Part II – 1 – The Start of A Journey

Autumn arrived with ripening crop, and the sun gliding away further north. Its rays were still bright but without much heat, like the light reflected from a mirror.

Many years had passed without much notice, and suddenly Ou Yang was 30 years old. For all these years,Ou Yang had been happily leading internal and external travel groups all over China, to the beautiful and exotic Yunnan, crowded Beijing, and big, modern Shanghai, home of delicious delicacies and humorous Xie Ju of Chuan Ju of Chengdu, while her husband Ge Wen worked loyally for a state owned enterprise as a civil engineer and waited with unquestionable fidelity for her to come home.

Ge Wen was born at the end of 1966, which explains his revolutionary name: the inverse of Wen Ge（文革 ), which means The Cultural Revolution started in the year he was born. In the year 2000, Ge Wen was already 34. For a married man, at this age, he should have long been a father by now, but Ou Yang had held the issue and dragged it on until both families were on the verge of making threats! Ou Yang, again, had arrived at a crucial threshold  where she felt that becoming a mother was much more serious an issue than the sweet love she had lost. Time seemed to pass by happily, with a busy schedule and lots of money coming into her big piggy bank. To her, a kid was a vague image of the translucent Casper, the cute and friendly ghost from the American children’s movie, while Casper lost a bit of his friendliness  in real life which concerned her and his cuteness stayed in the movie unfortunately!

Having kids is a normal family issue and the first child can sometimes be an accident. Ou Yang had already two incidents of pregnancy, and she had insisted on having them aborted. Thirty years of age for the traditional people of Xi’an would have been an old age to be a mom. Usually mothers would try to scare their daughters into thinking that they had become too old to be mothers. But Ou Yang did not think so and often told them that foreign women could have kids even after 40.   Naturally, Ou Yang became very careful because of these 2 incidents. She was still shivering over the weird and scary experience at the hospital after her last abortion. The woman doctor was one of her sisters’ friends, and she showed Ou Yang her aborted 12 week-old baby left in a sieve ready to be seeped through.

“Look, look here! Do you see the head?”

” Where?”

Naive Ou Yang had no clue that the head of a 12 week-old baby was as small as a sweet pea, too vague and difficult to be differentiated among the blur of tissue. It took quite some time for Ou Yang to accept that there was truly a tiny “human” head in there. The whole body was shorter than an index finger with two tiny fragile legs on which the doctor pointed out to Ou Yang its minuscule but visible feet with infinitesimal toes. She could not finish this odd visit any more and dashed out of the room puking her guts out on the way. The running water tap just worsened her feeling of disgust, reminding her that the little pile of stuff called her baby was going to be flushed down the drain like the food residue.

It was the first time she saw life in that particular form and in that unexpected way. It was shocking enough that she felt sicker than she ever had before. It made her wonder, and she was saddened. Life could be like that,  and life could be just that fragile and unimportant. The little thing was not born yet and it had long lost its voice and right before it was even identified as a human being. Yet Ou Yang, whose voice and right were more important, was too yang even to make it a question; she was too much of a Chinese to start raising it as an issue, and so were the doctors and nurses who dealt with this issue every day. It only could be at most a rough lump on the family tree that would get older and uglier with time, or sighs for the ancestors not having their expectations met.

After all, China officially holds no Christian values, which makes the culture with its rules and rituals amazingly different from that of the Christian world. Yet even in the original homeland of Christianity, its interpretation has been making transitions with time, with discoveries of formerly unknown matters and adjusting the purposes of the anciently distilled and purified moral doctrines and theories. China has a bit of everything in its culture and traditions, even Islam, but not too much of anything or everything. Good or bad, we have no right to judge. Unfortunately, we have to deal with issues in certain domain that are beyond our ability and property to judge! Heaven and earth lie there tens of thousands of years in front of us, speaking of no words, uttering absolutely no judgement.

Ou Yang had been rather content with her admirable work and her life with Ge Wen. There was money and sex whenever she wanted.  She was making 100,000 RMB a year in 2000, when the average social salary was around 30,000 RMB. Her salary plus tips was lubricant enough for everything to go on well, and for everyone in her family not to have resentment towards her: her husband at home, her mother and mother-in-law, her sisters and extended family. All that began to change when the two families put the question of motherhood on the table. They addressed it as a serious matter and she would not have been left alone without giving her consent.

She had been thinking about it of course, but it was hard for her to picture herself as a mother, a mother like her own.  In the back of her mind, she had this clear image of Isabelle, if ever she would want to be a mother. But after the repeatedly lamenting stories of her mother and grandmother, she just could not see how she could be different or happier. She had seen so much of the light shed by Isabelle that she could not tell if she was mesmerized or not. How could there be wonderful mothers like Isabelle, and how could there be this kind of love that was so relaxing and releasing?

