I went for a walk along the road of Grange Street at Patterson Avenue in Burnaby on September 17 at around 8:40 p.m. The air was chilly and humid. The sky turned into a combination of colors of dark blue and gray. When I kept walking towards north, I saw an Asian girl, about five years old, wearing a pink dress, held a light-red balloon in her left hand while her mother was holding her right hand. Her skin was a bit pale and her body structure was quite thin and tiny comparing to normal five year old kids. Both her mother and her had long, black hair. What intrigued me about this little girl was the fact that she was crying. Her mother kept dragging her hand and telling her to move, yet the little girl tightly grabbed the thread of her balloon and struggled to walk forward. The little girl’s walking was rigid and reluctant, and she seemed to fight for a balance between her own walking tempo and her mother’s big stride walking. The kid kept crying. She mumbled a few words when she had a short moment stopped from crying. Her cheeks and nose turned to reddish pink color. I could see her tears hanging on her cheeks and shinning like little crystals under the yellowish street light. The mother tightly held the child’s hand, but she never returned her head for even once to check her child. The mother only told the little girl to be quiet otherwise she would never be taken to here again. Even along these words, she did not turn her head to look at the child or stopped walking forward. The mother was wearing a black shirt and a pair of old jeans and brown, leather shoes.
After another ten minutes of wandering around, I stopped nearby a light-crimson, four-floor high, flat building. I heard a loud argument from the third-floor flat. It was an argument between a woman, who had a hysterical, sharp voice and a man with a thick, coarse timber of his voice. A large portion of their argument was spoken in Mandarin, and the woman was basically yelling the most of times. She repeated several times the phrases like “complete liar”, “irresponsible”, ”shameless”, and “ignoring the family responsibility” in Mandarin. The man seemed to be in a much calmer state than the woman. His voice volume was much lower and I could barely hear him. I assumed he spoke some comforting words or at least trying to calm her down. Yet the woman was clearly losing her temper and shouted louder each time the man tried to speak. She kept screaming and yelling towards the man for another five minutes, accusing her husband for doing something immoral behind her back. Then the man started to yell back at her and blaming his wife that she totally lost her mind and had no idea what she was talking about. The argument was intense, earsplitting, and very uncomfortable to listen to. Not even to mention there were few times the F word and other dirty language came across.
I wondered if there could be a need for calling the police. Yet the arguing noise was suddenly interrupted by a child’s high pitch crying. Then both of them became quieter. The argument was ended. I stood near the building for another ten minutes and it seemed that they had decided to stop this conversation, at least for tonight. Through the whole argument I did not see any of these people, but I heard them and their stories.
Even though the woman seemed to be the super sensitive one in this argument who could even overreact towards certain fact, I could not stop myself from standing by her side. She somehow reminded me of one of my best friends in China and her mother. I met my friend in junior high school when both of us were in the same boarding school. I used to have a quite tough life in that boarding school because of teenage bully. My friend at the same time also experienced a very difficult time in her life that her parents were in the middle process of divorcing since her father was discovered to have an affair with a two-month pregnancy. My friend and I had grown a very close friendship through our darkest moments of life, and we somehow supported each other to overcome that lonely, helpless time. I was sent to the boarding school at age of 13 because my parents were too busy for their work and neither of them could spare time to take care of me. My friend was sent to the boarding school because her parents were busy fighting against one another, and she had no home at that time but had to stay in her aunt's place during winter and summer break.
I was more than fortunate to meet my friend, and she was a big reason that I could still be optimistic towards life. However, due to my parents’ new careers, my family had to move to another city while I was being sent to another boarding school. Though my friend and I only had one year staying in the same school, we still kept contact with each other through letters after we were separated. Since our boarding schools did not allow teenagers to have Internet access or cellular, our contact method was handwriting letters mailed to each other’s city. To receive her letter once a month used to be my biggest enjoyment at my new boarding school. We kept mailing letters about another year until one day she stopped writing to me. I did not understand what happened at that time. Along these years, I had been constantly searching her name and our old boarding school online and tried to contact all our old classmates, but all I learned was that she transferred to another school. After seven years of searching, from both of us, we finally were able to contact each other online and we finally met this summer when I went back to China for summer vacation. I also later on learned that the reason I missed her information and contact was because her name, both family name and given name, were changed completely due to her mother’s extreme hatred towards her father.
