The journey to Guilin in the summer vacation of 2003 added to my confidence in the travel. The practice proved that although my bone fracture had not yet healed I could join the tour group and follow the team. My passionate interest in the tourism provided a sharp contrast to the coldness of my wife toward it. Her reason was that we were old now, something was wrong with my right leg and we might delay the whole team. The heavy task for me was to mobilize her to join me. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong returned to our country and at the end of 1999, Macao also came back. The era entering 2000, some people, like early birds catch worms, went there to pay a visit. The Guanyin Airport of Xuzhou began to operate in 1997 and it was convenient for us to go into the distance to have a journey. In 2003, the travel agency of Xuzhou began to organize the group to go to Hong Gong and Macao, flying from the Guanyin Airport direct to Shenzhen, through Luohu Port, to Hong Kong. In order to persuade Meilan Zhang to follow me, I tempted her to go to Hong Kong to meet Guiying Lin, who was our classmate in Nanjing University. Lin was an only oversea Chinese in our class and her parents used to live and work in Indonesia, later moving to Hong Kong. She studied in the same small class (16 students), lived in the same living room with Meilan Zhang and had a good relationship between them. Leaving Nanjing, she first worked in Suzhou and then married a son of a rich merchant in Hong Kong, moving there in 1970’s. It was 34 years since we separated. Zhang was anxious to see her and when I managed to contact Lin, she was eager to meet us in Hong Kong. I was successful in persuading my wife to join me to travel to Hong Kong and Macao.
On the eve of the 22nd of January of 2004 (the first day of the new lunar year) we flew from the Guanyin Airport to Shenzhen. It was the first time for us to travel by air, the curiosity and freshness occurring in our heart. It was 7 years since the airport began the operation and the flights were not many. On the wide-open airport there was only one airport. Our tour team was made up of people all from Xuzhou and after talking with some of them a pair was discovered to be Zhang’s students. The saying was proved that half of Xuzhou people were friends and the other half was relatives. We stayed in a hotel in Shenzhen and the next day we entered the New Territory, taken by a train to the Jiulong peninsula. A tour bus took us through the undersea tunnel to the Hong Kong Island. First we went to the Redbud Square, the witness of the return of Hong Kong to its motherland. We followed the guide to a hotel we would live in at that night. We didn’t know where it was located and had to ask the guide to tell Guiying Lin the location of the hotel, asking Lin to find us the next day. The early morning of the next day, Lin came to our room. It was 34 years since we separated in Nanjing in 1970 and all of us three were excited. I could see the tears in Lin’s eyes and we had a lot of words to say to each other, not knowing what to begin with. 34 years ago we were all 25 years old and during the long period we didn’t get touch with each other. Now we became old man and women and the period of striving would soon end. How we had spent so long a period. We were anxious to get to know it. It was unlucky that we were members of the tour team and had to talk with the guide, asking for a leave. In the end we were allowed to leave the team at 3 pm and return to it at 6 pm. We could talk only three hours, which was too precious.
On the afternoon of January 24, we met again on time. As a native, Guiying performed her duty, taking us into an eating house and ordering a lot of dishes. Three of us sat down, words were coming out, like water flowing from the lock gate, forgetting to taste the delicious food of Hong Kong. Obeying the arrangement by Lin, we were wandering in a market of individual merchants. In Lin’s words, wandering could make us hungry again and we could go into another eating house. After about an hour of walking, my right leg wanted to take a rest and Lin again took us into a restaurant. She asked me to go into the toilet and empty my intestines and stomach in order that I could continue to eat. Too passionful! The capacity of my gut was limited and I could not eat any longer. We thanked her for her zealousness.
Lin was an only oversea Chinese in our class of 1964 studying German, who was a rarity for us coming from the countryside. At the beginning assembly of the first term we were anxious to see what she was like. She looked quite good, round face, white-skinned. Some small freckles on her face did not affect her beauty. In addition, her clothes looked fashionable and therefore the class flower should be her. We did not know about her family until she was appointed to be a speaker after we finished studying the chapter of the theory of surplus value by Marx. She talked about how a capitalist could make a fortune, taking his father as an example. According to the economic theory of Marx, the capitalist could build up family fortunes only by exploiting the surplus value of workers. As a daughter of a capitalist, she believed that her father made so much money by his diligence and thrift. When young, her father went over land and sea to Indonesia. At the beginning, he carried cloth to the village to sell, and then owned a shop to retail cloth or wholesale. Finally, he ran a factory to make cloth. At the beginning of 1960’s, the Indonesian government excluded the Chinese, and Lin’s 8 brothers and sisters were sent to the mainland of China, only one staying there. First she went to Beijing to make up the Chinese lessons and then to Wuxi to study in a girl’s high school with other Chinese girls, living independently in her early age. When we entered Nanjing University, the capitalist had no better reputation than a landlord, a rich peasant, a counterrevolutionary, or a rightist. However, a lot of us admired her, as a daughter of a capitalist, living a rich life. In order to see her parents, she could fly to Beijing from Nanjing. During the Great Cultural Revolution, Lin was timid, not joining any of the mass organizations. In the job assignment on graduation, she enjoyed the policy of the oversea Chinese and got a unique job in the city of Suzhou. In my eyes, as a girl of a rich oversea Chinese, she was going on a different route than us. Her future marriage would follow the principle of “a well-matched couple in social and economic status”. In the 1980’s we heard some news about her that she moved to Hong Kong in the middle of 1970’s. Her husband died an early death. Talking between us proved what we got before. Out of our expectation, Lin was so traditional that she refused to be remarried and raised her son and daughter heart and soul. In 2004, two children grew up. She told us again and again that she was very low keyed and asked us to keep secret her communication method. She was not willing to take photos with us and to contact any of our classmates. Why? Was it her husband’s early death, or her rough and unpleasant life? Facing a natural disaster, you have no choice! Her son and daughter both studied in Canada and now came back to Hong Kong. She should be proud of her two kids. Slowly we got to know the principal cause why she felt herself inferior. It was because she was a whole-life house wife and not a career woman. In our talk she admired our career as teachers, esp. our professional title: associate professor and professor. She looked down upon the official positions. How to persuade her? I told her from my heart that a lot of us admired her during our study in Nanjing University. Her working place was Suzhou, a city compared to Heaven. After the marriage, she had been living in the centre of Hong Kong, close to the Time Square, where one inch of land was worth one inch of gold. After her husband died, she refused the temptation of remarriage and brought up two of her kids, letting them accept good education. Now both of them began to work. She should be satisfied with what she had got. We lived in the world and we should have good states of mind, not comparing with anything and anybody. Some of our classmates had climbed very high and if they did not have good states of mind, they were not living happily. They could look down upon others below them, but those who climbed above them and even became their superiors oversaw them. If they were always longing for higher positions, forgetting studying and nothing written being left, they would feel empty.
