Loving Mother and Travel
My mother has a beautiful name, 'Guonü' (literally 'Country Girl'), and she loved traveling throughout her life.
In the spring of 1932, my mother was born in Jinchuan, Jiangxi Province, to a wealthy farming family. She had one brother and two sisters, and one younger brother, making her one of five sisters. Due to their relatively good family circumstances and the open-mindedness of her grandfather, by the age of seven or eight, she attended private school, essentially completing primary school. Compared to other girls of her generation, she was considered quite cultured and knowledgeable.
In the early 1950s, my mother left the countryside and was recruited to a gearbox factory in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. When she first started working, she was sent to a Shanghai enterprise for six months as an apprentice. My mother said that during this time, she and the other female apprentices she worked with traveled all over Shanghai in their spare time, visiting landmarks such as the Bund and Chenghu Temple. During her time working in Nanchang, she visited all the tourist attractions in the city.
After getting married, my mother moved with her husband to a farm 100 kilometers outside the provincial capital, Nanchang, in April 1959. Although the work was hard and life was difficult, her love of travel remained passionate; as long as there were conditions, she would go to nearby attractions such as Lushan and Yunju Mountain to play.
Back then, tourism wasn't like it is now. Ordinary people didn't have the concept of 'tourism'; it was seen as a waste of money. There weren't many tourist attractions, there were no group tours, let alone self-driving trips. Very few people genuinely wanted to travel or had actually traveled. And my mother, towards the end of the 1960s, took advantage of the opportunity to take her younger brother to Shanghai for treatment and visited some of the city's attractions again, and also traveled to Hangzhou West Lake along the way.
During her years at the farm, my mother tirelessly worked hard to raise her four siblings. The harsh working conditions, the difficult economic conditions, and the pressures of family life suppressed her desire to travel. It wasn't until the early 1980s, when she retired, and my uncle, who worked in foreign trade crafts design, earned some money, invited her to participate in the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, and traveled to Guangzhou, Zhongshan, and Zhaoqing along the way. This trip happened three times, and every time she returned, she was very excited and often boasted about it to the group of old ladies.
My mother once told me that she regretted that she hadn't had the chance to take a flight to travel, wanting to see and experience the feeling of flying. My father opposed it, saying that flights were unsafe, would cost a lot of money, and that at her age, traveling abroad and encountering problems would cause a lot of trouble for her children. He refused to accompany her on a flight trip for years. In 2001, in January, my sister's family who worked in Xiamen invited my parents to stay for a while, and they traveled to Xiamen and the surrounding areas. My mother readily agreed, and my father delayed going, as usual. We siblings had to do the work for him again to persuade him. At that time, my mother was over 70 years old, and we finally persuaded her father to agree. I bought two plane tickets and took them to the airport, fulfilling my mother's dream of a common person taking a flight for the first time. They stayed in Xiamen for more than two months and visited Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, and some nearby attractions.
This was my mother's last trip abroad. Later, as conditions improved, more attractions appeared, and she grew older and her health deteriorated, she could no longer embark on a journey to see the vast and beautiful lands of China.
She who loved life and loved to travel has now left us 12 years ago. I miss her very much. On this Qingming Festival, I write this short essay as a memorial to my mother. If heaven has tourism, I hope my mother is not hindered by life or money, but can enjoy her beloved travel.
