The Sky of Mei Mei  (3) – Hope

Mei Mei had no other ways to break out from the cocoon! She had no courage, no money  nor true friends! She tried many times timidly from dépanneur to dépanneur ( grocery store ) almost begging to be their helper, wishing that they would shed some sympathy on the pathetic little “Cosette”*. She would clean the floors and the toilets, carry heavy goods, put food on the shelves, gather empty cardboards; she would smile to the clients, say nice words and keep them happy for their stores…She would simply do anything if she could make $7 or 6, even $5 an hour. She tried so hard that she eventually got one!

Now her world turned a bit pinky. She started making “money” now! She felt really very happy! Ever since she moved to Canada, she lost her right to pocket money, not mentioning her grandpa’s spoiling smile and little red envelopes for her! But now, she was making her own money by working! She felt as if her spine was growing with this itch in her bone marrow. She was so itchy that she stretched backward from time to time to feel it! She also sensed that some creatures were creeping under her nipples as if they were getting bigger. She started to look at herself in the mirror!

“Aiyaya, what a slouch beaten dog I am!”, she murmured sadly to herself!

“Mmm, I’ve got to be different now! I have to be nicer! I will buy myself a nice dress NOT made in China, hehe! ” She was determined.

She smiled the first time since so long that her skin on the face trembled.  Nothing, nothing ever would replace her revitalized feeling at this moment when this $140 CANADIAN money was in her little hand after one week of work at the rate of $7.45!

“诶，我怎么是这样的？！” 她自己都嫌弃镜子里的自己：黄黄的脸，没有光色；扁平的身材，没有太多曲线。班里和她一样年纪的当地女孩，以中国人的眼睛看她们，俨然已是十分成熟和丰满，更像二十四五岁的女人。而自己则被当地人认为才十二岁？！

“我得改变！要变得漂亮些！买一件法国牌子但不太贵的漂亮衬衫，唇膏，还有。。。” 她盘算着第一次工资如何花呢！她没有去想，人的外形，是食物和文化空气与水，是音乐和运动，是快乐轻松的环境。但一想到要工作了，她慢慢变得轻松。

她第一次微微地笑了。虽然脸在笑，眼睛却没有笑的力气。她愣愣地盯着镜子里异样的自己，用手使劲向耳朵背后别着硬而短粗又不听话乱翘着的黑发。由于太久没有笑过，脸上的皮肤在颤抖，像要裂开似的。不常笑的脸，托不住上拉的脸颊，笑意只维持了两三秒钟，便恢复了沮丧的原样。特别是放学一回家，见到爸妈阴沉的脸，自己也像坠入了冰河。在学校轻松而容易泛笑的脸，一进家门，就变得跟蜡像似的。梅梅喜欢要么待在学校，要么去上班。

才上两天班，就因犯错被主管训斥是“笨蛋！”。虽在爸爸面前哭过一次，但因有早日独立的强烈愿望，她坚持了下来。

工作一周以后，梅梅领到了平生第一次薪水－140加元。这是一周课余工作二十五小时扣除税费后的回报。她每天五点下了学就去上班，直到晚上十一点，而周末不确定。拿着这些钱，梅梅觉得，此时此刻，没有什么其它东西让梅梅能更深刻地体会到重生的感觉，没有什么比这几张印着伊丽莎白二世头像的绿色纸币更加美妙绝伦。

正好周二下午没课，梅梅约了也没课的之鸣来到了皇家山街，第一次用自己的钱买自己喜欢的东西。在商店里看了一下午，梅梅最后买了一件意大利生产的黑色低领衫。

那是一件NARACAMICIE牌子的衬衫。梅梅在镜前试着这件轻飘飘的上衣：前面是方形的开口，大胆地露出一点还未完全成熟的乳房；紧紧的上身，包着十六岁青涩少女暗暗滋长着的欲望；跨过下乳腺，一根发亮的粉色丝带，将衬衫一分为二；上边是绣花丝绸，像秀气大方的文胸，结束在粉色丝带上；不粗不细的粉丝带被系成一个蝴蝶结，紧锁着春意萌发的两只可爱小圆乳；丝带下边是半透明的黑纱料，前短后长地飘垂下来；前面从蝴蝶结下被破开来，露出淡金色绷紧微凹的肚脐，背后从背心也破开来，闪现着腰间洼陷而可数的颗颗脊骨；两片衣裙镶有同粉色的边。开心的梅梅转着身子，下衣裙嫣然飘飘似蝴蝶的两片翅膀，拍着要飞。。。

