Who Am I? (2018)

When I was writing my application letters for graduate school yesterday, I found this “Personal Statement” I wrote for HKU application three years ago. It was a week after Gaokao, and I could estimate that my score would not be good enough, so I wrote this PS casually but devotedly. It is a story about Beijing and Changsha, about my identity, and it’s still worth reading.

Personal Statement

Who am I

June 8th, 2018, after finishing Gaokao, I took the late flight from Changsha to Beijing to reunite with my schoolmates and take graduation photograph. This trip was hard to define. Was it a trip BACK home? Or did I just fly TO Beijing? Logically speaking, I live in Beijing, so it is my home. Geographically and emotionally speaking , my hometown is Changsha, the place where I was born. So, whenever a university asked me where I come from, I would hesitate, then answer “maybe Beijing” and think that perhaps anywhere would be my home.

In Beijing, I am proud to be a Hunanese. Though my identity set difficulties for me to attend high school in Beijing and disallowed me to take Gaokao in Beijing, I am not embarrassed with this situation. I embraced my education and expressed my talents. I luckily attend a great primary school by my parents’ efforts; I was chosen in the Early Development Program of RDFZ for talented students; I performed well in Zhongkao and successfully continued my education in high school. In my life, there is a voice that keeps telling me to inherit the Four Spirit of Changsha people, which are perseverance, bravery, patience, and optimism. I carried these spirits to stand out in my circle and carried these spirits to get on well with things around me, proving that I am strong enough to survive in Beijing.

I miss my hometown in Beijing, missing the food, the accents, the weather, everything. However, when I went back to Changsha to take Gaokao, I found that I got lost in my hometown. My new classmates treated me more as a Beijinger than a local fellow, and they were surprised to hear dialectical words and Hunanese accent from my speaking. At that time, I was a little bit disappointed, since it seemed that I was not fully accepted by neither Beijing nor Changsha.

Confused, I began to think that whether the environment accepts me is not a major problem, as the real question is that what I accept myself as. Fortunately, the experience in Changsha in last few months provided me a great chance to rethink my path. Being far away from Beijing, still not familiar with new friends and classmates, I got a better condition to observe things around me.

Honestly, what I received in Beijing, in RDFZ, is a quite liberal education that allowed me to pursue what I am interested in with the smallest limit. I met baseball, I found Bridge, and I was even allowed to climb up to the dangerous roof of school building to make movie. By contrast, in Changsha, the administration on students is believed to be stricter. However, I am not saying that one condition is better than the other. I encountered the authentic spirits during my stay in Changsha. The spirits were not just in Hunanese’s mind. They put them into action: the dedication in study, the ambition to leave Hunan, represent Hunan, and make contribution to our country as a Hunanese.

I came to a conclusion that why I felt strange in both two cities is that maybe I have qualities from both cities. That conclusion excites me and encourages me to continue my life path with my treasured experience and spirits.

Now I am standing on the crossroads to universities. I always believe a new place would be a great choice. Hong Kong is the metropolitan that attracts me. I have been there for countless times for SAT exams, for Bridge competitions, and for holiday trips. I even founded a Cantonese Culture Club in high school two years ago. Hong Kong has a more liberal environment, a warm and humid climate of southern China, an intricate metro system, and a diverse language environment mixing Cantonese, Mandarin and English that I longed for.

All in all, I believe that wherever I go, I will keep my pride as a Hunanese, and more importantly, as a person who treats everywhere as his home.   

First written on 15/06/2018, Beijing.

Edited on 31/01/2021, Roma