My Hero
By Ethan W.
My hero’s name is Kaiping. He was born on December 25, in the city of Taipei located in Taiwan, China. He now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He owns a car company called GTI. This company sells and buys cars.
In his childhood, he had many accidents such as, accidentally cutting his hand with a glass bottle. For example, my dad one day, was returning a glass bottle to the store so they could recycle it, but he slipped on the way down the stairs when he was leaving his apartment. The glass bottle shattered and a piece of glass cut a blood vessel in my dad’s left hand. The blood wasn’t dripping out of his hand, it was shooting out, like a hose spewing out water. The doctor managed to clean up his hand, but after his hand healed, he had very limited movement in his left pinkie. This caused him to give up piano and violin because he couldn’t play many songs. This accident damaged most of the nerve in my dad’s pinkie finger. The most he can do is move it a centimeter.
Perseverance is one of the traits my dad has. My dad was a great student and was always one of the best in the class. He made some mistakes in his childhood, but he always thought positively. Even sometimes, he was so motivated to do well in school that he would study until 2:00 in the morning. He showed dedication and perseverance in his life and that led to great success. In his childhood, his family never had very much money. One of his parents’ cars even had a hole in the floor that was so big that you could see through to the ground! The car didn’t have air conditioning either because it was too expensive back then for my dad’s parents to afford. He set goals to make enough money to help his family and he achieved everything he set out to do through perseverance.
I think my dad is courageous as well. For example, at my dad’s school, they would beat kids if they didn’t do well. They would also hit kids if they got a bad score on even just one test or quiz. The teachers usually used sticks, but one of my dad’s teachers used part of a long hose. One day, when my dad was in sixth grade, he forgot to study for a test and got a bad grade. His teacher put up the test scores on the blackboard and he had one of the lower scores. The teacher called him to come up in front of the class, and open his hand. My dad walked up to the front, held out his hand, and the teacher hit his hand with a rubber hose. My dad cringed but did not cry. Then he walked back to his seat with his hand stinging. My dad had to be incredibly brave to face that kind of punishment as a young kid.
Another trait I think that my dad has is honesty. He teaches honesty through the many games he plays with me such as basketball and chess. He teaches me how the games were played, and what he knows about those games. He never lies, even if the outcome might have been improved by changing the facts. My dad believes that honesty is so important that he will go to great lengths to make sure he tells the truth. He once was the score recorder in a basketball tournament, which was the semi-finals, and my dad made a mistake in keeping the score. No one caught the mistake until after the game was over and my dad felt terrible about it! He tried to find the refs and explain the mistake, but everyone had already left so there was no one to explain the situation to. When my dad went home, he called my coach to get the emails of the other team’s coaches. He ended up sending trophies to all the kids to make up for the discrepancy in the game.
Over all my dad had some good and bad events happen in his life. Both helped him become the person he is today. He learned from his mistakes so that he could have a happy life. My dad is a big part of my life and because of him, I have become the person I am today.