Our Identity Is Shaped by Good and Bad Experiences (Mum's Story)

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Identity is shaped by positive and negative experiences. Positive and negative experiences, I’m sure everyone sitting here today has been through both plenty of times before, but how these experiences can shape us is a very good question, considering our identities are forever changing along the journey of life. To explore this idea, I dug through the stories of my mum’s early years of childhood, all the way to her immigration to become an Australian citizen. 1971, China My mum was born in a small city called YangZhou near Shanghai, at that time, the Cultural Revolution was still sweeping through China, and the impacts can still be seen throughout the country. For my mum, her family use to be well known in the streets of the city. Her grandfather lived in a big house and was a successful business man. This all changed when the Cultural Revolution happened. Our family use to own lots of artefacts, paintings and famous calligraphy pieces. All these were taken away along with the big property my great grandparents lived in and most of their savings. All this came down to our family being extremely poor and moving to a small house in the outskirts of the city. When my auntie was born, the family was so poor that they could only afford soup and plain noodles for lunch and dinner. My grandpa worked hard to earn a living for the family, and made sure that my Auntie studied hard in order to be a good role model for mum. In the winter, the cold air always blew through the cracks of the house. In order to keep studying, my mum would crawl on top of her straw bed, and huddle in with a thin sheet of blanket. (Change slide) She studied hard throughout years of primary school and high school and was always on top of the class. So I guess that’s where all her high expectations for me and herself comes from. (Change slide) 2001, Australia Finishing university and being an

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