This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
(I read this article a few years ago and it made a deep impression on me. On the surface its message runs counter to traditional Chinese ideas such as valuing agriculture over commerce and “all callings are inferior; only study is lofty,” but the spirit behind it is the same: Heaven moves vigorously, and the noble person strives unceasingly to strengthen himself. For the child-rearing ideas of parents formed under today’s exam-oriented education system in China, this article should be of great reference value.)
In 1992, when after many twists and turns I returned to Israel, my eldest, aged 13, my second, aged 12, and my youngest daughter, aged 10, all stayed behind in China for the time being.
Choosing to return to Israel at that time was purely because I was at the end of my rope.
My father was Jewish; during the Second World War he fled to Shanghai, and I was born there at that time.
My mother abandoned us when I was very small, and when I was 12 my father died, leaving me an orphan.
When I grew up, I worked as a manual labourer at a Shanghai copper plant. After I married and had three children, my husband left us.
Staying in Shanghai, everything I saw was a painful memory.
Just then China and Israel formally established diplomatic relations, and in a mood of escape I became one of the first descendants of Jews to return to Israel.
The early days in Israel were much harder than I had imagined.
I did not understand the language there (the ancient Hebrew my father had taught me had long ceased to be used in Israel), nor did I know about the preferential policies for immigrants (new immigrants could receive a resettlement grant).
On the streets of Tel Aviv, I had no idea how I was going to survive.
The savings I had brought from Shanghai could cover only three months of living expenses. I had to find a way to earn money, and also bring my children to me as soon as possible.
I studied Hebrew hard, learning the most basic everyday language, and then I set up a roadside stall selling spring rolls, which required the smallest investment.
The official currency of Israel is the shekel; 1 shekel was worth 2 yuan.
My spring roll stall could earn ten-odd shekels a day.
When my stall’s business gradually stabilized, in May 1993 I brought all three children to Israel.
When the children first arrived in Israel, we received a good deal of reproach from the neighbours.
Back home in China, I had always held to the principle that however hard things were, the children must not suffer. After coming to Israel, I went on being a model Chinese-style mother.
I sent the children to school, and while they were at school I sold spring rolls.
When school let out in the afternoon, they would come to the spring roll stall; I would close for business and cook wontons and noodles for them on the little stove.
One day, as the three children sat around the little stove waiting for me to cook, a neighbour came over and scolded my eldest: “You’re a big boy now. You should learn to help your mother, not watch her bustle about while you sit there like a good-for-nothing.”
The neighbour turned and scolded me: “Don’t bring that backward Chinese-style education to Israel. Don’t think that just because you’ve given birth to children you’re a mother…”
The neighbour’s words were very hurtful, and my eldest and I both felt terrible. When we got home, I comforted him:
“It’s all right, Mum can manage. I like taking care of you.” But my eldest said: “Maybe she’s right, Mum. Let me try to take care of my brother and sister…”
The next day was a day of prayer, and the children finished school at noon.
Coming to my stall, my eldest sat beside me and, copying me, wrapped filling in the prepared spring roll wrappers, rolled them up and fried them in the oil.
At first his movements were a bit clumsy, but they became more and more skilful…
The change in my eldest was so great that even I had not expected it. Besides helping me make spring rolls, he proposed that they take the finished spring rolls to school to sell to their classmates.
Every morning, he and his brother and sister each took 20 spring rolls to school, and when they came home they would hand over to me all their spring roll income, 10 shekels each.
I felt very sad that they had to take up the burden of life at such a young age.
But they did not show the sense of grievance I had imagined; they said they were gradually beginning to like the feeling of earning money.
The neighbour’s wife often came to chat with me, telling me how a proper Jewish family should run and how children should be educated.
Jews never think that earning money is an activity one can only start after reaching a certain age. Just as the Chinese say “education starts from infancy,” they have always felt that “earning money starts from infancy” is the best way to educate.
The neighbour’s wife told me that in a Jewish family children get no free food or care; everything has a price, and every child must learn to earn money in order to get everything they need.
I found this kind of education rather harsh and not so easy to accept.
But the children were also being taught this idea at school, and they accepted this Jewish rule more easily than I did. So I decided to change my old habits with the children from back home and try to raise them as Jews.
First, our family established a system of paying for living: nothing in the house could be used free of charge any more, including the meals and services provided by me, their mother.
Eating a meal at home required paying me a cost fee of 100 agorot; washing clothes once required paying 50 agorot…
While collecting fees, I gave them the chance to earn money: I sold them spring rolls wholesale at 30 agorot each, and when they took them to school they could mark them up as they liked and dispose of the profit freely.
When they came back on the afternoon of the first day, I learned that the three children had sold their spring rolls in completely different ways:
My youngest was rather honest and sold them retail at the old price of 50 agorot each, earning 400 agorot;
My second used a wholesale approach, selling all the spring rolls directly to the school canteen at 40 agorot each; although he made only 200 agorot profit, he told me the canteen had agreed to let him deliver 100 spring rolls every day;
My eldest’s approach was rather unexpected. He held a talk at school called “Taking You into China,” in which he spoke about what he had seen and heard in China, and the gimmick of the talk was that you could taste delicious Chinese spring rolls for free,
but you had to buy an admission ticket at 10 agorot each. He carefully cut each spring roll into 10 pieces, received 200 listeners and took 2,000 agorot in ticket income; after paying the school 500 agorot for the venue, his profit was 1,500 agorot.
Except for my youngest’s method, which was within my expectations, the business methods of my eldest and second were beyond my imagination.