实在太美了。梅梅从来没见过设计这么美的衣服，也没想到会这么合适她，像是为她量身定做的。衬衫不仅美而合身，也像是给她的渴望也量了尺寸，不大不小，正好装下了她正在复苏的心。梅梅花掉一周的工资加上自己平时存的五十块，果断地买下了这重要的快乐！

她不能等，当场就穿走了新衣服。她把旧衣塞进背包里，和之鸣一起，冲出商店，跳上了脚踏车。风在她耳畔温柔地吹拂着无名的兴奋，股股新鲜而令人鼓舞的能量传遍全身，让她从里到外为之振然。衬衫下翼那两片带粉边的黑色翅膀托着梅梅轻盈的身体和快乐的心，翩翩飞舞而去。。。

She bought a French-made dress! A pretty black low-cast blouse where she could show shyly a bit of still not fully developed breasts, a bit of her 15, soon-to-be 16 years old young Chinese lady’s pride!

With the dress right on after purchase, she dashed out of the store on Mont-Royale Street, Plateau Montréal and jumped on her bike! Flying, flying, she let the breeze wildly whisper into her ears some unknown words of joy.  The fresh and exciting energy ran through her whole body, shocking her from inside out and reluctantly fainting away from the ends of her dark long hair!

With time eclipsing, she studied, and worked hard to put money aside, in the hope that she could leave her small exposed corner of the noisy unrest home for ever! She would rent her own little apartment, or share with a friend; she wanted to meet someone handsome, kind hearted and someone who would give her the peace she had been longing for and some sweet words she had never heard before; she wanted to have a sweet long kiss on her lips with her tired eyes closed, and maybe she wanted to pop up her foot in the air as well,  like the Hollywood movie princesses always do.

Her life had been nothing else but studying 6 hours a day and working another 6 hours after school. She had no time to be friendly with any boy, nor did she have the interest! She told herself to study hard like the Ancient Chinese man (who hung his long hair from the ceiling pillar and put needles on his chair to stay awake ) and work her head off as the Chinese farmer workers in China.

The time for moving out had come when she turned 17. She was so afraid of her furiously tempered mom that she usually started a brain freeze thinking of her. She knew what mom would tell her and the dishes would be scattered on the floor again with deafening breaking noise. There had been too many of these unbearable dramas theatred by mom – a once loving, quiet and graceful mom, but now seemed seized by demons and lost all her senses and spirit.

Mei Mei did not know how to bring this matter up. Of course, she could always talk to dad, but she did not feel right to evade this matter and transfer the disaster to her dear dad. Her mom would get to know anyway, so she waited for the “right” time.

A sunny Saturday evening, she invited mom and dad to a restaurant, La Cuisine Sichuan, an authentic, therefore the best Chinese restaurant in town. Mom seemed happy! She surprisingly kissed her daughter before leaving home. Wow, that was something! Chinese do not touch or kiss each other! We do not convey emotions by these gestures, we are supposed to guess the emotions and keep them deep down in the bottom of our hearts. Kissing or hugging brings us too close and that intimidates us too much! We hide them, the deeper the better. We hide our good deeds to be “modest”. We hide our shyness in expressing love by actions. We hide our gratitude or even want to make it disappear to show that we do not owe anyone anything! Sometimes, we hope that we can also hide well our deepest dark desires for our little petty soul from each other. But, we just can not, because “God is awake” …

From the beginning of the meal, she had started choosing words and thinking of ways to break the news.  She was just too nervous to have appetite! Looking at mom and dad enjoying so much of the delicious dishes with true Sichuan recipes and ingredients directly from Chengdu, China, she felt a great unnameable pain and also guilty to even tell them she was leaving.

Well, she had to do it sooner or later anyway. She hated her guts to see her mom everyday deep in the worries, or to hear her whining about petty stuff , or doubting about dad having affairs with other women. Now she was putting it to an end, for herself, even though she wanted very much to end it as well for her dad. She mustered up her courage and finally said something with her brain muffled and eyes filled with nervousness and anxiety.

“What did you say? What did you just say?”  Actually, she herself did not hear what she said, but her mom’s sharp question woke her up! She quickly sat back into her chair and returned to silence as usual. Mom had been silent the rest of the meal without even looking at her or her dad. But she knew she had to harden her skin and tighten her ears when they would return home.

