My name is Meirong Huizhong and I am a young Chinese woman living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. I'm a Permanent Resident of Canada and soon I will become a Citizen. Ottawa is my home now. I moved there in the summer of 2007. I was born in the City of Xining, Province of Qinghai in the People's Republic of China. On the first day of February 1987. My family always believed that I was destined for greatness and I proved them right by winning an International Scholarship to study Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa in the Capital Region of the Confederation of Canada. I didn't realize that this was a journey which would forever change my life, folks.
There are stereotypes about everybody. It doesn't matter if you're Asian, Black, Hispanic, Aboriginal, Arabic or whatever. The only people who seem to escape negative stereotypes are White people. Doesn't seem fair but it is what is. At the University of Ottawa I experienced a brand new world. There are lots of Chinese people in the Confederation of Canada, but we don't get along the way outsiders think we do. I'm from a small, poor Province of China. I'm a farm gal and not a city dweller. My family is poor and I had to work my butt off to get where I am. Most of the Chinese people I met in the Capital Region of Canada came from the Republic of China's big cities, and seemed perfectly at ease in the big North American Metropolitan areas.
Not me. I'm more comfortable in big farm lands. I loved riding my father Chang's horse and also helping grow the rice which guaranteed my family's economic survival after a successful harvest. And I feel no shame for what I am. However, just because I'm a rural gal doesn't mean I'm a slouch academically. I always pushed myself in school, and I dazzled them at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ottawa. It's also where I met a kindred soul, though he definitely didn't look like I expected a kindred soul to look. In hindsight, I should have been more open-minded about a lot of things. When I met Jean-Joseph D'Avignon, the six-foot-two, lean and dark-skinned young Black man from Haiti, I was taken aback. Mainly because I was oddly attracted to him. I've only dated Asian men and the occasional White guy. My fierce attraction to this Black guy stunned me.
Jean-Joseph D'Avignon was a newcomer to the City of Ottawa. He spent his whole life in the City of Montreal, Province of Quebec. He grew up in the Haitian enclave of Montreal-Nord. His family urged him to transfer to the University of Ottawa after a lacklustre performance at McGill University. We got paired up during a class project assigned to us by Professor Timothy Alexandre, a French-speaking African guy who's one of the few minority members of the Ottawa University Faculty. I wasn't sure about working with Jean-Joseph. Not because he's Black, but because he admitted to having dropped out of McGill University the first day he walked into our class. Way to introduce yourself, don't you think? I haven't been in Canada too long but I knew that McGill University along with Concordia University and McMaster University were the best schools in the country. The only schools which came close were York University, Queen's University and the University of Toronto.
As you can imagine, I would have given anything to go to McGill University. It's one of the top schools in all of North America. Right up there with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States of America. An internationally acclaimed school! And this bozo Jean-Joseph basically smirked while saying he was glad to leave the school of my dreams. I always thought the sons and daughters of Black immigrants living in Canada were more academically focused than White Canadian brats. Jean-Joseph was just as arrogant and entitled as the White guys in our class. Like them he was born and raised in the Confederation of Canada, even though his parents moved here from elsewhere. Like them he was a Hockey-obsessed, intolerant maniac. Lucky me, I've got to work with him! He'd better not bring my GPA down or I'll smack the shit out of him. The one thing I can't stand is a lazy man.
As luck would have it, Jean-Joseph actually surprised me. When I watched him joke around with his Quebecer buddies and listen to his Rap music before, during and after class, I thought he was a dumbass. The Professor seemed to really like the French-speaking students, both Black and White. He let them get away with all kinds of shit. As a native of China, I was fluent in English as well as Mandarin. I didn't speak a lick of French. I honestly thought Jean-Joseph was a fool. Well, when it came to engineering, he really knew his stuff. He amazed even me, and I'm one of the top students in the class. As we worked on the project, I got to pick his brain. He surprised me, man. He really did. Jean-Joseph's passion for civil engineering was evident as we worked together. I got to know him quite a bit.