(Written by a former resident of Shanghai)

A birthday was celebrated last evening in our apartment building, but I was engaged in preparing a lesson for class so I couldn’t be there.  After dinner I visited Jiang, the birthday girl, and wished her a happy birthday.  I also apologized for not attending her party.

          After we talked a while, she invited me to have lunch next Wednesday and said she would meet me at the Japanese restaurant.  She was proud of herself and said, “I have money now; my first wages since I came to America.”  I knew what she meant by that as I’d helped her get paid by the government for taking her wheel-chaired friend on errands every day.  It was pleasant to hear the good news, and we screamed it again in chorus -- “I have money!”  We were acting completely crazy.

          That sounded like she had got a lot of money.  In fact, it was just a little but she was happy, as she wouldn’t be so completely dependent on her son.

          Her pleasure made me remember my first earnings.  I got them when I was a student in high school by tutoring a boy in mathematics.  The first time I got paid, I thought I could realize a long-standing dream of learning to play the piano, and after two months, I had enough money for two of the weekly lessons.  I really enjoyed them, but didn’t have the money for the 3^rd or 4^th lesson that month so I had to quit.  It would have taken me two months to earn enough for those lessons, and it was painful to have to discontinue lessons.  My dream was gone. 

          When I finally became a teacher, I proudly gave my first salary to my mother.  It was exciting to have earned so much money, and I felt strongly that women should stand up for themselves and get jobs so I’d done just that.  My mother had always thought that women should stay at home and take care of the family.   Earning money was for men.

          I remembered that when my husband and I had come to America for the second time in 1992, we arrived at the Seattle airport, and my son met us there to help us change to another plane for Portland.  He had just started his first job and was so happy that he wanted to buy food for us.  He couldn’t stop saying, “I have money; what would you like?”  We looked at his happy face and it warmed our hearts.

          While watching my son, my husband remembered how his younger brother felt when he got his first salary.  Their father had died when he was 16 years old, and he had four brothers and a sister.  Hardly any money had been left for them so my husband had been working to try to support the family, but there were so many of them that they’d been living in poverty.

          When the younger brother finished his studies and got the first payment from a new job, he came up the stairs shouting, “I have money!  I have money! ….”.  As he entered the room, he was still shouting it, and he waved the money at his mother.    The whole family was so happy; it was like a feast day. 

          Everyone has the joy of earning money for the first time.  There are many reactions to it - depending on the situation - but it’s almost always an unbelievably happy time.