We felt reluctant to part from each other and didn’t know when we could see each other again.
Joining the team again, we were led to the top of the Taiping Mountain, altitude being 554 meters, the most luxury uptown, where we had a bird’s-eye view of the night scene of Victoria Seaport and row upon row of skyscrapers. The Hong Kong Marine Park impressed upon us favorably, which could hold more than 600 visitors, who could enjoy beautiful poses of various fishes through glass from different angles on the four floors. The “Flying Cart Crossing Field” and “Splitting Travel” in the park let the riders feel mad and excited. The outcry of the riders attracted us to look at them from the distance. The “Splitting Travel” sent the young to the upper airspace, 60 meters high (equal to 20-floor building), stopped for a while and suddenly fell down to the ground in 40 seconds. The outcry of high decibel sounded, one falling and another rising.
The Ocean Theatre was our favorite, like a tennis court. We got it early and found two seats with a good view, complementing fuel and resting our legs, comfortable. The dolphin’s performance began! First three black dolphins performed high jump, jumping from the water simultaneously and over the line overhead. Second, two of them jump high from the water again, trying to head the balloon tied overhead with their mouths. Third, two dolphin trainers dived into the pool and had a friendly touch with two dolphins, dancing a water ballet together. Fourth, dolphins and trainers climbed up, saluting the viewers and drawing a loud applause. Fifth, a lady looking like a viewer went close to play with the dolphin and fell into the pool carelessly. Two dolphins dived into water and headed the lady onto the bank, like hero saving a beauty, getting a round of applause. Seeing such a humanistic performance, we were delighted intensely.
In the early morning we rode in a yacht and got to Macao in an hour or so and followed the guide, finishing travelling around it in a day. In the evening we paid a visit to the gambling pleasure ground, which had been demonized by the mainland. The famous Manzu Temple looked like a small temple for a gnome, incense burning continuously. Standing beside the Temple, we could see the cross-strait belonging to the mainland, separated by sea water, so close to this side, that a good swimmer could reach by one dive. During the years of the extreme left, the human-smuggling here was much easier than that between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. In the early morning we entered Zhuhai through Gongbei Customs Ports and went directly to Guangzhou.
It was just the sixth of the first month of the lunar year, my 60 birthday according to the Chinese tradition. Xiangyang Qin and her husband invited us to a restaurant close to the Zhujiang River, eating seafood. We didn’t mention my birthday. In Nantong, one’s 60th birthday is an important one and should be celebrated, because it is one Chinese era. Now people have longer life than ever before and usually on the 60th birthday there is no big celebration. That the family have a party in a restaurant is adequate. Our two sons were overseas and it was impossible for our family to have a party. Xiangyang Qin used to be a student of ours in the Mapo Middle School and in 1980, she was a member of the reviewing class for the CEE in the Zhengji Middle School, who often came to us to ease the pressure of the CEE. In the autumn of 1981, she was enrolled into the CUMT. After the graduation she married a teacher of the CUMT and worked in a technical secondary school not far from the CUMT. When we began to live in the apartment of Pengda, our two families lived not far from each other and she could come to our home with her son. Later her family of three moved to Guangzhou. I spent my 60 birthday in Guangzhou, which made me very satisfied. Some of my next generation in Nantong sent me congratulation message. I thought of the 6oth birthday of my grandpa. It was in 1950 when I was only 5 years old and I remembered that the celebration seemed grand. When my father was 60 years old we worked in the Mapo Middle School and he came to us from Nantong. I was 28 and celebrated his birth day in my small tousy room. Now myself was 60. The time flew and 60 years was a fleeting moment.
There were already flights between Guangzhou and Xuzhou. We took off at 8 from the Baiyun Airport, first to Lianyungang then landed on the Guanyin Airport of Xuzhou, experiencing from the summer to the winter. We had to put on the wadded jacket and then dare go out. We finally could travel by air and took off and landed for altogether 6 times, feeding my addiction. Comparing with Guiying Lin, we dropped behind for almost 40 years, so undertone should be ours. It was unnecessary for us to behavior neither in an undertone nor in a louder tone. For man’s whole life, if you competed for everything, learned everything, thought of everything, compared with everybody originally equal to you, you could do nothing. In the last section I mentioned how a tree seed fallen into the crevice between stones grew tenaciously. As an advanced creature, we should know how to face the reality, be good at taking advantage of one’s own condition, try our best, persist in struggling and let the life emit a different spark, forming a strong bosom, which could dissolve many of your regrets and let you always be calm and unperturbed.
Proofread on Dec. 25, 2008 in Xuzhou
Uploading on Aug 7, 2023 in Xuzhou