Ou Yang knew an emigration company in Beijing since she had a very close business relationship with some travel agencies there. Yes, Ou Yang had been lured, and rather than by the sweet motherly image of Isabelle met at school or by the illusion of love with Marius Gallant that she experienced when she was twenty years old, she had been pushed into finding a solution for her future child. She could not stand going to pick up her niece and nephew at their primary schools and having her ear drums deafened by the intolerable high decibel, high frequency noise of 70 kids swooping out and down the stairs, along with the other six thousands pupils, onto the two basket ball courts at school after classes were finished!  She also found it extremely hard to accept the teacher’s comment on her nephew’s little book, underlined in red pen: “It is disrespectful not to have stood up to bow to the teacher at the beginning of the class. 5 points is removed from the moral behavioral judgement.”  She didn’t know what to say to the poor little ones who had kept studying for another two hours after dinner or had to take chess or piano lessons on Saturdays or Sundays; she felt that it was wrong to have the doctors give them antibiotics to avoid missing classes whenever they had a cold! Enough, she obviously had just had enough of all these, enough of her mother’s wretched stories, enough of the schools, and enough of the pressure on her to repeat what her sisters and millions of other Chinese people had been diligently and desperately endeavoring for their kids who would “surely” look after their old decaying bodies and weathered souls when the time comes.

Ou Yang’s decision of leaving her mother and sisters was not taken as seriously and sadly by her own family than the family of her accomplice Ge Wen, mainly because she was not like Ge Wen who was the only child of his parents. Ge Wen’s siblings had obviously not been killed by the One-Child policy installed after 1979, but rather by the unfortunate storm of famine during the Great Leap Forward that lasted from 1957-1961. Only Ge Wen had survived.  But it must be said that neither, no one in Ou Yang’s family was happy about their decision to emigrate to Quebec, Canada. First of all, Canada was a country that they had never heard much of before, and what kind of place was Quebec? To Ou Yang’s mother, that was a big “NO” from the very beginning. Yet, Ou Yang was her youngest, her “chou chou” (a french word meaning “the spoiled one”), and she reluctantly agreed under the influence of the whole family and with the sweet yet uncertain hope of having a future “yang” (foreign) grandchild in Canada. As for Ge Wen’s parents, though they had always been as pleasantly agreeable as their only son, their hearts were caught in between losing their only old age financial security, spiritual reliance, and the joy of a future grandson, and helping their son please his wife. For them, it was worse than having their hearts broken. It seemed that their souls were being scattered around in an ambiguous torment of wanting to keep their son close and wanting him to be happy!

 To be Continued…

Eleven years ago, the famous twin towers crumbled down in black smokes! We could never forget the scene of a man falling along side of one of the towers and we could still never be able to imagine the horror and desperation that the three thousand trapped people went through. That was a war under the sun, the bright sun of September 11th, which caused the US wars to Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 11 years killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as a collateral damage and indebted US with 4 trillions, another huge collateral damage that has surely put US deeper into today’s economic trap. Costly revenge!

This is a war, a war everyone understands and agrees to. But there are other fatal wars that are not easily seen and seldom or not enough noticed such as the abuses of antibiotics. Antibiotics are invented in the mid-2oth century as a gift and bless to us humans just as in the Trojan War for Helen, a wooden horse was pulled as a trophy into the city with armed greek soldiers hidden in its belly.  The abuses of antibiotics are breaking our immune system down by weakening or destroying our basic health foundation similarly as the horse was hiding Troy’s defeat in its belly.

I have been having a cold for 5 days now. Last thursday night, I started to feel hot at home. I thought it was because I closed the air-conditioner. I turned it on again. After 2 hours of cold air blowing and 21 degrees, the house was still hot and I was even sweating! My son came back home and reminded me that I might have caught the cold like his girlfriend! I found the thermometer and discovered that I did have a high fever: 38.8 degrees celsius. Then I went on Wikipedia and read about what to do with cold. It is not bacteria caused ailment, therefore, antibiotics will not help at all.

I video-chatted with my dad Friday morning and told him that that I had a cold. The first thing my dad asked me was that if I had taken antibiotics! I said no and explained why. But they still urged me to go get some in order to get better faster. In China, they do not know that almost all antibiotics are under the control of doctors. If we want to get some, we have to get the doctors’ prescriptions. The doctors here do not listen to us and they are very careful in prescribing antibiotics to ailment like mine. So hard luck, I said to them, I would die! My mother was curious and asked me what I would do to get better. I take Ibuprofen to kill the pain in my swollen glands that are fight the war for me as the first lines of defence. I need to sleep, you know, and I can not sleep because of the fightings going on in my throat! I love the green capsule of Ibuprofen that soothes immediately my burning throat, leaving me some tranquility and no collateral damage.

