Mother of Zen Ze Chen Shares Her Story with Fourth Graders
By Zen Ze Chen,
NY-NY Today Wen Zhou mother of Zen Ze Chen (me) came over to LREI fourth grade to share her story of her life. She came over to America in August 15, 1985, the purpose of coming here was to seek a better life, education, work, hospitality, food, civilized conditions, warmth, indoor plumbing, and windows with glass.
Wen said, “In Xiapu we had no indoor plumbing, no heating, no windows, we had to make windows out of paper and rice. The rice would act as glue and the paper was the glass. Since there was no heating, at recess we would line up facing the wall and push as hard as you can against the wall.” So it was not anything like New york.
Wen came here on August 15, 1985. She was so surprised when she saw black people and white people, because she really never seen people out of her village. So this was a whole new experience for her. She worked in a factory cleaning the thread of jackets pants and skirts also packaging.
Everyone loved Wen’s story. They thought the conditions at Xiapu there conditions were a lot worse than the city so much they thought it was interesting. Zen said, “It’s like showing a kid a vintage phone. Like the ones where the have the circle and you put your finger into them and turn it. One of those.”
Wen’s Journey to Heaven
By Bailey Wolfman
In recent news, Wen, the mother of Zen, recounted her childhood in China to a classroom of kids in America. It was reported that many people in China at the time were quite poor and cold because of a lack of money and heat. It seems living conditions are very different between China and America. Schools are so poor that they often don’t have basic materials and the whole class had to share one textbook!
In addition, many classrooms in China had no indoor plumbing and had to use a buckets to as toilets and share one water well in the middle of the town as water didn’t go to the classroom. It was also reported that they had no glass windows and used paper sheets instead of glass and rice as glue.
Wen moved to America many years ago and now owns a successful clothing company. She sells kids clothes, including dresses, pants and shirts. She is appreciative of everything available in America, but also learned a great deal from her childhood experience in China.
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