Times Change Lives

 

Allen/Zilun Liu

November 1, 2026

ESL 100

Times Change Lives

        Before I went abroad for my college studies, I had so many arguments with my family. My grandparents always said, “I won’t support you if you want to go to the United States.” I was confused,“Why did you support my parents?”.  “Time is changing, my darling.” Over the last several decades, the opening-up policy has significantly changed my country, China. Chinese governments were unwilling to see the economy improving in a slow speed, so we started making more connections on business and technology with foreigners. This great event not only enriched China’s economic structure, but also influenced my whole family's path and living philosophy both positively and negatively.

        During the 1970s, when the concept of opening-up policy was first created by Deng Xiao Ping, my grandparents had the chance to be educated in China, which laid the solid foundation for their successful business in the following years. Based on their long-term vision and a little luck, they invested in houses and slowly got rich. After my parents grew up, my grandparents thought overseas degrees would help them with more job opportunities. Therefore, my parents pursued further study in the United States, and this also caused me to be born in Chicago. The opening-up policy positively fulfilled my family with complicated experiences.

        However, these different experiences made a deep gap between generations of my grandparents and me. Three years ago, I was admitted to high school in China, and there was a tremendous burden to study. It sometimes takes me six to seven hours a day finishing my homework, which left me little time to relax. From my perspective, many extra assignments in school were too useless because they could only make me a study machine. For example, students spent much time doing repetitive exercises and couldn’t explore their own interests. At that moment, I thought I could change my study path in the United States as my parents, but my grandparents said," absolutely no.”  They educated me through their past experiences between different times and told me that China has been getting stronger. In their words, achieving overseas degree became “a worthless investment”, and they also thought I was escaping high school. However, I wanted to broaden my horizons and gain more opportunities for my future life.

China is changing so fast that these conflicts due to different generations and ages happen normally in my family, yet it also damaged our relationship. Although the opening-up policy changed my family's life and created differences between generations, it has also helped shape my personality. Even though my grandparents and I have different opinions, I've learnt to look at things from various angles before making a decision. Their ideas are not totally wrong. They are more thoughtful than me, but I also have my own ideas about my future. I can integrate their ideas into mine while still making my own decisions based on my goals. This helps me learn from their experiences without giving up my dream. Time goes fast like a river, and it forces people to be separated. I will certainly have my own unique experiences in my life, different from my parents and my grandparents. I have come to the United States now, but it doesn't mean my decision was right. There's no single choice for life.