The Person I Admire Research Paper

The woman that I admire the most is my mother, GuiYun Zhang. Preferred as Lisa (her English name). She was born in 1963 in a small village in the Liaoning province, China. She was born into poor family and she is the youngest of five. She described her life as a roller coaster, it has ups and downs. This interview is about how she overcame all the struggles in her life and became successful. My mother and I are somewhat close, because she left me in China and come to the U.S. when I was around six years old and by the time I moved to U.S., she was working all the time, so I don’t really get to see her a lot. This interview was difficult, because the only time she is free is during the morning business hours, and it took almost three days …show more content…
Her parents have five children and all of them are two years apart from each other. As growing up as the youngest child in the family, all of her sisters and brothers would take advantage of her, making her do all the hard works that they were supposed to do. Because of the financial barriers, my mom didn’t get to go to elementary school until she was nine years old, but she and both of her sisters had to drop out because her parents didn’t make enough money to send them to school. Her brothers as males of the family get to go to school, because they were the hopes of the family. Lisa and her sisters stayed home to help out with the farms and also make shoes to sell on the market during the day. My mom told me she loved school, even though she’s only been in the school for two years, but she said she really enjoyed learning Chinese and math, and she wished she had finished school like her two brothers did, but there was nothing she could do to stay in school, because that’s how it works in the Chinese culture, which is the males have more advantages then the …show more content…
My mom told me that she was very scared to move to a big city where she doesn’t know anyone and try to find a job there, but luckily, one of her friends from the village lives in that city and she helped her find a job and a place to stay. She lived in a small room that only can fit a single bed and doesn’t even have a door, and she had to share a bathroom with over 50 people at the time. She told me sometimes she had to take care of her “business” in her room because the bathroom is always used by someone. “During the winter time, the place I stayed doesn’t have heat, so I had to wear everything I have, even my boots… sometimes the temperature dropped really low, I couldn’t even fall asleep and in the morning, I would have cold sores on my feet from the coldness.” said my mother. I couldn’t image how awful it would be to live in an environment like that. She continues, “The winter seems bad, but when the summer comes, it gets worse. The temperature was hot enough that when I get up in the morning, my t shirt and shorts would be soaking wet from sweating too much at night. Also the smell in my room, it was not only my body’s scent, but it was over 50 people’s body scents.” Lisa lived there for almost three years until she had a better job and moved to a different