New York, New York

I asked my daughter recently if she would go work in New York after graduation from Cornell, like a lot of her young friends have done. She replied, “I don’t think so. I don’t like how my friends turn out after living in New York.” Her response gave me something to think about.

It is every small-town New Yorker’s dream to end up in the big City someday. Not just for the young boy or girl, the dream occurred even to me. Seven years ago, at the age of 46, bored of Ithaca, I packed up my belongings, and moved 220 miles south to be near New York. For the following five years, I lived in the suburbs, and took the train into the City for work everyday.

Today, I’ve retired from the City – Since November 2006, I took a job in Connecticut, doing the reverse commute away from the City.

What has caused my change of heart about New York? The City? The people? Me? All of the above? Or just me? All I remember at the time was this “I began to tire of the City” feeling.

In hindsight, there were reasons deep inside beyond me that bothered me, but I could not tell their names at the time which I only know now.

Toxic Manhattan may be nice on certain nights, but awful on other nights.

The City is but a romance. When you are younger, you live for the promise and potential that the City presents you (including high heels, cocktails, and charge cards for the new girls). When you get older, you have caught up. The magic dims, and you begin to see the ugliness around you: the lonely people; the class divide; the greed and arrogance of the Wall Street sucking the soul off the City. Good people will then move on, repulsed by the nastiness in the air.

By the time I left the City, a mere one year ago, New York was on speed: a terribly unaffordable place, a playground for the idle rich, a city financed by the dirty money from one dominant, yet infamous industry (an industry that takes in the country’s brightest and molds them into a bunch of corrupt capitalist lemmings). Underneath the gilded façade, average folks toiled, moving farther and farther away from Manhattan to save on rent, robbing the City off its vital essence of ethnic colors (now suffering the final indignity of credit crunch on their dwellings at the hands of the unscrupulous Wall Street traders of the exotic mortgage-backed securities.)

What I value in a friendship has always been intelligence, honesty and originality. I see little evidence of any in the friends I’ve made inside the City. I seemed to run into a succession of selfish, flawed, mostly single professional women. No matter how hard I tried to be nice, I knew my relationships with them would not last. Till this day, I often wonder if the City has made them, or they have made the City. (Oh, there are so many of them…Terrified to be left alone, and yet unpleasant to be around long.)

New York is Starbuck, and I am Duncan Donut. You go to Starbuck to see, to be seen, and to hang out; that’s where you spend $4 on a coffee of a cup size that you cannot even pronounce. I prefer Duncan Donut, because I can get my good-to-great cup of medium-size coffee on the run for $2.50.

I understand my daughter’s ambivalence about New York. I’ve been there myself.

But one certain thing about young people is their uncertainty.



November 27, 2007
Susie Li

REUNION, A STRANGE THING

Reunion is a strange thing. It could feel like a mental torture, for the first timer at least. The thought of it was downright scary and threatening for me: What am I going to find out? What if I don’t like what I hear or see? What if I do? What does it all mean? Who would show up in one of these meetings anyway? The accomplished? The survivors? The showoffs? The has-beens? The retirees leisurely sneering at the working stiffs?

It also begged the next set of questions: Who DO NOT show up? The forgotten? The depressed? The shy? The sinking ones? The wash-outs?

I know I shouldn’t doubt myself, but I can’t help it. With this, I tiptoed into the Beinu 35th reunion held in Washington DC on the weekend of October 13, 2007.

*** How did it turn out?

Not as bad as I had thought, although I must admit that I felt awkward in the beginning, being one of the five Shu classmates from among 120 attendees. 120 was a respectable turnout, considering the size of the total of 1972 graduates (about 1,000 girls), and considering whoever made it to America all these years since…

They say that you’ll make new friends at the reunions. It’s sort of true; but it will take more than one reunion to know your new friends well. I still prefer my Shu confidants (“Si Dang”). Too bad that few of them bothered to make the trip from the West Coast to join us this time.

I picked out some friends from as early as when I was at the West Gate (‘Ximen’) Elementary School 40+ years ago. One girl (or one lady now) in DC was apparently doing quite well, wheeling and dealing in real estate, while working as a pediatrician, married to an elderly white man from the FDA (who was once a cardiologist.) Her current status and reputation (a dragon lady to be sure) seemed at odd with the image I had of her when young - fresh, demure and understated.