When Sunday passed, I stopped feeling my throat! Yeeeeeee! I seldom suffered cold with fever during the past 20 years, but this time, it is an enormous event in my life. I feel that time has stopped in front of me and stared at me as if I really was unbearably ugly. I look messy and old, but it is worth the patience to let the glands and other immune organs to fight for me instead of employing imported munitians too early than necessary. The basic foundation for our health is the immune system that needs to be protected and after all, to be trained as the army, so when the enemies come, it can fight back strongly and protect out health. I feel very happy to have  followed the health science in curing myself with no abuse of antibiotics.

When younger, we sometimes lived our lives like half asleep. Many things happened and it seemed everything was alright. We could never stop sweating and panicking only when we became conscious about the gravity of the matter! The abuse of antibiotics again have left us sweating and wondering what if…

My son now is 23 years old now. The two weeks after he was born, it was such an unimaginable nightmare that I just couldn’t write this article without talking about this experience. He was born with caesarean section.  I got low fever after we took our son home from 10 days’ stay in the hospital. The low fever was constant and would never go away. Obviously there was an infection somewhere. I went back to the hospital for a check up.

Upon arrival, the doctor hospitalized me and gave me antibiotic drip without any tests!  Oh my dear, the drip went on for 5 days without the temperature coming down! The worst thing as that my son was alone at home with his 25 years old young dad! I was in a true half asleep status that 5 days passed without thinking too much about how my son was doing at home! Being a new mom, frankly, I did not have much sense about how to be a mom!  The motherly love is usually gained and learned only after the child is born, but my son was not there for me to learn the sense of a mother. I was all alone in the hospital receiving this whatever antibiotics drip that went into my body like water. On the 5th day, the temperature was still 39, exactly the same as the day I went in. Then the doctor took some tests and gave me some small pills, still antibiotics, but another kind according to the tests. The temperature came down 3 hours after I took the first pill!  The next day, I was out to be with my son.

The look of my son gave me shiver when I got home.He was so small, skinny, all white with his lips very pinky red. He did not smile, staring at me without eyes moving much. I found out that  he had been spewing milk and having dierreah for 2 days, of which the inexperienced dad thought normal for new-born babies.  The evening of that day, I threatened his dad to bring our son to the hospital. It usually took about 2 hours for them to come back home, but two and half hours went by and I was still alone lying in bed at home.  We had no cellular phones at that time. I was so worried that I went quickly to the hospital myself.

When I arrived, I saw that the nurses were shaving my son’s head! What the hell they were doing? I saw through the glass window that my son’s hands and feet were covered in white bands. The nurses were trying their best to find his blood vessels for injection! Oh, my lord! Not antibiotics for such a little new born?!  A small plastic bag with yellowish liquid was hanging on a metal support. It was not quite to my surprise that he was undergoing something serious, though not serious enough to make me guess the blood transfusion! My son was diagnosed three degree loss of body fluid and unbalance of acid and base. The doctor told us that he could have died if he was sent a few hours later!

My lovely niece is in Milan right now studying in Politecnico di Milano. Her primary and high schooling were accompanied with these antibiotics drip whenever she was sick. I was not sure if her doctor mother had her go through a test before the use of antibiotics or thought for a second that if antibiotics was the right solution at all( I would love to believe that she did). Every time she was sick, she was brought to the hospital where her mother works and got this bottles of drip. Antibiotics drip had become a religion in China for all kinds of big and small health problems. For  the poor school kids, it has become a quick solution for them to return to their classrooms faster, because no one wants their kids to miss schools or lessons, otherwise, they would have legged behind others…

Even though we suffer the abuse, some like us are lucky to have survived this horrible bless. Among even the developed countries, abuses of antibiotics bring people serious side and adverse effects on the light side, and on the fatal side, organ function failures, incurable problems, even deaths. A big percentage of antibiotics prescriptions are not necessary,  and China ranks the highest of antibiotics drug abuse among the countries. “Only around 20 percent of patients require antibiotics, but recent statistics show as many as 70 percent of Chinese in-patients using the drugs. The maximum recommended by the World Health Organization is 30 percent”. Even though China started last month to crack down the abuse, the purpose will be hard to achieve without its people having a good knowledge about the functions, side and adverse effects. In An Hui province, the devastating tragedy of one worker killing his pneumonia woman doctor was caused indirectly and partly by the abuse of antibiotics. He found out that his early improper antibiotics treatment in Shenzhen had caused the resistance to normal antibiotics that he had to pay astronautic number of money for imported medicine from other countries without guarantee that he would be cured ( need the link for your story posted some weeks ago).

