Guo Yanbin/Dictation
Huang Yujie/Written
My name is Guo Yanbin (@Canada Old Kajia), I was a state-owned enterprise employee of Shenyang Transformer Factory in the 1980s, and later worked as a middle-level manager in a Japanese company and also created my own business. Almost a decade ago, in order to give my daughter a better education, our family of three moved to Alberta, Canada.
After coming to a foreign country, I changed from an engineer to a worker, no longer going to the workshop and sitting in the office as in the past, but taking the heavy machinery certificate, driving heavy machinery such as dump trucks, bulldozers, and excavators at outdoor construction sites, and doing some road construction and construction work.
I prefer the simplicity of physical work to the previous surface, but now I have adapted to working on the construction site and enjoy the current rhythm of life. Because the Winter in Canada is relatively long, I can work for half a year and rest for half a year, have nothing to play with my wife and children, and have a lot of time to do what I like.
This is a picture of me at the construction site, dealing with some heavy machinery all day.
Maybe it was fate that my fate with the machine had always been quite deep. In 1967, I was born in a military family in Santaizi, Shenyang, where my parents worked in a military factory, and they were responsible for manufacturing military machinery.
My dad was a senior technician, which is now equivalent to a professor. In the 1970s, the monthly wages of ordinary workers were only about forty or fifty yuan, while my father's monthly salary could be more than 100 yuan, and my family's conditions were not bad. Books were scarce in that era, but my dad was able to buy us a set of "100,000 Whys" and many villain books, which can be regarded as the earliest enlightenment for me.
In 1975, I (middle) took a group photo with my eldest sister and second sister in front of Tiananmen Square.
My second sister is a liberal arts student, always like to dance and ink, under her influence, after going to junior high school, I read a lot of miscellaneous books. Novels, essays, poetry, everything to see, everything to dabble in.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when the revival of various literary creations was the era of the revival of various literary creations, and the obscure poems of Kitajima, Shu Ting, and Gu Cheng were all the rage, and a large number of writers like Yu Hua and Mo Yan also appeared, and their works became a trend, and I also liked to read them very much. I am very interested in liberal arts, I love politics, I love dialectics, like a literary and artistic youth, but in fact, I am a student of science and engineering.
In our time, learning was not very stressful, because there were too many students to arrange, usually each grade only needed half a day of classes, and the teacher did not care much about us, so I had a lot of free time to play. I have worked as a model aircraft and a model ship in the student science and technology group, and I am the main force of the science and technology group. I have many hobbies, painting, stamp collecting, playing chess, and also learned erhu, anyway, I don't want money, although the five tones are not complete, I still learned in school for a long time.
Our family took a group photo in front of the exhibition hall of my father's unit, with a row of planes behind us.
In 1977, the state tried to restore the college entrance examination on a trial basis, and all localities began to pay attention to education and distinguish key schools, and when I was in junior high school, I just caught up with that round of reform. Although I didn't study so hard, I did a good job among the boys, basically hovering in the top five of the class. In order to improve the promotion rate and do a good job in key middle schools, the school organized grades to open "fast classes", drawing four or five people from each class to study better, and continuing to study in the morning and in the afternoon.
At that time, the country was vigorously developing heavy industry, and the slogan shouted by everyone was "learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, and go all over the world.". If the boy learned the liberal arts, he felt a little ashamed, and always felt that only those who could not learn mathematics, physics and chemistry went to study the liberal arts, so I also learned science with the flow.
This is a group photo of me in high school with my father, who was my enlightenment teacher on my way to growing up.
In 1985, I took the college entrance examination, played well, but the cognition of various majors was relatively vague, I didn't know what to learn, I could only report blindly, and finally I was admitted to the mechanical technology and equipment major of Northeast Institute of Technology.
In the 1980s, it was still difficult to go to college, the promotion rate was very low, and it was difficult to spend the high school of getting up early and going to bed late every day, and I relaxed as soon as I entered the university. Everyone is generally in a very free state, and even the trend of 60 million points is popular among students, and the exam only seeks to pass. Although mechanical is the most basic major in engineering, there are not many opportunities for practice in school, and I did not learn deeply in those years of college.
When I was in college, I (first from the left) took a group photo with my classmates in front of the library of Northeast Institute of Technology.
In 1989, I graduated from university and was assigned to the Shenyang Transformer Factory as soon as I graduated. At that time, the power system caught up with the development dividend, the television industry also entered the era of great strides forward, Shenyang Transformer Factory, as the largest transformer factory in the country, can be said to be the most popular enterprise in Shenyang.
Entering the factory means holding the iron rice bowl, and it can be said that there is no worries in a lifetime. The minimum level of state cadres is 24, and I am a college student, and as soon as I enter the factory, I can enjoy the treatment of state cadres of level 23.
