Childhood
Zhang was born in the city of Guangzhou to English-translator parents who were forced, by the Chinese Cultural Revolution government, to move to the edge of Jishou, a village in the Hunan Province, soon after Zhang’s birth. In the countryside Zhang was exposed to and learned the language of ethnic minority groups like the Miao and the Tujia, and demonstrated her ability to adapt to situations where she was an “outsider.” Zhang remembers her childhood as “very peaceful and colorful,” and notes that this is where she established the foundation for her aesthetic preferences.
Read more about this topic: O Zhang
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch elders carefully. They were you and you will be them. You carry the seeds of your old age in you at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time they see you.”
—Kent Nerburn (20th century)