Unpredictable Future

     Except for wages, all prices have risen. It’s funny and realistic. When I was a little child in the early 2000s, my family lived in the countryside in China.  My father raised the whole family, which includes my grandmother, my parents, my two sisters and me. Based on the impact of inflation, my father knew that we would not have enough money if we lived the same way as the past. After months of consideration, he finally decided to go to the U.S. to earn money in 2003. I was only five years old at that time. Luckily, he arrived smoothly and quickly found a job in a restaurant as a chief. The inflation in China changed my family’s living conditions, and it has continuously influenced my life. 

      Since my father went to the U.S. to make money, my mother’s life changed. She used to stay at home taking care of the children and used to follow my grandmother to grow some crops. After my father left, she had to make some money before she received my father’s wage from the U.S. She didn’t have any professional skills because she dropped out of school when she was in the fifth grade. During those hard times, she either went to a baking shop as a baker or sewed gloves and sold them to people who came from the outskirts and paid a good price. She never chose a long term job because she needed to take care of other family members. She sometimes complained how tired she was, but after that she would quickly go back to work or cook for the family. 

     Another effect of the inflation was the education for my sisters and me. My father went to the U.S. for several years, and my sisters and I all grew up and got into different schools. My family had telephones and a computer to contact my father. However, I thought of myself as a child in a single-parent family. My father made international long-distance calls every week. My mother missed him very much, so she usually spent half an hour talking about her daily life with him. When my father talked with me, I typically acted as talking with an unfamiliar relative. After all, I didn’t have a deep impression about my father since he left when I was five years old. My two sisters, who came back four days every month from boarding schools, had little time to talk to our father. Fortunately, our grades were all good enough to make the family happy. They might thought we grew up healthily. In fact, I never told them that I had difficulty making friends. I made friends only when they talked to me first. In this unobvious unhealthy way, I kept growing up.

     Although the inflation made my family have a difficult time, it indirectly made my family come to the U.S. and have new lives here. In March, 2014, my mother took my siblings and me to the U.S. Embassy to hand in some documents and take pictures. I thought it was because my father in the U.S. needed them for his work or for personal use. I never thought those documents would have a huge impact on me. Nevertheless, life always contains surprises. After several months, my mother received a letter which said we were allowed to go to the U.S. as immigrants. Instead of staying at home, going to the U.S. seemed to have more opportunities for us, so here we are. My mother and my older sisters work in different places with higher salaries than in China, and I study here as a college student. Our life seems to have changed for the better.

     I have read some interesting articles on the internet that say the inflation was a good thing because it reduced the gap between wealthy people and poor people. Considering the experience of my family, I need to agree with the saying. When a plight has appeared, people have to struggle very hard to find a way out of the difficulty. Although we had a difficult time and rough life for a period, we are facing a hopeful future, though it is also unpredictable.