My wife and I met at university, and after graduation we both went into state-owned enterprises to become engineers, and we got married in 1992.
College students just enter the factory need to intern for more than half a year, go down to the workshop to work with workers. I especially like to be with the workers, because we don't have any stakes in each other, the workers also look up to the college students, everyone is mixed together very well, but I can't get along with my own leaders.
I was a college student who had just graduated from the city, and I was relatively less down-to-earth, less obedient, and more reluctant to please people. At that time, it was popular to talk about seniority, and those who could speak the truth and have a good relationship with leaders would definitely develop better in the future. Maybe the rebellious psychology in my bones is still there, the more people love to do things, the more I respect and stay away, not so listen to the leader's words, always have their own small ideas.
When working in the workshop of Shenyang Transformer Factory, I (third row, second from right) and colleagues in the technical department took a group photo.
I hanged myself all day, and the leader couldn't fire me, so he wasn't willing to take me. I was a restless person, he didn't take me, I ran to participate in the selection of the factory to study in Japan, although I was not selected, but this matter hooked up my addiction. If one road doesn't work, won't it be okay to change the road? Before long, I contacted an institution outside and got a place to study abroad as I wished.
In January 1994, I went abroad for the first time to come to Japan, studied machinery for half a year, and then began to work in a factory internship. I wanted to learn everything, I wanted to do everything, but then I found that it was actually difficult to learn the real core technology. I wanted to learn the technology and go back to make a lot of money, but since I couldn't learn it, it was better to go to work.
In the 1990s, the wage gap between China and Japan was still quite large. I first found a Japanese hot spring, I worked in the factory during the day, and after the hot spring closed at 10:30 at night, I went to clean the bathroom for two hours. In addition to hot springs, I have also worked in factories and restaurants outside. You can earn 100,000 yen per month, which is equivalent to 10,000 yuan! Before coming to Japan, my monthly salary was only more than two hundred yuan.
In the two years in Japan, I became much more down-to-earth. Originally, I always had a low eye, always thinking about when I would be able to finish this job? If you do it, you can't do it, and people are more impetuous. But after arriving in Japan, I found that the Japanese people are very serious and industrious. After working with them for a long time, I gradually understood that as long as one by one came, there was no hurry or fast, and in fact, I could finish the day. Later, no matter what I did, I did it little by little.
In 1994, I (first from the right) studied at the Yamanashi Electronics Factory in Japan.
In October 1995, when I returned to Shenyang from Japan, I had saved up 200,000 or 300,000 yuan of part-time work money. When I came back, I left the Shenyang Transformer Factory, and it can be said that I was fired. At that time, I had just earned the first pot of gold in my life, and when I came back, my salary in the factory was too low, and I had a gap in my heart, and I felt that it was not interesting to continue to do so, and I was reluctant to work at home all day. Because of this incident, I had a big argument with my family and friends.
I am a very sharp person and can listen to the opinions of others, but once it is something I have identified, I will not be swayed by anyone, and I am only responsible for myself. In the end, because I had been absent from work for too long, I was expelled and became the first among my classmates to leave the state-owned enterprise.
In 1996, a large number of Foreign-funded enterprises such as Japanese and American capital began to pour into the Chinese market. Because I had lived in Japan for a while and knew more about Japanese companies, I found a position as a Technician for a Japanese company that produced auto parts in the talent market. When I joined the company, my monthly salary was eight hundred, and then it quickly rose to two thousand, probably because I was more active, and I was promoted to section chief after three months of work. To be promoted in such a short period of time, I really didn't think about it at all.
While working for a Japanese company, I also won the table tennis championship in the unit.
I grew up with good family conditions, so I didn't focus on getting rich, and my desire for power and wealth was not high. On the other hand, it can also be said that the enterprising spirit is not enough. Ordinary people should strive to be ministers after becoming section chiefs, and then strive to become factory directors. But I still don't know how to do things as before, in fact, it is not that I will not, but I am unwilling, and I always feel that I have a kind of literary and artistic youth in my body.
Once a manager's daughter got married, and the people in the company didn't tell anyone, the truth was known to everyone, I knew, and everyone went to the wedding, but I didn't go. I actually just can't get used to him, my principle is that you tell me, I will definitely go, you don't tell me then I won't go, I don't want to pretend like this. It's actually a very simple human feeling, but I've messed it up again and again. Because of these, I did not work well in Japanese companies in the later period.
In 2003, I became a middle manager in the production department, and the minister went up to the level of deputy general manager. However, in foreign companies, this type of position is usually held by foreigners, and I have encountered a bottleneck in the rise. I was 36 years old at the time, and I thought that since I was not doing so well, I might as well break through it myself and see if there were any other possibilities.