This is a war, an invisible war against ignorance, non professional attitude from doctors, against laziness and profit over people’s health and well being. We need to get to know the health science even as patients, in order sometimes to fight harder to avoid some greedy doctors to push the sales of new antibiotics. We need to be attentive to and patient for the health situation and suffer that we have to go through. Certain suffering is not all bad, comparing to long term irreversible damages to our health.  If we want to keep our immune system stronger, give it a change to practice, to train itself to be strong soldiers for you and me. All medicines are there to save our lives only when we are in danger, but it is eventually our immune system that truly sustains our body and survive our health, not the antibiotics. If the system is gone, antibiotics can then do nothing. When nowadays the busy life style seems indispensable, the one and the only indispensable is our life and its sustainer – Our immune system!

Part I -3 – Heart Broken, and Then A Wedding

Falling in love with a young Frenchman on a tourist trip was beyond her imagination, as well as how to go about it and if it was to end up in anything more. But Ou Yang was either too young to feel “supernatural,” or her “responsibilities,” or simply too soaked to be able to feel anything but biological calls. Both Ou Yang and Marius felt like they had hidden sponges under their skins and they sucked on to each other whenever they had a chance! Recalling their cuddles and kisses, even just looking at each other with their secret love and the kind of dark “dirty” controlled desire would send her out of her mind. She found it very hard to be close to him and unbearable not to be close to him.

Only two days had passed and they were already inseparable. The trip had brought them to Jiu Zhai Gou. In the evening, after Ou Yang was removed of her duties, she knew that Marius would be waiting for her. They would leave the group behind and go out somewhere nearby, into a Heaven on Earth dreamland with pools of crystal clear water. Marius’ eyes were filled with green reflections from the water and the trees standing around it. They could look into the depths of the pond and see the fallen branches extending  further away, and there was nothing stopping them from looking into each other’s eyes and trying to stay as long as possible, and of course, “les espaces entre les doigts ont étés créés pour laisser une autre personne les combler” (the spaces between the fingers are created for another person to fill in).  In that moment, both felt that there was no mountain higher than the one under their feet and no place better than this fairyland and no person had ever been better than the one in front of them; the whole world existed only for them.

You will always wake up from every dream, just like every day has a night to follow. It seems that the more glamorous the love, the shorter it lasts, just like the quick and energetic passing flare of fireworks, an exciting popping flash in the sky, quickly fading and giving the universe back to its permanent darkness. Ou Yang’s group returned to Xi An. The airport had become the most tedious place she had ever been, even though Marius had promised to write to her and would plan another visit soon. But that promise had stayed a promise, recorded in her book with a few letters. Ou Yang’s soul had gone dormant for about a year with unbearable and unbeatable patience.

Eventually her heart was broken, but not by the fact that Marius never showed up. Like Ophelia in Hamlet, the dream of love would have never died if she had not fallen into the water and drowned herself, still holding a bouquet of beautiful poisonous Rue in her hand. A virgin girl, pure and fresh as white orchid petals, would always take her first love too seriously to let it go.. As a girl born in the early 70’s, a somewhat educated young woman from the bosom city of China, of course Ou Yang expected to be married with the man who took her virginity. She became half lunatic and often daydreamed about Marius, who had been the one and only man in her heart. That she had refused all marriage proposals had made her family wonder what had gone wrong with her and think that she was not normal.

At the same time, Ou Yang’s mother continued to find potential suitors for her to choose from, without knowing the things going on in her daughter’s mind. Ou Yang could not imagine what would have happened if her mother and sisters had known the story.  Her sisters, being both more than 10 years older than Ou Yang, behaved just like her mom. Since her 20th birthday after graduation, Ou Yang’s Mom and sisters, together with the help of her extended family, had all been very keen on getting her into a marriage, otherwise the “good” ones would have all been taken, leaving her a spinster.

Another year passed , and Ou Yang turned 22. Oh, she felt old!! After a year of picking, she finally chose a decent looking man,,university graduate,  tall, lean, and somewhat square faced, with a nice pleasant smile. His eyes were small, though, and that seemed to be his only shortcoming amongst all his merits. He was not only smiley, but also very modest, and never uttered a word more than he should when he was with people. He was a few years older, which kept Ou Yang’s family further assured. Everyone in the family thought that he was the one, not just because they thought he and his family were rich or socially elevated, but also because he was pleasant and seemed to harmoniously agree on everything. Fortunately Ou Yang agreed, but with a creepy anxiety that was gnawing at her: she was not a virgin any more and she was ambiguously worried about what to do when that fact came to light!