Such a scenario played out over and over again in the reunion. In the end, I’ve decided that people grew to match their lives; and life is full of accidents/surprises. The majority who came to America, took the road of least resistance, working for large corporations, played by the safe rules, tended to become cautious, reserved, and appropriately polite. The few who took the roads less traveled, working for themselves as entrepreneurs, tended to become resourceful, outgoing, and appropriately aggressive. This was true with or without the blessing of previous dispositions.

I belonged firmly in the former group. What I am now is a somewhat timid, conservative, and risk-averse individual, contrary to what my Beinu classmates have thought of me as a wild teenager. Was it my age? My coming to America, compelled as a perpetual foreigner to stay invisible? Or, my marriage to a settled and conservative academic? I don’t know. I suppose it could be a little bit of everything.

Ah, the reunion made me reminisce my vivacious youth. My good friend Sheila Chen from the Shu class, now in Tempa Florida, told me how, in high school, I showed up one Saturday morning at her house in Taipei, asking her mother to relay this message to her (who was still sleeping), “If my mother calls to find out where I was last night, tell her that I spent the night with your daughter at your place.” It was a boldface lie, told to a wrong person -Sheila’s mom. Now everything came back: I did have one boyfriend in high school whom my mother detested. He was a cool kid from a rotten, second-rate school. I was sentimental about him, and rebellious about my mother’s strict forbiddance of my association with him. My boyfriend was to be sent off to serve his military duty; and we spent a night together sitting in a nearby coffee shop, bidding each other farewell and crying all night. The next morning, I must be desperate for an excuse to get out of my mommy trouble, so I thought of Sheila…When you’re young, you do stupid things…

In the big gala on Saturday night at the reunion, I stood up to recall an adventurous journey through Africa, the dark continent, with my little family back in 1987: My American anthropologist husband would not suffer an escorted, guided tour with a group, but we wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit Kenya and the game parks that we had heard so much about. So he rented a white Toyota wagon, with me and my 6-month-old infant daughter in toll. In Kenya, you wouldn’t dream of camping once stepping out of Nairobi the capital. For foreign tourists, reserving hotel stays in game park resorts was a must. This was, after all, the real THIRD WORLD. But being a naïve traveler, my husband underestimated the time it took to get from Nairobi to the first game park resort. 40 short miles on a map took us a full day to travel through dry dirt roads and muddy puddles, not to mention the blown tire, low gas (no gas stations until the resort), and many curious, threatening stares from the 6-7 foot tall spear-carrying, loin-cloth clad Masai warriors coming and going by our dirty white Toyota (for the dirt road was the main thoroughfare connecting villages where people’s only means of transportation was their two lower limbs.) There were more harried tales to follow: My infant daughter was locked out by accident by her young mother at the game park, while the baboons outside stared right in, ready to jump in to devour her whole (or kidnap her from the crib, whichever); We were blackmailed by two border police from the neighboring country of Tanzania for trespassing while following a school of loitering hippos up the river (An obvious tourist trap, for we only remembered seeing a dry cow skull hanging by the roadside, hardly a legitimate border symbol between two states.)

When my classmates clasps their hands for more of my safari stories (or they were just being nice), I realized that I had had some pretty amazing experiences that were beyond “normal” for my fellow classmates, thanks to my husband – A true explorer, and a renaissance man from the 60s. I also realized that so many of our lives were forever changed by the men we were married to, in ways that no schooling, career or parenting could have ever made a difference.

Through finding things out about others, I found out about myself. This reunion has made me step out of myself, learn about myself, discover my past, re-examine my present. And because of it, I am refreshed, waiting for the next chapter of my life to unfold – and that is intriguing. There lies the beauty of the reunion.

On the way back to New York from the reunion, in the car, all seven of us who have warmed up to each other quite well by then, were scheming for our second lives. We talked about some dreams, not too distant in 10-15 years, when we shall retire from our day jobs, or from being someone’s wife or mother or daughter. We may pool our money and brains together to invest in a kind of reunion complex (built to be like the Beinu “GuangFu” hall where we once studied at), to work on a skill co-op (I’ve counted a lawyer, a business analyst, a cancer researcher, a wine expert, an artist, and a property manager among us).

