LISHUN MENG

Activist, Christian, Educator/Teacher, Event planner, Explorer, Parent, Writer/Editor

I was born in Shanghai. I am the 4th Generation of Shanghainese. As the city is the best one in China today, grows up in Shanghai means more open minded and curise to explore the world. In addition, I am a Sagittarius, I love to travel around. Luckily my family could support me to study abroad when I finished my senior school. I went to New Zealand first, started my collage life in the University of Auckland, then later move on to Australia, gained my degree in Monash Univerisity in Melbourne. I met my first husband when I was 20, gave birth to two talented and cute boys who are forever my pride. My life in University are quite simple but challenging. During my undergraduate years, I gave birth to two boys. This experience of studying while raising children, although hard, but very simple. This is, actually, completely different from the university experience in China. After graduating from college, I began my full-time mother's career for nearly ten years. It's a bit boring for a vibrant girl in her early 20s. Every day is busy between housework and children. When my youngest child was 2 years old, I started my first job. It was a Chinese teacher at a Chinese school in Melbourne. This is my real first contact with society. I had colleagues and friends, and this is a precious time for me. At this time, my EX wanted to return to China to work, he was recruited by Chinese Talents policy. Therefore, at the age of 28, we left Australia with our children and returned to a coastal city in China: Xiamen. He and I both worked at Xiamen University. I became a Chinese language lecturer at the University for more than one year before we made move to another city of China. At the same time, I also opened a salsa dance club, while also had been a columnist of a magazine in Beijing, writing about Western education system are why so different from the Eastern, especially China, for three years. Two years later, we moved to Suzhou, China, again because of his work. Because I am from Shanghai, Suzhou is very close to Shanghai, I was so happy to move over. Everything in Suzhou, including climate, humanity, environment, and diet, is something I know and like. I worked in Soochou University as an administrator. After working our years at the University, I became a housewife again after a divorce, remarriage and gave birth to another baby. After being separated from EX, I still chose to live in Suzhou with two lovely children. Then I met my husband and gave birth to another boy. Now I am a happy and busy mother of three boys. My children are in good health, excellent in their studies and of high moral character. Our daily life arrangements are very full, every summer vacation I will take them a brief deep tour to a never be country, to feel and explore the world. I love my current living status and I love my family. The life experience of the first half of my life is written here for the time being. I often think, the people I met, the things I have gone through, there must be reasons for them to happen.

Because I started to travel around from my early years, and as a cheerful woman, with a lot of friends, I found that known about people is not difficult, but the understanding between people is one of the most difficult things in the world. This understanding is due to cultural differences, due to factors such as personality or gender differences. Many people don't understand the culture of other countries or regions, which leads to a lot of misunderstandings. What impresses me most is that the Chinese and Western families have a very large gap in their educational philosophy for their children. Chinese families, as far as I know, Korea and Japan are similar. A traditional Chinese family, parents pay great attention to the child's academic, the test score requirements are very high, interfere with the child's time is relatively long, and even interfere with the child's career choice, marriage choice, will help the child pay down payment, help them with grandchildren and children become the most important or the only motivation to move on. For an example, in Chinese families, many marriages are in fact dead, many couples who have not fallen in love, but for the sake of their children's lives, choose to sacrifice their own happiness, continue to live together. As a child growing up in a traditional Chinese family, I felt the cultural differences so great after being deeply influenced by Western culture at the stage of the formation of the three views between the ages of 18 and 28. For a long time, I was quite confused and read quite a few books, thinking about how to raise my own children. I can deeply appreciate that both systems with their advantages. But the operation is far from the essence of its, to its dross so simple, a lot of theoretical knowledge to the actual while in use, it is not the same thing. The essence of the two kinds of parenting has a completely contradictory part is very magical, I found that China and the West in treatment is in a similar situation. For example, my eldest son had pneumonia in China a few years ago, in the hospital, the doctor asked him to drink more water, but he was not 3 years old, not enough cooperation, when I went to the doctor said the child refused to drink water and what can I do with it. The doctor directly gave him a 500ML bottle with VC liquid to Inject. The same thing happened when he was in hospital in Melbourne, and when I told the doctor that the little boy refused to drink water, then, to my surprise, they reduced the amount of 15ML of lifting bottles per hour to 5ML, maintaining only basic vital signs, hoping to stimulate the child's own body's desire for water by reducing fluid intake. In education, Western families are more interested in stimulating their own motivation, yet Chinese families see it highly risky to let lesser minors who are not yet experienced decide their future for themselves. Similar differences can be reflected in all aspects of daily life, working and learning, which has a difference in the thinking system. As both sides can be understood by me, I am very willing to increase the bridge of communication in this regard, so that more and more people can understand the other side of the coin, to find the advantages of the other side. Most of the conflicts today occurs because we don’t listen to the other voice.

Columnist, events planner, teacher, writer

I am quite good at organizing events actually. I found out I have this type of talent becuase slowly and eventually I became the 'organizer" of the mothers gourps, and other social circle. I have arranged many