On May 11, 1984, I was born in Shangcaiwan, Caizha Town, Huangpi County, Wuhan (now Huangpi District), Hubei Province. A year later, my parents moved to Wujiashan, Dongxihu District, Wuhan. My own brother was born that year. My parents named me Cai Bo and my younger brother Cai Tao.

This is the beginning of my life.

I lived in Wujiashan for more than 20 years, until I graduated from college and went to work in other places. Ten years later, I came back here. It was like a dream, witnessing the evolution of this place from a big countryside to a modern city.

I heard from the old people that Dongxihu District was originally a lake, which was built by a generation (most Henan people went south to support, and a small number of local and surrounding populations joined).

There were many people from Henan where I live. Whenever I recalled my childhood, the hawking sound of “old steamed buns”, “chopped buns, the signboard of “Daokou roast chicken”, the noisy Henan dialect in the neighborhood, and children saying jingle: “River (hè) south (nàn) old (lāo) township (xiáng), eat (chǐ) steamed buns (mò) and drink (hè) soup (táng), they all came to my mind again.

Henan dialect had even become the main language there. Everyone was proud to speak Henan dialect: my brother spoke Henan dialect, my uncle spoke Henan dialect, and some of my playmates were not Henan people who also spoke Henan dialect, and I also learned to speak it.

There were also some surrounding local dialects, such as: Hanchuan dialect, Xiaogan dialect, Yingcheng dialect, Yunmeng dialect, Tianmen dialect and Sichuan dialect, etc. I found that Hubei dialects were very different. There was only a little bit of basically similar Hubei dialect, which was not as consistent or similar as the dialects in Sichuan, Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Northeast and other regions. Hanchuan and Yingcheng both belonged to Xiaogan, but they all had their own dialects. Despite the great differences, they did not hinder mutual communication. This was the strangeness of Hubei dialect.

I also learned to speak these dialects more or less, just because I thought it’s fun. My father said to me more than once: “If you speak Mandarin well, others don’t know where you are from; if you can speak local dialect, it is easier to deal with local people.” My father never graduated from primary school and never saw him read any books, but he insisted on sending me to college. My brother was not so lucky.

But I was miserable, because I was beaten by my father on the way to growth, especially before I went to high school. I guess my father may be because I grew up but didn’t dare to do it. I was afraid that I would do it too. In return, I prefer to believe that the main reason is that with the popularization of media such as newspapers, TV and the Internet, or the communication with people, my father has obtained more information, which must contain a lot of content about college entrance examination and parenting. These great parenting knowledge changed my father’s cognition and behavior, and also saved me.

Therefore, no one is born to be a parent; parents are also growing up.

I don’t hate my father anymore. Because without my father’s support, I couldn’t be who I am now. His wishes and mission have been completed long ago, and the rest of the road depends on me.

This is my growing experience and why I insist on researching and sharing the intrinsic driving force of parenting knowledge, skills, thinking and cognition. I firmly believe that:

Continuous improvement and continuous integration can create value.

“There is no way to be a perfect parent and a million ways to be a good one.”
~ Jill Churchill

Let’s review this sentence again, as I mentioned in the first article “Starting from the Heart”.

I encourage you to keep learning and practicing with me, and you and I will become better parents.