In order to settle her mind of this irritating issue, she had sex with him before the wedding, with a stained handkerchief prepared. Things went well without a doubt! They dated for about a year and the wedding was proposed by the man’s family and was agreed upon and arranged accordingly on 1st of October, China’s National Day.

The wedding was held in the big hall of the Shangri-La Hotel, Xi An.  Chinese love red and gold colours that symbolize prosperity and wealth. The set-up was very Chinese, showing the rich abundant ambiance. Everything was red: tables covered in red cloth, chairs in red fabric, floor carpets, bouquets of flowers in red and gold , and even the waiters and waitresses were dressed in red-flower patterned dresses and suits. The expenses were covered mostly by Ou Yang’s family, as her two sisters had married quite comfortably well-off  men with important positions in the city government and, Ou Yang herself has been working for a few years as a tour guide with no mean tips. The man’s family, all been frugal  teachers and clerks, was therefore relieved of the burden, yet they did feel shame for not being able to afford such expenses for their once-a-life-time wedding.

At the entrance to the big hall, both families were lined up on either side of the gate to meet their guests. Ou Yang’s dress was a traditional Chinese Qi Pao with the side openings running to the ankles, hiding her beautiful pearl-colour high heel shoes. Her hair was curled and brought up, and her long neck was unusually exposed and a few locks of curly hair bounced up and down on both sides of her well-painted face. All of this made her a very desirable woman and of course made her soon-to-be husband very aroused. Happy and excited as he was, Ou Yang’s husband felt great in a white western-style suit that made him truly stand out amongst the reds and golds, giving him an unearthly quality of some sort. He was quite content to be able to marry Ou Yang, a nice, pretty, ambitious, loving and caring woman for his life. He would never want to go anywhere without her, would never want to go sleep without her. She was his sky, his air, his breath, his everything!

To Be Continued…

Part I-2－Mother,Marriage, and Marius Gallant, Summer

From the moment Ou Yang graduated from school and started working as a tour guide, her mother had started a campaign to get her into a marriage. Ou Yang had just turned 20, and in her mind, marriage was something that she had no desire to hear about, at least for the moment. She had her own plans, her own dreams, and the boys of her liking were on her mind! She would either find excuses to escape when her mom brought back boys that she thought suitable for her, or nag her sisters to help persuade their mother that it was still too early for marriage. Again and again, many such ” Xiang Qin” (Match-Making) had never changed Ou Yang’s mind. This kind of “I think he is good for you” really turned the love off in her head. Poor boys, either from good families, or “good” looking, or from the army, were turned away. Some did not even get the chance to see how she looked, except for in a photograph.

Ou Yang’s mother would always mumble or urge her to be serious about the matter, warning her that she would not want to be a “left over,” often saying that “shopping left and right, found a leaking oil lamp” ( 东选西选，选个漏油灯盏). Her mother’s proverb-like saying did little to help, and she didn’t know if it was meant as pressure or as a curse for her. Modern Chinese women never understood why their mothers still pushed their young daughters to be married so early, just as their mothers pushed or arranged for them. The women of the New China were supposed to be independent, no longer having to sell themselves as fresh meat or vegetables, but their mothers continued to be like their mothers and mothers’ mothers, busying themselves in taking on this serious matter as their everlasting career, until their daughters found their home.

Ou Yang, her name unique and rare, was a special girl that most Chinese would not find pretty. She was a bit too tall, her hips a bit too wide, her eye-brows quite “aggressive.” She spoke loudly with one-sided passion, a possible side effect of her tourist guide job. At work, she needed to yell to the tourists and be passionate, whether they were or not. She intimidated men with her pleasant or unpleasant ways. However, there were a few boys from her school who were quite interested in her and who still kept in contact with her after graduation. She went out with them, playing sports, eating small snacks on the street, or seeing a movie. That made her mother very happy. Every time Ou Yang brought a male friend home, her mom would treat him better than her own kids, providing tea, snacks and hovering around them and asking him questions until Ou Yang became upset and yelled at her to leave them alone. The dates seemed to go all right, but each date ended when the man started talking about marriage.

Some might say that Ou Yang did not rank high in Chinese traditional taste for beauty, but if you are of fine mind, you might find that beauty changes the presentation, connotation, and thereafter sensation, it might cause according to different era, race and nation. It also differs from person to person. Ou Yang would have ranked 5 out of 10 average in Chinese people’s sense of beauty, although she would have ranked a 9 in foreigners’ eyes, and her English helped a little with that result. Beauty to men might just be like food to hungry men, the hungrier they are, the better the food, or it also might be like a seduction hidden deep in a western teen’s mind after seeing an Asian girl getting off the elevator one day. This hidden memory of the pretty Asian girl and his early sexual urges might have just blurred his eyes or changed his senses, or it might be that one’s sense of beauty is purely subjective, carried along by each person along with the rhyme, place and their overall personal situation.