There you have it.

October 18, 2007
Susie Li

Social Grace and Cultural Sensitivity – East Meets West

Nothing makes a mother prouder than seeing a daughter growing up nicely from an immature, rebellious, selfish American youth into a mature, understanding and culturally aware world-class citizen.

My daughter Kristin did not much care for the Chinese side of her heritage as a child living in a small town in upstate New York, despite my best effort. But after she entered into Cornell University down a few blocks from where we are to study social sciences, things have changed: She has not only opened her mind to the intellectual learning of a great college, but also embraced the diversity and her own Chinese ethnicity in full force.

For this summer, through some personal contact, she found herself a counselor’s job with a bi-lingual summer camp in the city of DaLian, in northern LiaoNing Province. She is spending a total of 2 months in China, touring Eastern cities and teaching English to little kids ranging in ages from 7 to 12. This is her first trip abroad alone, not as a tourist, but as a cultural ethnographer (sort of).

I’m all in favor of her adventure into my homeland, getting to know my people and their ways of life (although I myself have only seen China for the first time last year.) My secret hope was that she might learn to appreciate the struggles of her mother adapting to America in her earlier years coming from Taiwan, much like China today.

We are in constant touch with each other, and I am writing down what she sees and hears, and the change of her perceptions of China and Chinese people for all to share.

Susie Li
7/25/2007

Social Grace

“How is it possible for such an ancient people as Chinese to degenerate to such a state of ugliness - crass, noisy, uncivilized, uncooperative, boastful, dirty, unforgiving? Not only have we been bullied by foreigners; we’ve been bullied by our own kind – from tyrannical emperors to corrupt officials and ruthless mobs.” So said Bo Yang, the satirical Taiwanese writer, in the 70s.

You would think things have improved now that China is fast forwarding to the 21st century. Not quite. Even in many of China’s most modern cities, Kristin has noticed the lack of basic etiquette and prevalence of disgusting old habits. With the 2008 Olympic just around the corner, these may be the very behavior that Westerners who come to visit would use to define China (how about barbaric, for example):

Kristin was prepared for people spitting; but SPITTING IN PEOPLE’S FACE? Oh please, that is rude!

Her Chinese acquaintances are not shy from picking their noses or picking the dead skin off their feet in public.

No one lines up for anything in China. No one respects law, and perhaps, there are no laws.

Chinese love money. While they have it, they’ll flaunt it, quite crudely. Unfortunately, there are a lot of newly rich Chinese who have not learned the virtue of modesty…

There are one billion Chinese in China. It is competitive out there. People will lie, cheat, or cut corners to gain every bit of advantage over others. What you get are street fights, car crashes and mob scenes.

Education of the Young

Kristin suffers from the consequence of China’s one child policy: She has one class of 6-7 years old kindergarteners under her charge. Most of them are boys; a lot are brought up by their grannies (who do the spoiling) while parents are working; and all of them are spoiled and undisciplined. Her experience has firmed up her own belief, “Two is better than one.”

The conservative Confucianism discourages independent thinking and encourages fear of authority. Chinese parents demand homework and progress everyday from schools for their kids. By the time the kids graduated from schools, they have been molded into robots, capable of only studying and surviving exams – no creativity, no questioning the authority, no free will, no social skills.

“No wonder those Chinese students at Cornell seemed so boring,” Kristin remarked.

“What else could they do? They were not comfortable with English. They were at least good for going to the library!” I replied.

Cultural Sensitivity

I told Kristin that China is going through the growing pain: thrusting first from an agrarian society into Communism where everyone lost everything, everyone was poor; then thrusting again into capitalism. There may be enough time for economic adjustment, but hardly enough time for mental adjustment. It will take some more time (30 more years?) and many citizens traveling overseas to bring home societal changes.

She assured me that she is adapting well and enjoys her new friendships and surroundings in DaLian. She is equally at ease living in the downscale hostels in Beijing Hutong as using the squat-down toilets (It is more sanitary according to her.) In her calculating mind, she is already planning for next year back in China for a longer stay, more cities, more learning, and better Mandarin Chinese.