No need to describe further anything that happened after getting home. Mom, besides her usual despair, had a major break down! She cried hard and long, yelling: “You are 17 now, eh? You are grown up now, eh? You want to leave us now, eh? I have sacrified all my life for you, I have suffered so much for you! You have wings now and you make money now! You do not love us any more! Maybe you have never loved us anyway…We came to to this strange country with no money, no career, for YOU, and now you are leaving us…” She just cried on and on!

Mei Mei, no matter how tight she shrank her ears, how hard she held up herself, she could not maintain it any more. She had been brought up as  nothing with no such thing as RIGHT, of course she did not know what to fight for and how.

But, life was just simply wonderful in its self adjusting abilities, as Mei Mei was learning about her rights as a HUMAN-being and using the most efficient ways of evading the negativities in life.  She ran, yes, she COULD actually run away, run to a place where she was not the BELONGINGS and the CENTER of the universe of  her parents, nor the carrier of her parents’ happiness and fate! She just could not bear the weight any more on her tiny, skinny and fragile shoulders, neither could she carry the shapeless responsibilities and guilt on her still undeveloped soul! She was leaving, leaving to her one-room apartment shared with another little struggling soul! She was definitely going on the path, searching for the return of nature of herself,  searching for her OWN destiny!

The End.

My writing of Mei Mei’s story ends here, yet her life continues. She might already be out there some where living her own life as a doctor, a nurse, an engineer, an artist, or a business woman, a secretary or a waitress.  I am sure that she has found her place in the new country, continuing blending into the multi-cultural Canadian society with profundity. She might also be creating a new different culture with her past Chinese cultural richness together with the existing wealth of the Canadian bi/multi-cultural heritage.

The Sky of Mei Mei  –  (2) – The Thunder Storm

In China, Mei Mei’s favorite subject was Chinese and writing. She loved writing so much that she could not stop. Writing gave her wings and she would take off, flying and indulging her imagination with her own version of the world. After a year in Montréal, she appallingly found that her world was completely lost! She didn’t know what to think, let alone what to put on paper. Her brain became a big, airless space where she was left alone. She had been seeking endlessly in every possible hidden corner of her mind to come up with some sort of sensation to connect to the world that she had been familiar with, but nothing was found!

Due to her difficulties in learning the tongue-twisting, slightly hawking French, which she had presumed easy, she returned to reading on the Internet, but as an evasion from her reality and not for the pleasure of reading. Her futile confidence gained over the past years in the “red” China was unconsciously vanishing, as was her time unknowingly disappearing into whatever there was online.   She became very quiet, so quiet it seemed as if she no longer existed…

From a jolly, happy and even naughty kid, Mei Mei was descending gradually into a slouchy, skinny, flat-bodied little girl who was coming unwillingly to the edge of losing her mind! She had no one to cast a glance of admiration her way, nor had she any boy to talk to. She became mute and deaf! She could only see herself as a Chinese paper mask stuck to her face!  On this exterior motionless face, the flicker from her eyes was now dying down. The huge, speaking, Dan Feng* eyes were like a dam that was about to burst! Deep in her eyes there lay a strong will to be liked, appreciated, and loved; behind this breathless mask, shined silently her desire to be kissed by a boy, or even by her father! Her already slim flat body extended her shy limbs towards nowhere for nutrition to grow into a wishfully wonderful woman.

She did not know when her parents began arguing and fighting. She believed that it started with one single incident of water damage in the bathroom. The pipes were so old, and the lack of maintenance meant that they leaked whenever they had chances. The bathroom walls were showing black moisture in the corners and so were those of the unit downstairs. The downstairs tenants even came up at one point to yell at her parents because of the leak.

And yet, living in that inglorious flat with moisture was nothing, compared to hearing the Cantonese owner undermine her father by threatening to expose the alleged “secret” of the first four months he was there. He was probably the one who started all the misery for Mei Mei’s parents; he had told Mei Mei’s mom that her father had lived with a lover while she was still in China.

The tiny flat was really getting too small for Mei Mei. Her mother’s yelling would drive her out from her quiet, yet still some what enjoyable, internet world.

She tried to convince her mother to believe in her father instead of the stealthy  Cantonese man, but it was in vain. All she got from her furious mom each time was either a shout such as “You shut up! What do you know?” or bitter scorn: “See, that is your dad! A University professor, and now a what? A shabby stinky No.9 * who washes dishes and makes $5.00 an hour”.