Ou Yang had met a handsome fair-haired young man whose name was Marius Gallant. Judging solely by his name, it is obvious that he was not Chinese, but then again, most Chinese did not know which country he came from. To the Chinese, foreigners,with their names and their looks, are as strange and uniformed as Chinese or Asians are to them. Who was this handsome young man? She did not dare to tell anyone, especially her mother. It would be out of the question to date a foreigner, let alone the possibility of marrying one, So, the dating went on under the radar for the time it lasted.

It was Marius Gallant who fell in love with Ou Yang on the plane to Chengdu, Sichuan Province. It was a trip aimed atLe Shan Da Fo  and  Jiu Zhai Gou near Chengdu. Traveling is a good time to feel different and experience new eccentric settings to force our senses into spontaneous status. Marius Gallant, a 25 years old Frenchman, originally from the city Orange where there is a well-maintained Roman Amphi-Theatre dated AD 33 under the Roman Emperor Augustus.

Marius was medium height and extremely well proportioned with legs a bit longer. His nose line ran straight from his forehead down, just like that of Michelangelo’s David. Ou Yang had never seen any one’s lips so beautifully shaped and of proper thickness, and she could hardly take her eyes off them. His eyes, oh, his eyes, Ou Yang simply had to avoid looking into them, for the reason that she would get lost in them and find herself ranting about nothing to her group! One thing she could fix her eyes was his silky, shiny blond hair, cut short on the sides and back leaving the longer part on top combed to the right side. Ou Yang’s heart could barely endure the seduction that Marius’ longer locks of hair provoked, those locks that flew aside naturally following the whirl started from the left to the right. The sun shed its breath-taking romance on his golden hair, his perfect profile and this pair of jade green eyes full of differences, freshness and wonders that Ou Yang would fight to keep her sensations not so strayed as to show little sign of her biological admiration for such a beautiful creature…

When in love, we change. Not that we do it consciously with intelligent processing, rather that the changes just take place, driven by our biological urges.  Biologically, it would be a disastrous event to our species if a man and a woman were to meet and their beauty caused no ripples, especially when there is a striking contrast between the two of them. Marius had noticed Ou Yang in her own special ways, special not only as Chinese, but also to this fine minded young man who was visiting China for the 1st time.

Ou Yang got the signal of Marius’ clear intention by being touched on her waist after she sent everyone to what they wanted to do at the end of one day in Chengdu. That was obviously too bold a gesture for Ou Yang to accept while a too shy move deep in her true heart. She backed up one step while she truly liked his hand on her waist.
“Why didn’t he just pull me against him since I could do nothing about it?” she thought, regretting that it did not happen the way she wished.  When Marius offered her to take a walk in the Du Fu Cao Tang close to their hotel, Ou Yang said yes immediately, fearing that this offer would expire before it was accepted. Ou Yang walked calmly back to her room shared with another Chinese staff, her joy could not be concealed by her severe facial expressions, her excitement could not be hidden away from the humming of her favorite American movie song:  The Hills Are Alive , one of the songs in the Sound of Music when Maria fell in love with Captain Von Trapp, a song that ranked 10th among American movie songs in the last 100 years.

Until she came around the corner where she was supposed to meet Marius, Ou Yang was still singing this song. She was so hyper that the song just would not stop . She pulled the prettiest skirt from her suitcase, shed some perfume on her neck and put on some makeup that might not be necessary at all. It was towards 9pm when the sun had set to shine other parts of the world leaving Chengdu to its sweet tranquility. Two minutes after she arrived, she heard footsteps coming from her back. She knew it was him and she dared not to turn around. She stayed as if she was almost in a frozen manner, waiting something to happen without her feeling too overwhelmed, something sweet, unexpected, something that she had been longing for since she was 15…

“Yang yang!” She heard. Nothing actually happened except for Marius calling her name, yet sweet sweet “Yang Yang” out from his soft cherry-like lips had already drugged her into not knowing who she was and where she was. She turned around and saw Marius holding a small bundle of flowers with one red rose in the middle. She accepted the flowers, smelled and inhaled the refreshing scent down her spine and into the back of her brain. She was happy, so happy that she offered a kiss on his cheek. There she was pulled very close to him, so close that she could hear his breath and feel his heart beat. For Marius, it was the same. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips gently on hers. Ou Yang did not move away this time, but instead, she held him tight, so tight that she could have gone inside Marius’ body and became one together with her ideal prince.

