewife and cooked each day for the whole family. She could neither read nor write, but taught us by her selflessness and hard working. She liked Peking Opera (live performance) and Charlie Chaplin’s movies, like “Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator”.
There were always some hens in a coop. Every day, as soon as grandma said: “Go to check the eggs”, I would be the one racing to the coop. After I grew up and lived in concrete apartment buildings, raising chickens became a long-held dream.
Books, fairy tales, fables and short stories, accompanied my childhood too. I still have some of them well-kept for over fifty years. Mom often read books to me or with me. I still remember if a story mom read sounded scary, I would put my index finger tightly into each ear, but still urged mom to keep reading. When I could read, mom borrowed many books from the library at her workplace.
Nothing seemed special in my childhood, but no doubt, books raised my potential for writing. At grade seven, it was my Chinese teacher that identified my outstanding skills of writing. Often he read my assignments as good examples in class.
Grandpa’s garden cultured my love for nature and macro biology (living things seen by the naked eye) became my particular interest. Entomology was my major for a Bachelor Degree.
Vector biology, the study on infectious disease-related insects and arthropods, as the early bricks paved my career, followed by integrated pest management (IPM) and vector-borne disease control. I had been once interested in instrumental analytic chemistry focusing on the determination of trace pesticide residues in food.
In Saint Mary’s University, a Master thesis study on the black vine weevil, a beetle causing huge economical lose in Canada, brought me back to entomology, my favourite field. However, in early 2000’s with a Master Degree, a science job starting out in Canada would be no higher than a Research Assistant. Thus, I ran into a diversity of research assistance such as on drug delivery by nasal using rats, Nemann-pick II disorder using mice and blood coagulation using human plasma, . . . nothing to do with insects.
It seems the swarm of multi science across my career doesn’t submerge my writing interest, but floats it instead. Ever since 1996, my first prose “Mock Orange Blossom” was awarded with a contest prize, hence published in the “Beijing Evening News”, the city focused newspaper, more prose have been published in print media, or heard on radio broadcast in China and in Canada since 2006.
After my long-held chicken dream had come true in Nova Scotia, a creative non-fiction children’s book “Running Wild with Bossy Boy” on chicken’s personalities was published in 2018.
I keep writing prose for media, writing books for children and revising the prose chosen for a Collection.
Being a Councils’ Member at Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, I provide presentations for the program of “Writers in the Schools” (WITS). Wondering what I share with the students at school, please click here Writers in the Schools (WITS).
Gardening, a heritage from Grandpa, remains my favourite pastime.
Updated on November 29, 2021