Writing and A Speech

I’m human like all other Chinese immigrants, except I am a better writer. Like others, I came to America with just enough English to get by. But over the past 10 years, through small steps I have undertaken to better myself as a writer, and continuous improvement and persistence, I have attained a certain level of proficiency and confidence in my writing. I am no genius. If I can write elegantly, so can my fellow Chinese, in English even.

I was invited to give a speech at my local Toastmaster Club recently. Before, I sat down and quickly drafted a script titled, “The 1% Solution”, which meant to be motivational. The speech went well, not super spectacular. (Hey, at least I delivered my speech without the crutch of the ubiquitous Powerpoint.)

However, the speech evaluator gave me a fine pointer: “Susie, you gave good examples. But you ought to add your personal experiences to the examples. That would make the speech more effective, more human.”

So, what would be my own experience that I have successfully applied “the 1% solution” to? It must be my writing. Writing is something I know about, that I have worked very hard at (still continuously), and my loyal companion through the early years of boredom, loneliness and solitude. It all began with a simple passion for learning, whether about my newly adopted country, its people, or its art and culture and literature. I write only when I am inspired, or when I have this hidden life inside me blazing to come out. As far as style is concerned, I am not a prolific writer, but a constant gardener. Beautiful language motivates me to write, as I read the following passage from W. Somerset Maugham:


“We went along very slowly. and the sound of the paddle in the water was the only sound that broke the silence. It was delightful to think that I had all those hours before me to enjoy the sense of well being, and I thought to myself how, when I was once more in Europe, imprisoned in stony cities, I would remember that perfect night and the enchanting solitude. It would be the most imperishable of my memories. It was a unique occasion, and I said to myself that I must hoard the moments as they passed.”

- in Maugham’s “The Gentleman in the Parlour” (1930): near City Hue, on the Huong River in Vietnam.

So here is my revised speech, including a piece of my writing life.

Susie
July 10, 2007

The 1% solution

I believe in the 1% solution. Say, you have a big ambition, whatever it is - to lose weight, to be a better communicator, to improve on customer service, to improve on your kids’ test scores. To improve what you do by 20% sounds very hard, if not impossible.

People talk about breakthrough solutions, silver bullet kind of thing. The reality is more like the Toyota way: You get 1% improvement with each improvement cycle; you’ll get 20% improvement by going through 20 improvement cycles, not by finding one 20% solution.

Let me give you some examples:

(1) Michael Bloomberg is famous for being an effective, pragmatic city manager of the great New York City. What he does best is to break down big problems into little ones, and hold people accountable for solving each of the little problems. Over the years, he managed to ban smoking in bars, take over the broken school system and put it on track, and make a name for himself.

(2) I like writing. For some people, writing is cathartic, therapeutic to the wounded soul - You essentially write away your sorrows. For others, writing reinforces the positive experiences, even improves on them to make them sharper, more shapely and memorable, such as my reminiscences about my recent meeting with my high school friends from long ago. For me, writing is for both.

I started out small, by writing diaries. I AM a string of my memories. Life is rather empty and uninteresting without memories. But memories are fleeting, so I took notes. If I didn’t take notes, I won’t remember how I lived, how I did, how I thought, good things and bad things that happened to me, in my life. I would be nothing without my memories. The other day, my dear friend Agnes gave me a golden advice that I was compelled to write down lest I should forget, “Some Buddhist teachings urge women to renounce themselves to become men creatures. Why? Is it chauvinism? I think not. In the Buddha’s time, men had careers and fulfilled lives out of their homes, but women didn’t.”

Recreating memories is interesting – It can be an act of imagining, which fuels my writing. The more I remember to write things down, the more it’s about me the writer, and not necessarily about the reality. For example, my first love may have never existed; but in the back of my mind, I believe it did, and it became more beautiful than life.

Imagine this: You ran into someone on the train. Suddenly you remember that she was your high-school crush. You had only one kiss with her, and that was it. Now you remember back, and that one last kiss was sweeter than never, romantic as hell.