Mei Mei’s mom had become a whirling propeller that was releasing all its strength and wreaking havoc all over, even damaging Mei Mei’s only comfort and access to tranquility and a little bit of left-over secretive joy.  The small, dirty apartment with Mei Mei in the middle of the open bedroom had never given her a quiet corner.. The slap she received from her mother one day jolted her numbed soul awake:. Mei Mei felt that if she would not want to be drown with her parents, she had to break out of the cocoon which just resembled oddly a sealed and unbreakable iron bucket*.!

That day was her 15th birthday. Two years in the new country had simply exhausted her body and soul. She hadn’t gown much taller or bigger, and she still looked like a 13 years old with her child-like body. She longed to break away and fly off into her sky,  she was so thirsty for the tranquility and independence! But just as quiet as a moth sleeping in its cocoon,  Mei Mei had to be enormously patient as she waited for her strength to grow and for time to pass by not so violently, reserving some energy for the time when she woke up.

As a birthday gift, Mei Mei’s father bought her a new computer. It was a special one, a trendy Mac! The slick silver machine sat on her desk without any conscience of who she was.

The laptop was such a meaningful gift from her dad that she instantly forgave him for his cowardice towards her mom. Staring at the frost lit Apple logo, she felt tears pouring down her pale and thin face. They were tears that had been held back for two years, tears of hatred for her mom and dad bringing her into this 6-month white winter world, and tears for her loving dad who had still managed to keep a little corner for his lovely daughter in his miserably fallen “professional” and family life!

Mei Mei called her grandfather when the clock hit 10 pm, which meant that in China it was 10 am. She called all of her buddies in China. Grandpa did not know what was happening there, and neither did all of her friends from the kindergarten, primary, or junior high schools.

Every time she called, she had to hang up not long after, because she knew well that their admiration for her having this precious opportunity to study abroad would have pushed her to the edge of the cliff. It was this shining mirage that had lured her parents into this nightmare! She had never expected that her happy little family would have gone through such a thunder storm with no umbrella strong enough to shelter.

Mei Mei and her parents would never have realized what they were running into. Immigration, to the naive and innocent adolescent Mei Mei, seemed like a spiritual violation, the worst of which lies in the fact that it was an unspeakable, very unfortunate self-induced one! Chinese people are a very proud race who would find it a great shame to admit their problems to others or even to themselves. The growing pains of Mei Mei were not only normal adolescent ones, they were tangled tightly with her “lucky” grand migration. Her pains seemed unimportant to neither her parents nor the new society, and to her “well” educated ignorant parents, it was a road to destruction, especially when China seems to have developed in a positive direction that they had not expected.  As for Chinese people who have no religious or any other kind of spiritual support, the blend-in would be surprisingly superficial, because they were not equipped to survive the cultural shock, though the quality of the umbrella “Made in China” is improving.

As for Mei Mei, we keep our hope, because as the ultimate wise man said:  Nature has its decent remedy to keep its balance.This is the key factor that has always been saving us from all disasters!

*Dan Feng eyes: big long eyes with single eye lids.

*Stinky No.9 : The mocking nick name for Chinese intellectuals in the Cultural Revolution, the one at the end of the list of “bad” people.

*iron bucket was used to describe the red China before the Opening-Up.

to be continued…

The Sky of Mei Mei 

The First Story of Paradise Circus *

 Preamble: When we migrate to unknown lands, we are blinded by the beauty of fairy tales and mirages! We are naive to dream that there we will surely have the things we miss on earth: security, freedom and happiness. We are bold enough to go through the space between earth and heaven, to enter into a place we always believed to be without demons, pain, nor tears, only to find out that Paradise is a noisy CIRCUS … Despite this grand disappointment and disillusion, HOPE, whoever retains it, lifts him, or her, from falling…

The Sky of Mei Mei – (1) The New Land

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” ― Victor Hugo

Mei Mei, a petite 13 year-old girl, followed her mother and the crowd into P.E. Trudeau airport in Montréal, Canada.

They arrived as tired and roughed as the seventh huge and clumsy suitcases bound with layers of transparent plastic. With Mei Mei watching over the numerous extra small bags, tiny mom dragged each big piece off the luggage conveying belt when they arrived. Two hours of fussing about and waiting after 27 hours not sleeping much on the upright narrow seats and endless idling around at stop-overs in airports, Mei Mei and mom could barely stand. Mei Mei was so exhausted that she could drop dead asleep on the spot, regardless.

