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| University Settlement's Writing Class of ESL Program at 175 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002 (212) 533-6306 |
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| It was such a beautiful day that I decided to take a walk along Columbus Park, which is near my home. It was a quiet and peaceful place. I felt the fresh air fill my lungs. I felt a gentle breeze, so I felt comfortable. While I was walking the road I saw many flowers in the garden, such as tulips, daisies, daffodils, and violets. All the flowers produced various colors. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. While I was standing in one spot, admiring all the beautiful flowers, a group of pigeons flew over me. Suddenly, that reminded me of an experience from my childhood. We had pigeons at my home in China. |
| One of My Memories of Pigeons By Wen Fei Liang Contents |
| Before my country’s Cultural Revolution, when I was a kid, we didn’t have enough meat to eat. The government had to distribute every resident limited meat and rice by tickets. |
| One day my father brought a couple of pigeon home. My Dad used steel wire to make a firm cage. Since then we started to feed pigeons for many years. My father used a scientific way to raise pigeons. He gave them various foods, for example, grain, corn, red beans, green beans, and crushed eggs shells. Every day he would change the menu and gave them fresh water. He let them out of the cage twice a day. He cleaned the cage everyday. He kept the dropping for our home plant fertilizers, so my home plants and flowers grew up well. |
| About six months later our pigeons had bred multiple times and basically we had five pairs of pigeons that were young and strong. They could produce many eggs that became little pigeons. When the small pigeons grew up we kept the good one and killed some of them. By that time our family could cook a pigeons every two weeks. We were so happy because raising pigeons could give us a chance. We could get meat from pigeons and improve our family members’ nutrition. |
| I remembered that male pigeons were more attractive than female, but female pigeons were more graceful and gentle than males. The male pigeons pleased their wife or girlfriend by singing long songs, and never felt tired. |
| Our pigeons also joined in a pigeons’ association in my country. Sometime our pigeons went to a long distance competition. I wondered how pigeons could find their way home. They were very intelligent. |
| At the time of the Cultural Revolution a terrible experience happened that I would never forget. Two men came to my home and showed that they were from the pigeon association. They needed to investigate the conditions in which our pigeons were raised. They walked directly to the pigeons’ cage. They caught the pigeons and put them in a basket and left. They didn’t allow my father to ask any questions. They put a receipt on the table. We found that on it they wrote”smuggler”. After a few days, my father told us they cut the pigeons legs, because they were afraid our pigeons could go back to their home. They put them in the market to sell them. |
| I thought my father was absolutely not a smuggler. However, in the turmoil of the day, the official didn’t allow us to say anything. Otherwise we would be in jail. I thought it was unreasonable for them to take away our pigeons. They were like robbers in broad daylight, robbing innocent people. Since that event, we have never raised pigeons again. |
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| Welcome to Wen Fei Liang's Writing Page 6! |
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