Here's another post in the Kids in Ancient China series. This is part 2 of the story of Xuanzong. It's a historical fictional story. There are 5 parts total. Enjoy.
Part 2
Whenever my dad told me stories about my uncle, it made me miss having him around when I was growing up. If things had been different and we were just an ordinary family, he wouldn’t have had to go away. Everything would’ve been different, but I can’t change the family I was born into.
After my uncle left, my dad became the emperor. My grandmother wanted to rule through him too. When it didn’t work, she exiled him as well. This was one of the saddest days of my life. I was only 5 years old, but I still have a memory of him leaving the palace. Tears rolled down my face. There was a whole group of us waving goodbye to him as he left: me, my mom, some of the servants, and some other relatives. When the gates of the palace closed behind him, my mom and I just hugged each other for a long time because we knew our lives would be even more hard.
Later on I found out that the reason I wasn’t exiled with my dad was because of my aunt, my grandmother’s daughter. Although her name was Princess Taiping, I just called her Goo Goo (“aunt”). She became like a mom to me and made sure that I learned about China’s long history, art, and poetry. I loved learning about art and poetry because it let me have a picture of how life was like on the outside of the palace.
I had different tutors and teachers come to teach me. Some of them were very boring, but my favorite was my history teacher. He made history come to life and told story after story of all of the famous people that lived before us. I remember one class in particular when he was talking about Sima Qian, China’s great historian.
“Sima Qian wrote about many people and wanted to remember not only the rich and famous, but also the everyday people. You are one of the famous people in China because of your family. If Sima Qian were alive today and he was going to write about you and your life, what would he say?”
This threw me off and challenged me. “What do you mean?”
“How do you want people to remember you?” He asked.
“Remember me? Why would they remember me at all? My family might be famous, but I’m not the next person to become the emperor. Most likely my half-brother will be the next emperor, not me!”
“Yes, he might be the next emperor, but no one knows what will happen. How do you want people to remember you?” He asked me again.
“I really don’t know.” Was my answer.
“Yes, I know that it’s a big question. Just something for you think about. Class is over. Sometime down the road, I might ask you this question again.” He said.
Thankfully, he never did ask me that question again because two years later I got a new history teacher. I was sad because the new teacher was boring and wasn’t as good of a story teller as my old teacher was. My old teacher made every emperor and every important person in history sound fascinating. However, his question about how I want people to remember me was something that stuck with me my whole life.
No comments:
Post a Comment