I can give you thousands of reasons why I write and how I would like to write, but it all started small: a passion, reading, observing, note-taking, diary-writing, and last but not least, years and years of persistent practicing.

(3) Merrill Vargo, who is the consultant of the Springboard Schools, talks about what she advises schools to do to raise their kids’ test scores. Vargo says, there is no single solution for improving a school's performance, but a lot of little ones.

The problem with the test score may be: A lot of kids in elementary schools these days don’t have English; they go to school hungry. So what do you do: You give the English vocabulary-building classes; you serve snacks before tests; you send books home for parents to read to their children. These are the 1% solutions. They do not require you to fire all the teachers, or reconstitute the school administrations.

Sometimes all schools have to do is simply to reprioritize. Life is full of trade-offs. If you've got a student body that is struggling to learn English, their lives depend on their getting good at that. And if you need to walk away from the music classes, the art classes, to have the English classes, you may need to do that. That's not the best of all possible worlds, but that may be the best choice in the real world. It sounds awful. But it’s pragmatic.

We are not starting from scratch; we are starting from where we are.

So, if you want to be a better reader, a better writer, or a better communicator someday, you start by doing small projects, practicing it, and sticking to it. Over a period of time, you learn the tricks of the trade, the mistakes to avoid, and your strengths and weaknesses. You keep tinkering with your work until you get what works best for you and your audience.

But don’t just talk about it. Get up and do it.

When We Were Young (May 18 – May 19, 2007 Bei-nu Shu class reunion)

Back in March of 2007 when I picked up the phone call from Koren in my Mount Kisco, New York apartment, I was stunned.

I heard Koren’s voice at the other end, “I’m Koren, your high school classmate. We want to see you!!! It’s been more than 30 years. We had our high-school reunion and everyone was asking about you. Nai-Chu is in the Bay Area. Come soon to Palo Alto before she goes back to Taiwan.”

High school is to Taiwanese kids as college to American kids, where true friends are made, where kids depend on other kids before being thrown out to the open pit of adulthood.

But I must admit that I was ambivalent on Koren’s call: All these friends from my Taipei First Girls’ High School classes I used to know, and now I couldn’t even remember their names; for the past 30 years, I buried my head deep in the northeastern US snow, cut off from the world outside (not to mention my Taiwanese connections); I have not kept up with even my closest friends like Nai-Chu or Yamei. What would they think of me? What would I think of them? After all, 30 years is almost a lifetime for some people.

But I could not say no to Koren. On May 17, I packed up my little bag and embarked on my journey to the West Coast. I did not know what to expect, but was determined to have a good time of it.

I spent two days with 20 of my “old” friends (friends and their relatives from the Shu class) and “new” friends (friends from other classes of the same year of Bei-nu). I had a blast. There was not a single dull moment. I was once again a happy child, traveling in time, backward and forward, picking up new gems and old stones, laughing, thinking, serious, light-hearted, endless emotional connectedness. I looked into my dear old friends, more beautiful than I had ever remembered them 20 or 30 years ago, with few graceful lines on their faces to mark the lives well lived. By now, I can’t see how we ever parted, and how I ever forgot what they looked like.

I want to thank all my friends who so selflessly embrace me, the lost one. So I pick up this rusty pen to chronicle my emotional journey in dedication to the memory of you.

Susie Li
June 13, 2007

NAI-CHU

First night, I went to Nai-Chu’s Half Moon Bay house where we had an intimate dinner party with only the few Shu
classmates including Agnes’ family, Koren, Yamei, my sister maomao. Of course, Nai-Chu’s husband/business partner/soul mate, aka Stan Lai, the famed dramatist and playwright, movie director and TV producer, was by her side all night to assist with the party.

Beautiful and thoughtful as ever, today Nai-Chu is also a gourmet cook. The banquet she put together for us was exquisite. It was nothing that you could order from a neighborhood kitchen. I counted these dishes: free-range stew chicken, Dong Po Pork, 2 vegetarian concoctions, chicken hot pot, all expertly prepared.

