Article by Natalie Lo

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It was March of 1979, Ina Chan and her older brother took the bus and moved from Guangdong Shunde, China to the small Portuguese colony of Macau. In this place, she would leave her family behind and start over from the ground up. She started with barely enough to provide as a single mother. However, with determination and perseverance she was able to scrape together enough money and send her son overseas to Stanford University.

She was the backbone of her son’s success. Moving 82.7 miles from Guangdong to Macau wasn’t the easiest.

She had to leave behind her seven year old son with her mother and faced many other difficulties. However her decision to move would become the best decision she had ever made.

Who is she?

Ina Chan, is my grandmother from my dad’s side. She is a prime example of how hard work pays off. She had worked for 40 years of her life, and now is finally able to live a normal relaxing life. She has the leisure of watching cable television, swimming at her local club, and taking daily walks at her favorite park. All these activities that we take for granted, she had to work extremely hard for. She has spent over half her life working so she can have a lifestyle the rest of us view as normal.

It’s hard to imagine a life where food wasn’t guaranteed everyday, but that was the reality my Grandma and her siblings faced. “All the money we earned we just have it to your great grandmother. All the money we earned we would use to buy rice,” Ina recalled, “One time when we went to buy rice we dropped all the money so we had to make porridge that night.” Being poor during this time period was not uncommon.

"Work hard and you can achieve anything" Born into a family who owned land during the rule of Chairman Mao, meant that she would be at the bottom of every opportunity. Her grandfather was a landowner, therefore she too became the enemy of the communist party. Her family had their money, land, and pride stripped away. When she was seven her dad passed away leaving her mom to raise her and her three siblings alone. Growing up she and her older brother had to work to help provide for their family. In the sixth grade, her mother fell ill and they could no longer afford her school tuition. It was only a tuition of 2.5 yuan. She had no other choice but to drop out and start working. She and her older brother went to the hills and fields to collect tree branches and sugarcane peels to use as firewood.

They would go to construction sites and move bricks, they did anything and everything they could to support

Being a Single Mom After arriving in Macau it took her three and a half months to finally land a job. Her first job was a supervisor at a clothing factory and her second was at a restaurant. She claims that the most important life skills she knows were learnt from working at that restaurant. She worked from she was fourteen to fifty five. When I asked Ina her proudest moment, she responded with, “My proudest moment? Raising your father and allowing him to go to school.” Ina was a single mother. Her mother was also a single mother. I was fortunate enough to grow up with two loving parents. My parents broke the cycle. Iit is much more common for the life of a child raised by a single parent to be steps behind their peers who are not. My grandmother was poor because her mother was poor. My dad was poor because my grandmother was poor. The cycle only broke when he was able to land a job in America that paid well. My grandmother never made it to middle school.

For the Future Ina lived her entire adult life to support her son. She was determined to make sure he would be able to grow up and live a better life. That he would be able to escape poverty. This is inspiring to me because it shows just how much she loved him. She dedicated 40 years of her life to provide for her family. Due to her selfless nature, she only wishes for the best of her grandchildren. She has constantly said that our success and our happiness is equivalent to her own. Ina wants to spend the rest of her life relaxing and enjoying the beauties of life. She’s sitting back and watching her grandchildren learn and grow. When asked what her hopes and dreams are, she stated that she is hoping for my success, my happiness, and my future,

“ I hope you are healthy and work hard in school. I hope you live a long life. I hope you are happy and joyful. Honor your family.”

About the Author Natalie Lo is a junior at Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy. She enjoys animating, creating videos, coming up with outfits, and playing lacrosse. She hopes to be an animator some day. She is grateful that she gets to grow up in the Silicon Valley. Her grandma is the backbone to her sucess and she is forever grateful to her. She would like to return back to Macao to visit her.