Explore "China's Son" by Da Chen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Yellow Stone Elementary School sat a mile away down the street. It was an old Confucian temple with tilted roofs and lots of wood carvings on the walls. Ancient trees shielded the buildings from the sun, and there was a pond full of lotus blossoms.
When registration day came for the new school year, I got up early and studied my appearance in front of a piece of mirror, broken off from my brother's bigger one. I was as dark as charcoal and as thin as sugarcane. My crew cut, Mom's handiwork, had uneven furrows left behind by rusty scissors and a not-too-experienced hand, as though a clumsy farmer had plowed the fields. I didn't mind it too much. The hair would grow again and the pain of having your hair yanked out by blunt scissors was soon forgotten. My sisters cut each other's hair and Mom took care of the four men in the family. We saved a lot of money that way.