I wondered if there could be a need for calling the police. Yet the arguing noise was suddenly interrupted by a child’s high pitch crying. Then both of them became quieter. The argument was ended. I stood near the building for another ten minutes and it seemed that they had decided to stop this conversation, at least for tonight. Through the whole argument I did not see any of these people, but I heard them and their stories.
Even though the woman seemed to be the super sensitive one in this argument who could even overreact towards certain fact, I could not stop myself from standing by her side. She somehow reminded me of one of my best friends in China and her mother. I met my friend in junior high school when both of us were in the same boarding school. I used to have a quite tough life in that boarding school because of teenage bully. My friend at the same time also experienced a very difficult time in her life that her parents were in the middle process of divorcing since her father was discovered to have an affair with a two-month pregnancy. My friend and I had grown a very close friendship through our darkest moments of life, and we somehow supported each other to overcome that lonely, helpless time. I was sent to the boarding school at age of 13 because my parents were too busy for their work and neither of them could spare time to take care of me. My friend was sent to the boarding school because her parents were busy fighting against one another, and she had no home at that time but had to stay in her aunt's place during winter and summer break.
I was more than fortunate to meet my friend, and she was a big reason that I could still be optimistic towards life. However, due to my parents’ new careers, my family had to move to another city while I was being sent to another boarding school. Though my friend and I only had one year staying in the same school, we still kept contact with each other through letters after we were separated. Since our boarding schools did not allow teenagers to have Internet access or cellular, our contact method was handwriting letters mailed to each other’s city. To receive her letter once a month used to be my biggest enjoyment at my new boarding school. We kept mailing letters about another year until one day she stopped writing to me. I did not understand what happened at that time. Along these years, I had been constantly searching her name and our old boarding school online and tried to contact all our old classmates, but all I learned was that she transferred to another school. After seven years of searching, from both of us, we finally were able to contact each other online and we finally met this summer when I went back to China for summer vacation. I also later on learned that the reason I missed her information and contact was because her name, both family name and given name, were changed completely due to her mother’s extreme hatred towards her father.
Maybe it was because my memory about meeting my friend this summer was still a really huge event to me and I still had great passion towards it. Maybe it was because I saw one little girl crying and later heard another kid crying. Somehow, the crying of children tortured me, and I felt it was unbearable for me. The sensitive feeling about crying child could be caused by my own tough childhood when I was constantly left alone either at home or in a boarding school facing challenges and obstacles as a young, fragile individual. My memory about my friend and her parents could also be connected by the argument I encountered tonight.
Parents were the absolute decision makers for children, and some of them could use their power in such a wrong way to create desperate effect over their children. If the children suffered from such mistakes caused by their parents, then they need to rely on the outer social connections, such as friends and mentors, to find support and hope in life.
Parents were the absolute decision makers for children, and some of them could use their power in such a wrong way to create desperate effect over their children. If the children suffered from such mistakes caused by their parents, then they need to rely on the outer social connections, such as friends and mentors, to find support and hope in life.
After today’s journey, I decided to create a narrative animation depicting a friendship between two little kids who suffered through their own tough time; however, through this darkness they find care and love from each other. In order to make the story more symbolic and focused on the theme “hope”, I therefore decided to make Kong Ming Lantern (a type of traditional Chinese sky lantern made by silk paper for praying and message delivering during ancient war time in China) as the main object of the story. The kids would use this sky lantern to mail each other letters and delivering their hope.
Here are some sketches, design and drawings that I made for some rough ideas about this story.
