Navigating chaos
By Shengkai Lin (IFM/BSc1, 2025–2026)
https://www.instagram.com/elliotterwitt/p/CRO3Ptwng2E/
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Elliott Erwitt’s photograph of a child balanced on a bicycle strikes a deep chord in me. It mirrors the story of my grandfather (Chengxi Yu, which means “receiving the happiness”), who was forced to relocate from Ningbo to Shanghai at the end of the 1960’s. He lost everything, still being a teenager. To me, that simple bicycle represents the heavy burden of history my grandfather shouldered as the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) swept through China.
Because his father was a landlord, the family’s status plunged from privilege to belonging overnight to one of the “five black categories” (“landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad influencers, right-wingers”). Branded as “class enemies” and facing forced labor, his parents made a desperate choice to save their son. They sent him alone to Shanghai to escape the political storm.
I imagine his father cycling him to the station, much like the figure in the photograph. As my grandfather gazed back at his receding hometown, his eyes were unaware of the hardships awaiting him in the city. To me, this black-and-white image transcends a simple street scene; it is a portrait of a child who navigated chaos to eventually become the pillar that sustained our entire family.
