前註： 假如我能寫成我的英文書，那麼這將是很靠前的一章。

My name is Road, Bright Road.

It sounds like a unique (another way of saying it is:  strange) name doesn’t it?
 
When my mom was pregnant with me she was working far away in another province, a place where at that time it took days for her to go back home.  When she was on the way home for my birth, her tummy started to pick up the pain. When she finally made her way to Xiamen city, where she still was a day away from home, my aunt, who lived in Xiamen saw that she could not move anymore. So she led her to a neighbor who happened to be a doctor.
I was born right there in the neighbor’s home which was on a street call Siming Road.
My aunt gave me the name: Minglu (means bright road) .

The name Minglu was not used in the early stage of my childhood. Instead Ming Li (means beautiful) was used.  My grandfather gave me that name.  My grandfather was the best grandfather I could ever have and he cared about my appearance a lot.
He especially liked me in long hair. One time I was so attempted by the trend among the girls to cut their hair short.  My grandfather was strongly against that and warned me not to do the same. However I was so excited about changing the hairstyle and to try something new and “modern”. So I had my older sister cut my hair. Right in the middle of the haircutting, my grandfather came back home from work. I was so scared that I fled out of the house with one side of my hair long and the other side short.
 
I had been using Ming Li until when I was about 12 years old and started to understand more of myself and about the world. I decided to use exactly the name my aunt had given me: Minglu.

Later on some fortuneteller said: Road is not a lucky name at all. The character that represents the word basically means a person must travel a lot and live through lots of hardship.

I kept the name Road not only because I was young, energetic and wasn’t afraid of traveling and suffering but also to remember my mom, my aunt and the neighbor who joined my family members to welcome me into this world.