I stayed overnight at Nai-Chu’s beach resort. We had a long conversation the next morning. I told her how I, a naïve Asian girl, found my place in the strange America after leaving California in the 1980s with my husband Steve for Ithaca New York, having to live the life of a frontier wife. I eventually went back to Cornell to earn a statistics degree, fought against racial discrimination at work, had two children, then decided to strike out on my own in New York City. It took years to gain my confidence back. But I am fairly grateful for what I’ve got: work, passion, respect, family, friends, health. I think (and hope) I’ve found happiness.

She showed me her other side that I had not known. I had envisioned Nai-Chu to have an easy-going, pampered life in Taiwan all these years. It wasn’t always like that. For her, being the producer of a live drama troupe, the first and only one in Taiwan and China, means she is constantly juggling the money and people, making tough decisions about the present and future of the troupe, taking care of the tedious details not appreciated by the artistic folks. Being a close business partner to her creative spouse means she must balance lives and work delicately, walking a tight rope, keeping the feelings fresh. Although she didn’t disclose what her secrets were, I could see that it is her indomitable spirit, her natural charm, her Buddhist devotion and her administrative acumen.

Deep down beneath that beautiful face is a warm and caring heart that draws people toward her. There is this unique quality of Nai-Chu: she could easily be anyone’s best friend. You would feel it instantly if you are there with her.

STAN

Like wife, like husband, Stan is personable, effective and articulate, yet an odd antithesis to Nai-Chu the way I remembered her. Perhaps because I know where the couple was coming from – Nai-Chu is my best friend in high school; Stan is the younger brother of Bob, my older brother’s best friend in High school and also a JiangXi compatriot (rare at the time in Taiwan) – I was rather mystified by the pairing of the two. The only impression I had of Stan when young was him strumming the guitar playing to the tune of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” at the Idea Coffee House in Taipei. (At the time, the New York-based Jim Croce was big, singing ballads too maudlin for my taste. Funny, 30+ years later, I have become a fan of Croce, for the lyrics of his hits speak to me, of my life, perfectly. The lyrics are melodramatic, but so is life, and I only found that out in old age…)

At the time, Stan struck me as a hipster, a younger brother, a child prodigy to a sisterly Nai-Chu, who I was sure would be someday the wife of a diplomat or politician or scholar or journalist, someone from the stable society.

But in this trip I witnessed the powerful relation between a husband and wife, bonded by common interests, emotions and ambitions. It works like magic.

Stan and I had some spiritual discussions about Buddhism. I was impressed by his easygoing manner, not at all as serious as one might think:

Susie: “Buddhists’ desire to be empty of desires is a desire in itself. How do the Buddhists resolve this conundrum?” Stan and Nai-Chu: “Buddhism isn’t about getting rid of desires, but about not being controlled by desires. Some desires do lead to enjoyment. But you must remember that nothing is permanent, and do not feel sad when you lose what you desired.”

Susie: “I found American Buddhism a lot more approachable than Chinese Buddhism, and the translation of Buddhist philosophy more understandable in English as well.” Stan: “I agree. I am in the midst of translating ‘Western Pursuit of Happiness’ back into Chinese…”

Susie: “I am embarrassed to admit that the first book that inspired me to be a Buddhist is ‘Siddhartha’, the fictional biography of the Buddha written by Hermann Hesse, the Nobel poet laureate. I was haunted by the beauty and wisdom in the novel all my life.” (At the same time, I felt guilty not being touched by the “Heart Sutra” or the “Diamond Sutra”, etc.) Stan: “I made a special trip to visit Hesse’s house in Germany. He is one of my favorites.”

Susie: “Do you know who my hero is? It is the Buddha. Here he was, a human being of flesh and bone. If he could achieve enlightenment by going through all the suffering, rejection, peace and wisdom, then there is hope for the rest of us. This is powerful stuff.” Stan: “Hmm…(still thinking).”

In the end, I can’t help but remember the lyrics of Grateful Dead’s song “Ripple” – Very Buddhist in its reflective moment:

“ If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they're better left unsung.
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air. ”

“ Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.

There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone. ”

“ Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

You who choose to lead must follow,
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home. ”

Ah, life is ephemeral. You have to walk the path; only you, all alone.

