Middle School Student Winning Essays - (Essence Edition)

Author: Chen Jiangong, Tan Tan, Bi Shumin, Gao Hongbo, Chen Shixu, etc. / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: I’m a girl who’s “obsessed with money.” An anonymous person once wrote: There’s someone like this: they seek warmth in clothes and sustenance in food, and their greatest hobby is reading and collecting books. But they have an extraordinary craving for money, sometimes not inferior to Grandfather Gercourt’s obsession with gold. They always hope for the day when they’ll be rich. Would you find them unbelievable? That person is me. It’s really nothing out of the ordinary.
I don’t know if you believe it, but before I even started school, I was given the nickname “a girl obsessed with money.” Back then, my father was involved in scrap recycling, serving as a “liaison for turning decay into wonder.” “Like father, like son,” I always looked down while playing, carrying a small cloth bag, picking up things as I walked, muttering, “Bag fragments for ten cents, bones for nine cents, used toothpaste wrappers.” As long as I thought of my mother’s proud smile because of my “maturity,” I didn’t care about the stares and whispers of “big people” and “small people.”
After starting school, I was especially good at math. Hey, you’d be surprised, but spending all day with my father collecting and selling scrap, immersed in the clatter of the abacus, really benefited my mathematical thinking. To tell you the truth, I even sold paintings—collages made from collected exquisite cigarette boxes and sugar wrappers, along with some other impromptu creations. “What use is the money from selling paintings? Buy books at the Xinhua Bookstore!” That’s how my classmates and I, through this method, read great books like How the Steel Was Tempered, The Little Mermaid, and The Necklace, which, though not fully understood at the time, benefited us for life.
Some say, “Imitation is the deepest form of love.” I deeply relate to this. Imitating the activities I loved at school, I wanted to organize a sports day for children in the neighborhood. The biggest challenge, of course, was funding. Ask my parents? I quickly shook my head and said no. During lunchtime, I took the children out to collect apricot pits, and then spent the evening smashing them to sell to the recycling station. The sports day was a great success. The enthusiastic atmosphere attracted and inspired the parents and grandparents of the athletes, who all cheered for their children. The prizes weren’t expensive, but they were earned through our own hard work!
A few days ago, I visited a neighbor, and he proudly showed me a prize I had personally awarded him back then: a pencil and two notebooks. He said it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience he would never forget. Truly, I was moved to tears. Money can be used to do many meaningful things, right?
Not long ago, one morning, I encountered “Rice Bin” (my school bell ringer back then). He married a mentally disabled wife in his forties and, like herding ducks, hurried three children, ragged and dirty, to walk to school. The children stopped and refused to move, their eyes fixed on the school bags of the children heading to school. My heart ached terribly. Poor children. I hope my wish comes true—I will give you everything I have in the future. Come, let’s all look forward to the day when I’ll be rich. Then, I will make sure you all have beautiful school bags, and every child like you will carry one!
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