I really had not foreseen that in just a few days, children who used to cling to me and act spoiled would be transformed into shrewd little Jewish merchants.
Their studies were not affected in the least; in order to work out more and newer ways of making money, they studied and thought very hard, and what the teachers taught suited them very well, because there was no preaching about the spirit of self-sacrifice and the like.
The teacher once asked them this question:
“If you are attacked by heathens and must flee for your life, what will you take with you?”
To this question, answering “money” or “gems” is wrong.
This is because, whether money or gems, once they are taken away they are lost completely.
The correct answer is “education.”
Unlike wealth, as long as a person is alive, education cannot be taken away by others.
They greatly admired this saying of their teacher:
“If you want to become rich in the future, learn well what is in front of you now; it will all be of great use in the future…”
When my eldest studied immigration law in his law class, he told me that a family like ours should be able to collect a resettlement grant from the immigration office.
Half believing, I went, and came back with a resettlement grant of 6,000 shekels in one go — a tremendous fortune for our family.
Then my eldest told me that because he had provided me with the information, I should pay him a 10% fee.
I hesitated a long time and finally decided to give him the large sum of 600 shekels. When he got the money, he bought very pretty presents for me and his brother and sister, and the rest, he said, he would turn into more money.
With this fee my eldest ordered by post a batch of stationery that was very cheap back in China, and sold it at school, reinvesting the profit in more stock; a year later, the balance in his account had already exceeded 2,000 shekels.
Although my eldest was very good at making money, in fact my second grasped the essence of the Jewish rule even better than he did. One thing Jews have in common is engaging in lines of business that need no capital, doing work that others don’t do and that requires no spending or investment.
While my eldest was making money from resources back in China, my second was doing the same, but the profit he earned was in the realm of the mind, which needs no cost.
At the age of 14, with his writing skills, my second actually opened his own column in a newspaper, introducing the customs and ways of Shanghai, submitting 2 articles a week, each of 1,000 words, for 8,000 agorot a month.
My youngest is a girl; being rather reserved, she did not show any talent for making money, but I was gratified to see in her the Jewish optimism and grace toward life.
She learned to brew tea and make pastries. Every evening she would carefully brew a pot of black tea and serve it with pastries of different flavours she had invented, and the family would sit around eating and chatting. Her pastries had something of a blend of Chinese and Western flavours, and both her brothers loved them. But these pastries were not free; with the pastry fees her two brothers paid, after deducting costs and the fees she had to hand me each day, my youngest also lived very comfortably.
As our family’s funds grew more and more abundant, the four of us jointly invested in opening our family’s Chinese restaurant. I held 40% of the shares, my eldest 30%, my second 20% and my youngest 10%. As our family restaurant became more and more famous, I too attracted a lot of attention.
After I was received by Rabin, I became a well-known figure in Israel.
By this time I had fully mastered Hebrew, and together with my mother tongue, Chinese, I was eventually invited by the Israeli national diamond company to serve as its chief representative in China.
When I returned to China to take up the post, the children came back to China with me too. Only when I had Chinese children to compare them with did I realize that my children had grown up even more outstanding than I had imagined.
Before returning to China, each child bought many Israeli-made articles. After we came back, a teacher came to see me. She said my children were peddling goods from Israel on campus — everything from ornaments to national costumes and even bullet casings — and suggested that I discipline my children properly.
I told her I had no right to interfere with my children’s behaviour; this was their way of earning their school fees, because I was no longer responsible for all their study expenses.
The teacher’s eyes went wide at once; she could not understand how a mother like me with a monthly salary of 5,000 US dollars would not pay her children’s school fees. I invited her to taste one of the little pastries my daughter made, which sold at home for 2 yuan each, and told her with a smile: “This is the product of my children learning the Jewish rule during their years of life in Israel. I believe they will all become outstanding people in the future…”
In the college entrance examination that followed, my eldest entered a college of tourism. He said he wanted to become a professional in tourism and then go to Israel to open his own travel company and monopolize tours to China;
The next year, my second was admitted to the Shanghai International Studies University. He said his ideal was to be a writer, earning profits without any investment or self-sacrifice;
My youngest said she would study Chinese cookery, become a top pastry chef, and then open the best pastry shop in all of Israel…
After returning to China, I found that many Chinese parents live in a contradictory state of mind, swinging back and forth: they hope their children will become very rich in the future, yet seem afraid of their children becoming absorbed in money too early. It is just like hoping their children will have a happy family in the future while being afraid that they will fall in love too early now. This is a classic case of Lord Ye who loved dragons (professing to love what one actually fears). Jews welcome a child’s birth with the sound of clinking gold coins; making money is their ultimate goal in life, and education and study are processes one must go through to reach this goal. Chinese parents, however much they may long for it in their hearts, never want to bring the subject out into the open. Is it so hard to say? In fact it is just a simple sentence: “Child, I want to be the mother of a rich man…”
In China, many parents think that concentrating on study is the most important thing and that money is not a child’s business. But in fact, children must one day go out and face real society. Learning to earn money does not mean making children obsessed with money, but letting them come into contact with society, understand that every effort brings its reward, cherish every cent, be responsible and become self-reliant.
Financial intelligence is as important as IQ and EQ!
Rather than giving children money to spend, let them learn to earn money!
Every choice in life is like a gamble; win or lose, it is your own.
Whether your stake is large or small, once you have chosen there is no chance to take it back.
Those who cannot afford to lose often cannot win either! This is the true way of being a parent
