A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling

appeared on the vermillion rampart to celebrate his victorious revolution. My mind now raced with those memories as we rattled past the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the newly built memorial that housed Chairman Mao’s body.
    Six years later, I would be commander in chief of a student movement on the Square, protesting for government reform, organizing thousands of students for a hunger strike, setting up Democracy University, and erecting the statue of the Goddess of Democracy. But as the bus transported my father and me from the train station to Beida, I found it hard to believe I had actually arrived in this ancient city of glamour and mystery that had filled my imagination ever since childhood.
    At Beida, I was assigned to a standard room that could accommodate three bunk beds and two desks. The walls were bare and white, and the floor was concrete, but through the single window I could look out on lush green trees, which had an immediate soothing effect on my frazzled state. Dad helped me unpack and settle in.
    A few days later, when the time for his return arrived, he took out the last two apples we had brought for the trip.
    “Keep them, Dad,” I told him. “You can eat them on the way home.”
    “I have lots of apples at home,” he said. “You’re all alone here. You might get hungry.”
    “No, Dad,” I said. “You keep them.”
    I put the apples back in his bag. In our family, we never make an open display of affection. Instead, we offer each other food.
    I walked with my father as far as the campus gate. We were both alone in our thoughts.
    Finally my dad broke the silence. “There is an old saying—‘mountains beyond mountains, skies beyond skies.’ This is a difficult place, and you are on your own. You are far from my protection now, Ling Ling. But just remember one thing: No matter what happens, you can always come home.”
    I nodded, and we waited in silence for the bus to arrive to take him on his homeward journey. I waved to him as he stepped aboard and disappeared into the crowd.
    As a flock of migrating birds flew across the sky, I proudly thought to myself, Dad, like those birds above, I’ve finally flown out of the sky you can cover . Somehow I did not feel as joyful as I would have imagined. Instead, I felt alone again.
    When the afternoon sun began to set over campus, a deep sense of homesickness settled in my heart as well—though I bravely and stubbornly refused to admit it. As I walked numbly back to my dorm and slowly climbed the stairs, I remembered a time when I was a little girl and my dad put me on his bike to go to the fishing port for fresh seafood. I could almost smell the aroma of freshly cooked fish. I thought of the time he had surprised me with a visit to my school and brought me steaming dumplings from home. I thought of how excited I had always been when the bright lights of army trucks returning to the base at night signaled the arrival of my precious parents from one of their rescue missions.
    Trying to shake off these thoughts, I abruptly opened the door to my room. There, in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun shining on the study table along the wall, I saw the two apples waiting for me.

5
     
Peking University
     
    If there’s one place in China where a young person can be transformed by education, it’s Beida. It’s the country’s most competitive school, especially for applicants from a rural background, which is why it became a gathering place for the best and brightest students. Words cannot adequately describe how much Beida shaped me and how much I loved the time I spent there.
    Founded in 1898 by an American missionary, Peking University sits at the northwest corner of the city on a campus studded with buildings modeled on traditional Chinese architectural designs. The lake, the bell tower at the top of a little hill, and the gardens that flower year-round give Beida a feeling of secluded peace and privilege. In such an idyllic setting,