Venture Capital

                When I meet people for the first time in the U.S, the conversation always starts with my school, my hometown and my family.  One of the most frequently asked questions is: “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”  Nearly all my American friends have at least one brother or sister in their family, so they can hardly imagine being the only child at home. Because of the huge population in China, all the families in China are only allowed to have one child, which for parents means they have to put all their expectations on the only child they have. Thus, a lot of Chinese parents push their kids very hard and sometimes give them overcommitted stress. My parents are just one example of those parents. When I was a kid, I felt the pressure was so unbearable and averse to what my parents wanted me to do. However, I realize what they did has benefited me so much that I should feel thankful.

              Whenever I tell my American friends about the one child policy, they always look surprised and curious. Because most of people in the U.S.  have never heard about this policy, I would tell them the whole story. During the Second World War, especially the war against the Japanese invasion, China lost a huge amount of the male population in the country. So after the war, they barely had any men left to rebuild the country, that’s when Chairman Mao encouraged all the families in China to have as many babies as they could to reboot the population and help the country recover from the war. However, after about twenty years, China started to be so over-populated. The government then realized that it was time to control the population, and soon, the one child policy came out.

              Even though my parents preferred to have more kids, they couldn’t go against the mandatory one child policy. I was destined not to have any siblings. As the only child in the family, I started to feel the intense pressure since I started school when I was six.  My parents had very high expectations since I was the only child they could put their expectation on, all the pressure came to me. After I began my high school, which is the most prestigious school that had about nine hundred students at my grade in my hometown, my parents wanted me to be the top ten percent for every exam in each subject.  That meant I spent all of my time studying. Every week after my school, I had to attend extra classes like math, physics and chemistry. Besides, my mom wished I could be a concert pianist one day. That’s the reason why I started learning piano when I was ten. Both my school and my piano classes made me feel like a guitar string which was about to break anytime.

              Although my childhood was quite miserable because of the constant studying, I’m still grateful to my parents for what they did to prepare me to be a successful person. They spent almost all their savings on my education, which seems very incredible in the U.S. In the U.S, some kids leave home and start working part time to support themselves after they turned sixteen.  Since in China all kids spend their time studying, they can hardly have time to do any kind of jobs, so parents are the only source to fund their education. Some of my friends who also want to learn instruments performance or study abroad, but their family just cannot afford the expense. Therefore, they have to either give up their dreams or try extremely hard to find a way to make it.  I feel lucky that I have such a nice family that can pay for my extra classes, my expensive piano lessons and all the fees related to studying abroad. 

               It’s not easy to be the only child in the family. I have had to work really hard to meet my parents’ expectations. If I’m successful, my parents will feel so proud and they will feel successful too, but if I fail to be the person they wished me to be, they lose everything. All their hope would be gone. However, I get all my parents’ attention and love. They spend all their love and money solely on me so that I can have better education and a better life. I’m the only stock they invested in, and they are the only stockholder I have. I believe the stock performance will get closer and closer to their expectation if I keep working hard!