To be continued

Preamble: We are always looking for something “better”. Sometimes we have the illusion that new is better and different is better, and all the while we are forgetting that old is probably the best! We are naive to assume that life will be finer in another place, and that the husbands will become ideal. We are bold enough to go through the troubles of emigration and patient enough to hold ourselves together so long for the moment to be in this place where we always have believed there will be the perfect ones waiting for us, yet only to find out that Paradise is an empty Circus after the show, where we lose even the ones we have … Despite this grand disappointment, HOPE, whoever retains it, will help them find the truly better ones…

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”― Victor Hugo

Paradise Circus – The Hidden Seduction

– Spring, Xi An/China – Ou Yang Mei Wen and Elisabeth

Xi An, one of the birthplaces of ancient Chinese civilization along the Yellow River, divides its history with the old square City Walls. The thick walls protect its inhabitants from invasions as well as encumber the citizens. Under the ground lies the Army of Terracotta Warriors with horses and accessories, and at the edge of the old city was the terminus of the Silk Road. We will never cease to marvel at its historical heritage. The very first Dynasty of China took Xi An as its capital city, and it was capital throughout the following 12 dynasties until the peak of Chinese culture during the Tang Dynasty (712AD-756AD). The Vanguard Shanghai displays 100 years of Chinese history, and Beijing 1,000 years, yet Xi An tells stories going back 3,000 years. Between Athens, Cairo, and Rome, Xi An, a capital city in the bosom of China, presents its past glory with the Emperor-Air architecture of the city and its buildings.

Ou Yang Mei Wen, such a beautiful and rare four-character name! Her parents call her Xiao Mei, but her teachers and classmates call her Ou Yang because there were already some other Wens and Ou Yan sounded so exotic that they could not miss the chance to pronounce the sounds. When she was 18 years old, Ou Yang was already 1.67 meters tall, giving her an extra beauty point among her average-sized, 1.58-meter peers. Her face was oval shaped and she had high cheekbones; her eyes were a bit small, but showed passion and empathy. Her eyebrows went from the middle slightly away towards her temples; usually, we would say that girls with that kind of eyebrows are bitches. Unlike what her name indicated, she had a slightly rough and strong voice. Her big hips showed her fertility was just as passionate as her laughter. She was the picture of a fully-grown woman in spite of the covered-up breasts and bottom in classic late 80′s fashion.

When learning English as a future tour guide at The Xi An New Century Travel School, Ou Yang was introduced to Elisabeth, the wife of an American teacher. The American family was new in town and in China, and they would have loved to be friends with some locals. Elisabeth’s main job was to take care of their son Sunny, their “home” at the guesthouse of the school, and to “cook,” while teaching only four hours of Basic English. For Ou Yang, it was a great opportunity and a privilege that many of her classmates envied her for, because having some Americans to hang out with, to show them around the town would indeed improve her oral English and give her knowledge about the USA. She was so happy and so eager to take the three of them to see the City on one Saturday morning that she could hardly hold her joy inside, as she was supposed to. She couldn’t help singing the whole morning long.

When Ou Yang arrived at the gate of the guesthouse her tourist “clients” were already waiting for her. Ou Yang brought many bottles of home-made food for them and the best gift she could think of for their three year old son: a motor car with batteries. Before she could take them out, she was embarrassed by the big long hugs from the teacher and his wife. She stood there without moving, letting herself be taken over by these two big Americans. Though somewhat awkward and nervous, as Chinese do not have this kind of social rituals, she liked it and felt for the first time closely endeared. No one had ever hugged her or kissed her on her cheek like that before in her life. It was exciting and energizing! After taking out the food and the gift, Ou Yang received even longer hugs and kisses, but this time, she was prepared! She gave a sort of response by squeezing slightly with her arms and touching their faces with one corner of her mouth. She had completely surprised herself by hugging and kissing them back!

Ou Yang’s school had provided a mini bus for their visit.  Being a foreign teacher in China in 1988 was almost like being a King and came with a weird sense of superiority. Of course, it was something very new! In most Chinese people’s minds, foreigners were from The Eight Nation Alliance, with ghostly blue eyes and malnourished dry yellow hair, and were trying to cut China into pieces to feed their need for post-Industrial Revolution expansion. Their hearts and senses had been burned with the humiliating period of Chinese history between 1840 and1901, when foreign troops from eight countries invaded China and drove the Empress Dowager Cixi to Xi An, along with her nephewEmperor Guang Xu.  Hong Kong was leased to Britain in 1897 and Macau to Portugal in 1899 for 100 years, a heavy “indemnity” that was paid to beg for peace within their own country.  The Boxers were wiped out by the foreign troops long before they realized that their biggest enemy had all along been their corrupt-to-the-bones Qing Government, and eventually their own indulgence in their own Bagu rituals and submissive hierarchical philosophy of  confucius.  The Boxer Rebellion also claimed the lives of 240 foreign missionaries, 20,000 Chinese Christians, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese and foreign civilians and soldiers. I guess it is quite normal to have a slight xenophobia after even the Queen and Emperor fled Beijing to hide behind the thick Old City Walls of Xi An.

