My Exploration of “China Dream”

(找寻“中国梦”)

By Wang Yifei (王怡菲), a 7th grader of Zhengzhou Middle School

Since I was very young, my teachers and parents were always talking about some sort of thing called the China Dream. I ‘didn’t know what it meant at first, only that it’s very important and we should keep it in mind all the time.

August 24th 2016, I became a proud middle school student, dreaming about all the things I can do as a middle school student while I couldn’t when I was in elementary school. And then I realized that all I can do is do more homework, accept more bad grades and have more exams. Maybe my disappointment in middle school life brought me back to the question I had years ago, “What is the China dream？” Of course, a lot of things had happened during the time, and the poster on our classroom wall changed from “Hard-working” to “Keep the China Dream in mind!” Our politics teacher always says, “The China Dream is very important, it is related to every Chinese, so you must remember this paragraph here. It is going to be on your exam papers, so focus.” And that basically means nothing.

So I started to research what are people’s views about the China Dreams.

If we view it as our personal dreams, then there can be millions of China dreams and there is really no point of deciding what really it is. However, I decide not to give up until I find the answer.

Sadly, as I have asked many people about this, they tell me about their plans, their dreams and their points of views of this world. And that’s when I began to question myself, what is my opinion of the China Dream? That’s when I found that my answer is the same as every one else’s. As a student, I wish that my grades could be better, and I wish that I could have a wonderful life.

In this winter vacation, I searched on internet and books, trying to find the answer. But still no luck, my mind is as dry as a cracker. One day, my friend asked me a question, “Do you like China better or America better?” The answer came out of me before I even know it, “I like China better. This is obvious, isn’t?” “And why would you like China better, you see, America’s air quality is better than China’s and most people think that the life there would be wonderful.” “Yeah, that’s great, but I was born in China and China is my mother country…”

At that moment, I suddenly realized what the China dream is. The China Dream means that no matter how good the other country is, we love our country and are willing to devote our lives to our country. We are working hard now because we want to do something to our country to make it a better place. In other words, everyone has their goals and their dreams, and they are going to work very hard on it. But I realized that we are working so hard because we want to make our country a better place. And every dream of ours will stick together to create the China Dream. It’s like this from the beginning, I’ve worked so hard trying to get the true meaning of the China dream, and my perseverance got paid at last, which is a part of the China dream too. The China dream concludes all the good qualities of people, and we are expecting people to do their best at everything.

That’s what a China dream really is.

(608 words)