Dad was waiting. Three of them exchanged silent greetings without any body contact and hurried into Daddy’s rusted grey car. To where? Mei Mei had no idea.

Their flight was the last, and so were they, driving lonely on the high way 720. It was 1:30 in the morning…

The deep plain February winter of Montreal, with its vast expanse of snow took Mei Mei’s breath away. She came from Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province in the southwest of China,  a blessed place which earns its beautiful name as Spring City. She had never seen real snow in her life, the only recalls of winter was the Camellia Japonica which extend their glamorous exotic and sexy petals with various rich, noble colours from January to March.

Goose feathers fell silently from the dark infinite sky onto the front window and piled up on both sides of the wind shields.

Mom was numb and quiet , dad’s mind drifted away intermittently with the flying snow, only the wipers accompanied them loyally with dry squeaks, the rhythm of which kept their hearts beating, and led the car running into an unknown black hole of mute void.

The large thick snow flakes only seen on photos or in movies awed Mei Mei and goose bumps crept into her skin! She was so excited that her drowsiness magically disappeared. One moment, she was in a dream or a movie, or her memory of the familiar soft and warm winter in Kunming with the Camellias swirling around like the skirts of Spanish Flamenco dancers, another, she came back to this strange yet exciting, distant yet truly present reality at the sight of her motionless mom and dad sitting side by side in the front.

Daddy had already been in Montréal since October 2003, for about 4 months, in order to take care of the basic needs when Mei Mei and her mom would arrive. He rented a two-bedroom apartment for $400, and paid  $65 per month for utilities. At the current exchange rate, $465 was equal to about 3,100 RMB, which was about the total salary for the couple, his wife making RMB 1,500 as a chief of a technical department of a state-owned company and himself RMB 2,500 as chief of a university research institute in China. With years of accumulated savings, they would be fine for the first four or five years in Montreal, even without having any revenue.

Their car stopped on a narrow lane in-between two rolls of plexes in a city called Verdun.

Arriving at their home in Verdun, slightly South West of Montréal Island, the scene disappointed Mei Mei as she saw the weird style of apartment called double salon, where the master bedroom is open to the sitting room.

Their home in China was not as extraordinarily huge as those of some of her classmates,  but at least there she had her own room, and it was as large as the bedroom and sitting-room here put together! To the Chinese in China, whose country is new and most buildings were constructed after 1995, the crappy 6-plex at Verdun built around beginning of 20th century, made them feel as though they had come to a very “backward” place.

As a young Chinese girl, Mei Mei had no knowledge of the age of the 6-plex which is linked with many other plexes. She did not know that they were town houses in the immediate suburb, close to bus stops and subway stations designed and built for immigrants, workers and lower income Canadians. In China, the meaning of town houses has changed its connotation to trendy stylish houses for the upper class of Chinese society — the New Rich. She also never had any idea of its basement, where she saw the old cast-iron sewage pipes broken and “repaired” with Scotch Tape. Seeing all the shabby, dirty, and nearly falling apart furniture that her dad had picked up on the streets, Mei Mei burst into tears and dashed into the bathroom where she saw a broken toilet paper holder hanging on the wall from only one side.

It was not what the couple wanted for their only child who had always been spoiled by her grandparents and relatives. It was even less desirable for themselves, as they had reached their golden middle age, each having earned their comfortable and relatively well-paid permanent positions in China. They had set their feet onto one of the best countries in the world, dragging their pieces of heavy baggage to this “never-heard-of” before of Quebec, in the Northeast of the American continent!

For the mother, it was simply a nightmare. For the father, it seemed like the start of a scary dream in an extremely long night from which he did not know if he could ever wake up. He vaguely felt that he was falling into somewhere in-between without earth nor sky but dreams of colours and temptations.  He started feeling regretful for having come here after 4 months, leaving Kunming and China behind, a place, though without dreams, yet at least full of warm sunshine even in winter, and no risk of getting frustrated over new challenges and adaptation, and losing in a strange country full of temptations and freedom that he didn’t know how to handle.