KOREN

Koren is a bit of an enigma to me. Delightful, friendly, she was the thread that stitched together this loose network of middle-age girls. She looked good, but not in the way I remembered her, as most of my other friends.
The big party of the last day was held in her great house in the middle of the wealthiest district in Palo Alto. She’s done well…but then again, she came from a well-to-do family in Taiwan…who would be left to wonder if anything would have changed her, or made her life different?

I am truly thankful of her insisting that I come to California. This has turned out to be my happiest moment in a long while. Koren is an energetic, invaluable catalyst.

I didn’t spent much time with Koren back in high school. It felt like I spent more time here in her big house with her in two days than all the time we had together in high school. Somehow I sensed a glamour conflict: Her house is meticulously big, but empty; she felt incomplete even if she has bravely convinced herself that she is in the best place to be.

Not knowing what has happened to her in the past 30 years, and not wanting to probe too deeply, I see Koren as a strong woman, and by that I don’t mean that she is strong enough to admit that she feels comfortable with her loose skin or her yoga-toned body. Rather she is strong enough to know someday when she’s had enough.

YAMEI

Yamei hasn’t changed one bit since her high school, wearing the same hairdo since I last saw her in the graduation ceremony, laughing so effortlessly. I’m not exaggerating: If she were to put on her Bei-nu dark green uniform today, I would think she were “back to the past”. While we all show gentle signs of age, and some even assisted by injections and scalpels to wipe out the character from their faces, Yamei stood out as naturally as she could be (She used to be a bit of a tom-boy – it’s refreshing to see it still there.)

Her demeanor was nothing of an authority now that she has become one of the leading representatives of the Taiwanese government in Silicone Valley. I always got along great with Yamei in high school, especially when she moved into my neighborhood during my senior year. Both our parents had the roots in the Chiang Kai Shek army.

I needed very little update from Yamei to know that she was doing fabulously. She has always been a well-grounded, positive, honest person since I knew her. The fact that she has married well, has brought up two smart, outstanding (and occasionally mischievous) daughters, and has a fulfilling career came as no surprise. Her straight-lace charm not only worked well for me then, but must also work wonders with others now.

Yamei made the reunion after returning from a difficult trip to Taiwan for her mother’s funeral. (It has brought back the sad memory of my own mother’s demise 27 years ago. Ah, the frailty of life.) “Guess what I’ve found while cleaning out my mother’s place?” she pulled out something with tears still hanging in her eyes: A vivid, black-and-white, 3 x 5, picture of me and five of my middle-school girlfriends, taken by Yamei sometime in our high school years, in the yard of my house. We looked so young in that picture, fresh-faced,
hair short short and skirts even shorter, eager to be grownups in our demure lady-like poses.

For one second, I couldn’t recognize the faces in the picture, “Who are they?” “YOU!” Yamei laughed uncontrollably. My goodness - that was surely the happiest find of my trip.





GRACE

Grace picked me up from my in-laws’ place in Orinda where I stayed the first night. She was another friend who completely escaped my memory for 20 odd years until now, not to mention that we were even college classmates at Taida. Perhaps she hung out with different crowd from mine.

No matter! I quickly warmed up to her, getting to know her all over again – which was fairly easy because she has such a generous spirit and infectious laughs that you felt like having a great time yourself around her, even though she got us lost more than once on the highway to Koren’s place in Palo Alto. She was funny. She was self-deprecating. She obviously has a big heart.

I didn’t realize that she had lived in New Jersey for quite some time before moving to California in the last six or seven years. She sounded nostalgic about the East Coast, especially her family’s excursions to Queens for its famous Chinese food.

“California is wearing me down fast.” She said.
“The way you have to drive in this traffic, it doesn’t take much to wear anybody down.” I concurred.
“Working in a high tech job can be quite stressful too. You have to constantly invent, keep up.” Grace works for Oracle.
“How does retirement sound?” I asked.
“I’m not sure of full retirement. But I wouldn’t mind the life of a part-time consultant.”

Grace’s husband is also an academic like mine. No wonder we had so much to share. I can see that this friendship is a keeper.