Time and history does not surprise us by presenting completely different behaviors within a short enough span. Instead of being afraid now, Chinese did start to see why the foreigners could be so strong and how us Chinese had become chickens waiting to be killed. The government started to hire Americans, British, Australians, and Canadians to come to teach in China, to open our eyes about what was going on outside the Great Wall. They were, for the first time in history, treated the opposite of what the Kings and Queens of all times of China treated their own teachers. At that time, foreign teachers were paid 3,500 to 6,000 Yuan a month while their Chinese counterparts were paid 150-300 Yuan, which finally made us see the light for China in a very special and unusual manner.

The past can’t define our future, as Ou Yang now was showing her teachers the place where Ci Xi and her puppet Emperor lived in Xi An during their suicidal escape, as the tattoo of “Dong Ya Bing Fu”(the sick south-eastern Chinese) did not attach any more to our pretty Ou Yang Mei Wen. The past was just like the Terra-cotta Warriors buried underground, with new plants and trees growing as if nothing had ever happened. We could never stop wondering how time could hold our breath more than anything or anyone else and how time can cure our wounded hearts like a magic invisible doctor.

On the road, Ou Yang was deeply amazed by how Elisabeth talked to Sunny.  She had never seen any mother talking to her child like that! For sure, she understood “sweetie, honey, my love”, but she could never understand how kids could be treated so gently and soaked with so much love.  When she saw how often Elisabeth kissed Sunny on his juicy little face, she could only wonder about where this love came from. She was 19 years old and could not remember a single kiss or hug like that. Her mom would usually push her needy hand away when Ou Yang tried to hold her mom’s hand because of fear or in need of a cuddle, or Ou Yang might hear “get aside, I am busy!” Look at Elisabeth, she attended to Sunny’s every request and finished it with a hug, a kiss, or a sweet word. Ou Yang was so refreshed by all she saw. She felt as if she was the one who was receiving all these sweet words, hugs and kisses! She sensed that her somewhat semi-open heart was bathing in a non-explicable feeling which she had no vocabulary for. It seemed that she was ascending to a platform of some sort of wonderful feelings, a bit intimidating, but soothing, encouraging and energizing, a stage where she kind of knew that she would take off to some place, a place which she was not clear about so far.

Ou Yang led them on to the old city walls.

“Wow, how special and marvelous! ” Elisabeth nearly screamed. To Ou Yang, Elisabeth was very special too! She was taller than her and of slim body type. She had a young fresh face that was always glowing. Her Irish blue eyes under her joyful smiling eyebrows flickered with excitement and her narrow chin made her smile big and wide. We had no idea at all what was going on in her mind. An American stood there in front of the very “foreign” culture that the western countries had been dreaming to share, while she could just know so much about her 400 years of history. She also had “yellow” coloured hair like the “foreign ghosts”.  But in that moment, the hair was changing into a fine golden blond and they were dancing healthily around her beautiful face and charming long neck like wind over the edge of the same old repaired walls. Elisabeth,  a 28 year-old Irish American, had come to China in a very good and unprecedented way, or rather to say that she had come at a time where Chinese would see “foreigners” with unprecedented angles, wowing the wonders of the old China, giving her loving heart out to people whom she had never met before.

On the corner, an old Chinese man came into sight. He was an old man with his long white hair bundled on the back of his head like a daoist master. Strangely, he was not doing Tai Ji or meditation; in fact he was doing something that no one would ever think of! He was knitting! He knitted vests for women, hats for men, and little purses for young girls. Another thing you would never think of was his age. In China, no one minds being asked about their age, especially old men.

“Old Grandpa, how old are you?” Ou Yang asked him.

The old man was used to the question, and seeing all these foreigners. He lifted his head from his knitting and smiled gently.

“87 this year, 87!”  We could see that he was proud of his age, with wisdom hidden in his silvery hair, tanned wrinkles on his face and hands. We could also feel a distant love vaguely endearing us in his seemingly un-vanquishable spirit. 87 years was not long in the grand scheme of 5,000 years of history, and at 19 years old,  Ou Yang’s life had just started, a life that might be very different! Even though she had been overwhelmed by this particular opportunity with the American family and she did not pay much attention to who this old man was, how he felt and where his confidence came from, Ou Yang, a young life full of energy, hungry for discoveries and love, would definitely make her own way on a road that she could not be sure of how far it would take her.

To be continued…