In a group photo with some employees of Japanese companies, the first one on the right in the first row is me.
Considering that my mechanical skills have not been very good, but there is still a way to control the cost of production labor, I funded my brothers to set up a cleaning company. The result is exactly the opposite of my expectations, my own boss is not more free, in addition to customers, there are various government departments, a bunch of management of my party A to dock. All kinds of communication and socializing made me very repulsive, and the company was about four years of operation and then stopped, without loss or profit.
After the failure of the business, I had the idea of living in a different environment, but it was more because of my daughter. I used to live a free-range school life in junior high school, and I also wanted to give my daughter Xiaoka a happy childhood, so I basically didn't pay much attention to her studies. But by the time she was in junior high school, I was starting to sense something was wrong.
In her time, the competition was much more fierce than we were at that time, compared with others, she was a little worse, the key middle school was definitely not a play, let alone admitted to a good university, how to receive a good education is a very realistic problem. Under the pressure of fierce competition, her daughter Xiaoka became more and more unconfident. I thought it might be better to give her a different environment.
I have always been educating my daughter in a more liberal and relaxed way, and I don't want to put too much pressure on her.
In 2007, I went to consult the immigration agency, they asked me what you have studied, I said I have learned English, for the convenience of communicating with me in English, I am used to speaking Japanese, I can't help but answer in Japanese, only to realize that English has been forgotten. There was no way but to start learning English again.
After studying IELTS for more than half a year, I scored 5 points and finally met the minimum requirements. I was nearly 40 years old when I applied for skilled immigration, which was already a lot of age, and success or failure was completely by chance. Once I failed, it was difficult for me to find a suitable job in Shenyang, and it was a very embarrassing stage for myself.
In the early days of immigration, I signed up for a foreign teacher class to learn spoken Language.
When I was ready to go abroad, my daughter-in-law was already a senior engineer. She and I just complement each other's personality, I love to be noisy, I love to pursue new things, and she prefers to stay in the country and is less willing to take risks. But once I decided that things were difficult to change, for the sake of my daughter's education, for the sake of staying together as a family, she could only compromise in the end, but fortunately we all applied successfully in the end.
After coming to Canada, my first job was to deliver food, and then I worked part-time as a courier delivery, driving a school bus, and so on. In order to recruit labor, the government will train us in English for free, learn it well, and then look for a job. In the first two months of my arrival in Canada, I was admitted to a language course through a test and received a government grant to attend school. In order to alleviate the stress of life, I went to school while delivering takeaways part-time, and I spent the most difficult period.
Later, I found it difficult to find engineers and technicians here. It is useless to have a domestic education, unless the technology is very good, and the boss can communicate well to get a job, but my English level and technical level are not up to standard, this way is not suitable for me. Another approach is to spend two years in Canada to get a secondary school entrance exam, relearn machinery, and then step up to become an engineer. I don't want that, so how long will it take to get back to school?
Based on practical considerations, I chose the third path - not to be an engineer, but to be a worker. To this end, I learned heavy mechanical maneuvering and took a driver's license for a truck driver, so I had two career options. At that time, I also thought that the work of driving heavy machinery was relatively simple, and I could have more time to play around, go back to China to see, and do what I liked.
In the summer of 2013, I obtained a certificate in heavy machinery operation in Canada.
Manual labor in Canada is not tiring, and after entering the industry, I thoroughly experienced the old Chinese saying "grinding foreign workers". The pace of work is very slow, belongs to the step-by-step type, not in a hurry, if you do this in China, the company will be finished early. But to be honest, the quality of their work is really good, very meticulous, very standardized.
For example, they are required to wear an iron boot when working, which can ensure that the hammer will not hurt the toes when it falls. This kind of affects the movement of workers, it is difficult to be efficient, but it is about quality and safety. Workers can even refuse to work if they feel that the working environment is unsafe.
As in China, working here is also very mobile. Maybe only government employees have a relatively stable job, like mine, who is engaged in construction, and where you make money, you will go where you want, which is a two-way choice. If there is a worker to introduce me better, I will go, anyway, the engineering vehicles are provided by the company, I just need people to pass.
In the winter, Canada is icy and snowy, and the thick snow makes the ground very solid, which is not suitable for infrastructure construction. So whether it's building roads, building houses, or building oil fields, in the winter, I can't do my work, so I rest and wait until the spring to work.
I was responsible for digging roads, leveling the land, and laying lawns at the site.
When I'm not working, I can receive two thousand Canadian dollars a month in unemployment insurance, which is equivalent to ten thousand yuan, which is enough for my family. When working, the income is six or seven thousand, which is converted into about 30,000 yuan, and there is not much difference after paying the tax. In fact, I can do other work in winter, but I just don't want to do it, and I don't feel the need to sacrifice my life to make money.
