Common App Essay Admitted to UPenn (Sarah ONeill Supreme Editing)

BY SARAH ONEILL 

The day was a Saturday in Shenzhen. As the final bell of another school week screeched, I could hardly wait for mom to drop me off while she shopped for fresh flowers in the marketplace. A soft summer air lifted up the market’s storefront flaps as we reached what I loved best about shopping: Mother Zhang. Mother Zhang sold hand-me-down books, discontinued toys and rare, banned fiction from schools. She had everything I ever wanted dangling from tacks and hoisted up on shelves. Each Saturday, she idled by her register, her fluffy hair streaked with gray and tangled, and her eyes wrinkled at the corners.

 “Ah. Ni Hao, Anzhi.” she’d say. “How are you, little friend?” 

While other kids floated into the store, Mother Zhang would find a book from the shelf to read ten-year-old me who crept into a corner. When she started reading, with excited gestures, she would stop the plot and plop on a headdress or grab a cardboard sword to act out the exploits of the Great Qing! During a royal ball, I was her favorite ballerina. On some Saturdays, she’d ask me to choose a story as we twirled across the cramped corridor. 

Outside of Mother Zhang’s store, I lived with much more stringency: making sure the length of my ponytails was above my shoulders; I never talked about make-up or fan fiction; my head was buried in homework. Like what my education called for, I was taught to be inconspicuous. But Mother Zhang was the opposite: her curly bangs resembled an 80’s puff, and her bright pink make-up was smeared. “You’ll be guest speaker today,” she said, taking two bright orange hair pins from a cupboard and remaking my ponytail into two plaits, “you tell your own stories.”

But what were my own stories? 

Growing up, we lived in a cramped apartment building where mom’s flower pots crowded together, and bicycles were strewn about. We, and our neighbors, lived there for one purpose: to reserve a spot at the Liyuan School, famous for kids to “win at the starting line”. It was the same reason my parents risked their savings, making the most expensive investment of their lives: squeezing five people into a 70 square meter apartment “for my future”. Thus, when teachers asked, “Are you making dad’s money worth it”, fading into a corner and being good always protected me. That’s why Mother Zhang was such a reprieve. On one Saturday, my voice was shaking when I flipped through Cao Fangzi, my favorite book. “Tell us why you chose it,” Mother Zhang nudged me, “persuade us to listen”. 

 In high school, Mother Zhang continued to inspire me when I sought to start a club – a free forum that would allow discussion about anything that mattered to the student body – and bring back the open attitude towards dialogue that hadn’t existed on our campus since 2008. School staff warned that seminars without a teacher in charge were “unauthorized” unless a “detailed report of the content” was submitted. Therefore, sixty-eight of us gathered in a half-abandoned room under the library to draw up a detailed proposal. On the whiteboard, I wrote Torchlight, our name. The purpose of the club was to shine light on the unique voices that abound on campus and, if possible, foster interest in campus public affairs and political deliberation. What happened next is nothing short of fantastic. One person spoke up, then another…until a free, unfiltered exchange ensued. We then issued our first independent newsletter. 

That afternoon transported me back to Mother Zhang’s bookstore when I was shy about expressing myself. I hadn’t realized it, but those tiny “speeches” in the bookstore had encouraged me to share my voice and, once again, in that “condemned club”, I was empowered to create another stage for others. For someone who once hid in corners, I had emerged.

Sarah ONeill Supreme Editing