It is the second term that I have learned English in Beiweionline. I love logging in the website and hanging around to find something new. I felt frustrated between the work and life and even additional study now when I read a post there about Miley Cyrus and her song ‘Life is the climb, but view is great’.  Yes, it is.

I live a happy life with my family and my job is good with better reward and lots of friends. People call me a Good Samaritan. I am a smart learner and keen on English for many years. My English is good enough for my job and nobody requires me to do things like that.  However, I know what I want apart from my easy life, prosperous career development and a cute daughter.  It’s a natural for me to take a higher position and decent salary here with my diligence and persistence.  I am always climbing.

In 1999 I joined the company as a secretary owing to my English and my bachelor degree. When I intended to improve my English to have better development, my first boss told me that the best way was to study in Beiwai.  It’s a big dream for me since I didn’t think I could make it. I thought it a joke and ignored it for many years.

In 2004 I was prompted to a project manager and engaged in my new role each day. My dad came here far from my hometown and made a company with me for the first time. Everyday I got back very late and was proud of it. He finally couldn’t help asking why I should have been so busy and point out the flaw in my character.  He gave me the newspaper with the report of Jack Welch and his winning. “You should see what he did and would better to learn something”, he said.  I denied admitting it, for I am a person in charge and enthusiastic about my new position.

When I had a chance to read the book written by Welch later, I knew my dad was right and I may compound myself within my reach.  Life would be as it is, not I wish it should be. 

As my dad predicted my life changed thoroughly in next year. I was transferred to another project and humbled to assistant manager.  I may leave but I chose to stay.  Only at that moment I absolutely touched the ground and began to recognize myself seriously.  My life was hard and I could not climb down on pledge to retreat from the harsh reality of life.

But I thought a lot about going back to my hometown.

I was born in a worker family in Xinjiang province. My parents were volunteers to Xinjiang separately from Chongqing and Zhejiang. My dad devoted all his life to his family and won the respect by his capability, skills and straight personality. I admired him as a hero and a model to struggle for life. It was a pity that my mum was rejected to enter university due to her poor identification according to the rules and regulations at that time in China. She taught me a lot and never scolded me seriously. What she wanted me to do was to learn English better than her.  Unfortunately I never listen to her and leaded a life in my own. I reckoned that I lied down in the darkness and spoke to myself, ‘English is nothing, and I can understand what I want to listen to if I listen carefully’.  Consequently I failed to fulfill my mom’s dream of going to college, the only way to success in my hometown.  I was then sent to a factory and became a worker.  I was far too young to accept the alternative easily and insisted on I could have worked out my own way some day.  I was to climb.

While life has its own way and will not evolve as I say. I worked in the factory for three years.  I had nothing and unhappy there.  I made my own hard decision, to leave the factory and go to school again for a preparation of the annual examination to university.  My mom was my strong backbone. She knew me well and said nothing. There would be a dream, hers and mine to be reached someday with a careful plan.

I won and was accepted in 1993. I climbed the top of my mountain and have a great view in the university till my graduation in 1997.

I then had a job here, up and down, high and low.  I enjoyed the ecstatic moment of success and experienced an extreme downturn in my job. Who cares most about me? They are parents or children, friends or workmates?  My parents will pass away and children will grow up and leave.  Friends are friends to be supported and workmates are colleagues with various problems themselves.  Nobody will help you unless you will.  Life will go on and live will continue.  I still had a dream.  I could do something more beyond my dream within my reach. For example when my dad was despair to death, I gave him my hand.

My dad was diagnosed a severe cirrhosis in 2002. During my dad’s last days, he suffered greatly from hemorrhage and bloated and so on.  I hardly accepted the fact that my dad was old and vulnerable in front of me and cried like a child. He had ever been so brave and independent and capable and never been defeated in his life. He gave me an endless courage to stand alone here in Beijing.  But everything changed now. He phoned me for help. He hoped to have a good sleep, go to toilet normally. I was often roused from a deep sleep to tell my dad had been sent to the hospital due to the hemorrhage. I knew nothing about his illness, his diet, and even his body and did nothing for him. The doctor gave him up and provided simply treatment like stopping bleeding, blood transfusion and human serum Albumin injection as well.  No way was one way left for me.   I began to search the relevant information among the websites, books, friends and doctors.  Day by day I was aware of the traditional Chinese medicine and recognized its real meaning in one’s life.  I told him to change his staple food into varieties and nutrition, keep his heart calm and reduce his psychological stress.  Once upon I got something new and available, I would let him try and get the feedback so that I may correct it. 

However he can’t go further due to his end-stage cirrhosis.  All I had done couldn’t save him. Instead, I remembered I sat in my chair, wept there since an old expert let me quit and let him go. Before he died in 2008 my dad made me a call.  He asked me for a good care of myself and my daughter.  

I felt released for my dad in one hand since he lived for suffers. On the other hand I couldn’t accept his leave and imagine where he was going.  I hurried back to my hometown to attend his funeral. I stared at his body and seemed to listen to him. He spoke to me several days ago and he cared about me.  I could see but he couldn’t. I could speak but he couldn’t. There is no way between him and me now.  There are lives and lives. What kind of life do I have?

With tremendous grieving inside, I went through a wonderful year in 2008 as a volunteer serving in Good Luck Beijing, Olympic Beijing 2008 and Paralympics Game 2008.    

When Game was over I returned to normal with working, sleeping, reading as well.  Everyday I took a free newspaper in subway to my workplace and flip through the pages carelessly for relax. There was no excitement, no inspiration. Time was going on and on and I am getting older and older, I walked to the end of the road. Here another mountain appears. I know a little about it.

Eventually I was caught by enrollment advertisement of Beiwaionline in April 2009.  ‘Beyond my dream within my reach’, that’s what I want! I began searching related information and try to make a clear picture of that. I recalled my mother’s dream, my way to success, my first boss’s suggestion, my current’s situation.  I shall do something new. It looks like climbing the one more mountain.  Although I have spent almost 20 years in learning English, I can’t use it freely.  I need to step over the barrier of English apparently, life actually.  Life is the climb with no end being set and view alongside.