What do you do to earn so much, buy a house and a car? I am driving Toyota now, and the Mercedes-Benz BMW here is not so expensive, but for me there is not much difference between ordinary cars and luxury cars, they are all confused and drive away. Speaking of buying a house, if you can buy a small castle, of course, it is good, but people sleep in that bed, there is no essential difference between eight houses in the house or two houses, I think they are all the same. I've always thought of myself as an ordinary person, just live the life of an ordinary person.
I (second from left) and my co-workers build roads at the construction site.
I didn't ask my daughter how much she had to achieve, I wanted her to be self-reliant, self-reliant, confident and happy. Xiao Ka did not experience too much discomfort after going abroad, in order to better integrate into the life of Canada, Xiao Ka still decided to study in high school for a few more years in the local area.
Canadian high schools are completely different from those in China, more like reserve universities, and they are free to choose the courses they are interested in and help them find their future direction. The overall competitive pressure here is smaller, not only the score theory, the original learning of ordinary small cards, in Canada also belongs to the upper class of learning.
Her classes are not stressful, with four classes a day, leaving school at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and a lot of extracurricular activities. Every Halloween or Christmas and other holidays, Xiao ka will be like the local students, dressed up and go to school, life is very rich. After graduating from high school, Xiaoka also successfully applied to the University of Alberta, which is ranked in the top 100 in the world, and the whole person is much more confident.
Usually, she will work part-time as a tutor, supermarket, front desk and so on when she has time. She once worked at the front desk of a clinic for a year, not only to receive guests, but also to arrange for the management of various details of the acupuncture process. The store manager was very satisfied with her performance, saying that Xiao Ka was the best of all the front desk staff he had ever met, and it would be very good if he studied economic management. Until then, we had never found that the small card showed this ability.
In fact, everyone's situation is different, some people may be more suitable for China, some people may be more suitable for Canada, but the soil is different, and the fruits of each seed are different. At least I am very relieved that my daughter, who was very insecure before, has discovered more possibilities and has regained her self-confidence, and now she is fully capable of living independently.
I am very pleased that the daughter-in-law and the child are in front of Lake Louise, and now the little Carlevorian is much more confident.
And my personality also has the advantage of being more relaxed and playful. My classmates have always envied me and thought I was very good at playing. I used to like to play football, fitness, photography, Go is not very good, but table tennis is not bad, and often go hiking with a bunch of buddies. I'm also sticking to fitness, hoping to be able to have a little muscle line and maintain a tougher state.
I worked out in the gym, started studying fitness in college, and have been doing it until now.
After coming to Canada, I learned to ski, shoot, and participate in the Edmonton Amateur Football League, all of which are fun-loving. I also want to develop a new project – hunting. Hunting is allowed in Canada, which is not to say that I want to kill, just want to try a new sport, learn a new skill, I think I am quite interested.
I like to play a lot of things, not always keen on a line, but I always maintain a great interest in the unknown. It doesn't matter how much money you earn, but you still have to live happily.
Coming to Canada, I learned to ski, and in the winter of 2019 I (first from left) was at the Red Deer Ski Resort with friends.
At the beginning of this year, I bought a motorhome that I could drive south all the way to the United States in the winter. China and the United States are roughly the same area, Canada is larger than China, these two places I think have been enough to play for a lifetime, when I return to China, you can also go to Japan, Southeast Asia and other places to play, really enough.
I also love to play with photography, and every time I go, I always like to record something. In my opinion, the most important thing about the work of humanistic photographers is actually the memory of the freeze-frame era. A year ago, I opened the watermelon video account "Canada Old Card Family" and began to share daily vlogs on it, recording our family's life and growth in Canada.
Netizens are like my friends, they are used to calling me old card. I am a relatively cheerful and happy person, and when I saw the released video that made everyone laugh and comment on a few words, I thought it was quite interesting to record.
My watermelon video business is basically every day.
In Canada, I also miss my hometown from time to time. I used to like to go to Beijing to climb the Great Wall, which is completely different from the city, only from the sense of ruin can I feel the vicissitudes of history, feel the vastness of nature and my own smallness, I prefer to enjoy the journey in this way.
Every year when I return to China, in addition to returning to my hometown of Shenyang and the familiar Beijing, I will also go to Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places, alone in an unfamiliar city for a month, to feel the local life. Unfortunately, after the outbreak of the epidemic, these plans were interrupted, and I will continue to do so in the future.
I've always loved one thing – interesting soul, one out of a thousand. I don't think I'm pursuing one of the best, I just want to pursue a fun life. The scenery on the road of life is different, as an ordinary person, I can't leave anything in this world, I can't break ten thousand books, I can walk thousands of miles, let myself live as full as possible.
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