Childhood
| Names | |
|---|---|
| Known in Chinese as: | 張彥 |
| Government Romanization: | Cheung Yin |
| Jyutping: | Zoeng1 Jin6 |
| Pinyin: | Zhāng Yàn |
| Pen name: | 西西 |
| Government Romanization: | Sai Sai |
| Jyutping: | Sai1 Sai1 |
| Pinyin: | Xī Xī |
Xi Xi's native county is Zhongshan, Guangdong. She was born in Shanghai, where she attended primary school, in 1938. In 1950, she immigrated to Hong Kong with her parents. Her father worked at Kowloon Motor Bus as a ticket checker. In addition, he had been a Division A soccer team trainer and, later, a referee since he was in Shanghai, thus Xi Xi had developed an immense interest in soccer when she was young. Xi Xi has two brothers and two sisters.
Later, Xi Xi attended secondary school at Heep Yunn School, where lessons were taught in Cantonese; she started her English-instructed lessons from Form 4. During her early life in Hong Kong, Xi Xi was living in poverty, and she had to worry about her expenses on textbooks and her school uniform, as well as fees for Home Economics classes. As a junior secondary student, she began to write for the local newspapers and magazines.
Read more about this topic: Xi Xi
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Pleasing illusion: “if my childhood had been the Paradise it should have been, all would now be well.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers’ touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)