Mei Mei’s life started anyway, regardless of all the weirdly alienating feelings. She had to learn French, since Quebec is a French-speaking province of Canada and the 101 law passed on Aug. 26th, 1977 obliged almost all immigrants to go to French schools. She was among the earliest immigrant groups from Mainland China, who started landing in 2000. By 2003, Chinese from the mainland were still scarce and most Chinese people in the small Chinatown spoke Cantonese. To her surprise, the Chinese Han language is called Mandarin here and the meaning of China is connected with the fragile chinaware, the reasons for which she had absolutely no idea.

Mei Mei started her French Welcome Class. There were about 20 students, most of whom are East Europeans, actually Romanians.

The professor was very amicable and patient, especially to Mei Mie. Whenever Mei Mie had questions, she would come to her desk and asked nicely:

“Qu’est-ce que je peux faire pour toi, Mei Mei?”

Most of the time, Mei Mei was too shy to ask questions, and she didn’t know how to. Seeing her classmates already speak quite well after a few months, she felt dumb and stupid that she was still fighting with herself about some pronunciation and grammars…Mei Mei had always been an excellent student in her class in China and this never happened to her. It was really hard for her to take easy the giggles of her classmates over her funny French.  She would feel very embarrassed and frustrated, resulting in feeling inferior to the rest of the class. She didn’t know that Romanian is one of the latin languages as French is, and the mandarin of Chinese is by no means close to any.

One long year went by. Mei Mei finished her Introductory French Welcome Class, with a still-awkward pronunciation and intonation of the French, taught by her professeure qui vient de la France, with a thick Chinese accent. Now in the normal school system, she had to adapt to the French of the Quebecois. She had to learn the “là, là” before starting a sentence, and to finish it with “ben oui, tarbanouche”. Understanding this meant mastering the local language, with which she gained some recognition, respect, and comfortingly, a little confidence!

She began to make friends, even though they were only Chinese. Yet don’t pears grow from the same tree? They spoke the same language, talked about the Chinese cartoons “Ne Zha -哪吒”, “Hu Lu Wa – 葫芦娃”, and were used to the nice piece of finishing music at the end of CCTV big time news at 19:30, heard during each every single night when they lived in China. They told each other how rich their parents were, and how big and nice their flats had been. They all complained to each other about how bad it was in Canada, and how stupid were the Quebecois! They sought some consolation by venting subconsciously, and restoring a tiny bit of their comfort and confidence by connecting to the mentality that had been their unconscious support before they left their own country. Among the “weird” language and “cold-hearted” people, the CCTV ending music became so soothingly pleasant to their souls that they enjoyed it immensely for the first time ever in their young lives.

Mei Mei was like a little pear tree that was uprooted and replanted in a far away place. When replanting a tree, you need to prepare the pit with fertilizer, and give enough water to make sure its roots quickly take hold of the earth and start absorbing nutrients for survival in the new environment. When Mei Mei’s parents took her to Canada, they did not ask her for her opinion. As Chinese parents always think that their children have no idea about life, it is out of the question to ask for their opinion. Mei Mei came to Canada with no valid preparation, no parental guidance, and no friends at the beginning of the most dangerous adolescent age. The worst of all, she had been misled into thinking that Canada was an easy country with excellent social welfare, free schools, and nice people to blend in with, forgetting, or rather, not being conscious at all that moving to another country with a different mentality and culture would increase the danger for an adolescent girl. Yes, Quebec is a kind province where the provincial government provides free Cours de Francisation and subsidized English or vocational courses for new immigrants. But life is not only about one-sided will, neither is it only about food and roof, nor merely about schools to go to; it is more about how we can find our home for our soul.

For immigrants, it requires an extra effort of understanding and adapting into the existing system and its earlier arrivals’ mentality, creating a hybrid culture that enriches this new country. It is especially true when Chinese culture and mentality remain among the most complicated and sophisticated, tangled with feudalism, socialism and the recent 25 years of capitalist influence. Immigration is about rediscovering our soul by blending into other cultures, and winning the battle by establishing a brand-new “mash-up” spirit for ourselves and for the new country, in this new land!

Paradise Circus – from Massive Attack’s 2010 Heligoland album

The author uses “Paradise Circus” as the name for a collection of her short stories in which “The Sky of Mei Mei” is the first.

This short story is also published on Albertoforchielli.com and its Chinese version on his Cai Xin Website in China. It was also published on Chinese newspaper: Sino-Quebec Montreal in 2015.

to be continued…

–The Thunder Storm–