AGNES

Agnes is someone in my Shu class I didn’t know well while in high school (because she was quiet), but grew to respect a great deal since we reconnected. A genuinely decent person, she has made a remarkable life for herself in America. All this time, nearly 30 years, she has lived in Queens, New York, not far from me (and I didn’t know.)

Agnes came to New York after college, has raised two sons mostly by herself
while her beloved husband moved East to care for his aging mother and troubled younger brother. Being a single mother was a full-time job for most people, Agnes still managed to return to St. Jones Law School for a law degree. Now she is an established immigration lawyer in New York Chinatown. Her two sons are attending top college and graduate school. In her spare time, she helped her old friends from Taiwan find jobs in her law firm. She is the caring mother, loyal wife, career lawyer, supportive friend all rolled up in one. You cannot tell her courage and achievements by her quiet, unassuming demeanor.

Her whole family showed up for the reunion. They were on their way to China for a tour, celebrating the graduation of her elder son from Columbia University. I compared her two sons to Prince Harry and Prince William of the British Royalty, both exceedingly handsome, tall and regal, except Agnes' two sons have their mother to look up to, whereas Prince Harry and Prince William are motherless. You could tell that Agnes was quitely pleased with her two sons.

She told a little story about her two sons when they were small that cracked us up:

“My older son must have been 10, and my younger son 7. My husband was away. But father and sons talked often over the phone. One night I overheard the older son passing on some secret to the younger one. I was curious and listened in without them noticing me. I heard the old one say, ‘You don’t have to understand women. You just need to love them.’

Wow, where did this little kid get the big idea from? I could understand that the boys began to be interested in girls, but the wisdom? It had to be from their dad (and what ‘women’ would the dad be referring to anyway?).”

Behind every successful woman, there is a supportive spouse. This is true to all my successful classmates. Agnes’ husband was no exception. A fun fellow, he obviously enjoyed Agnes’ associations as much as she did, so much so that he quipped, “It’s enough to live with just one 50-years-old lady. How about having 20 50-years-olds talking all at the same time? It’s like you opened the door just a crack to peep in; then this avalanche of human female voices; then you have to slam the door shut QUICK!”

Yours Forever - A Short Story

I was asked about my so-called boyfriends in high school in the recent reunion. At the time, I drew a blank. (When one is young and vain and all the usual things that young men and women are, one never thinks one is anything in particular; and, one never feels quite up to it.) So I responded to my old friends as honestly as I could, “I never had a boyfriend in high school. It was all a joke.”

I flew back to New York, and remembered a short I wrote when I was learning to write a few years ago. I had to dig deeper into my memory for creative inspirations, being a new writer. I did remember a secret, sad romance buried in me from a long time ago, perhaps from high school. In the essay, I aimed to tell a story as beautifully as I could (not necessarily as truthfully as I would.) Whether I succeeded or not, you’ll be the judge.

Here is the story.

Susie Li
May 29. 2007

Mount Kisco, New York

<~**********************************************************~>

Yours Forever

You were one I never had thought I would have. When we meet again in heaven, I will tattoo my kisses all over you, in China ink that never fades, and not let go of your hand ever - "It's been so long, my dear, I miss you." And you will introduce me to everyone, something you never did in life!

I was in high school, going on 17, when you came for me. Back then, I was shy and virgin, but I got tired of people judging me by my brain. I began to feel this lump in my chest wanting to be noticed by a boy, me in a strapless gown, him holding a glass of plum blossom wine crooning sweet romance into my ears.

When the telephone rang that evening, it was HanSheng asking if I could go to a party with his guests, a group of Cambodian officer athletes visiting Taipei. The party was given by the Cambodian ambassador in their honor before going home next morning, home where fighting was waiting, the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government against the Khmer Rouge. I was unsure at first: I didn't think I would be attractive enough with my short straight hair, my flat chest, goofy hands and awkward glasses; I didn't know what to say to these strangers who spoke only French. But, it was full moon tonight, too beautiful to waste, and I was a seething seventeen thinking of only the warm and woolly man bodies. So I spun a careful web to tell mama that I was going places with my girlfriend. My chance to act grown-up, to see somebody different.

In the dim light of the moving van, two young girls and seven men, I could only guess at these men's vanishing looks: Muscular copper-skinned men, nothing like the flabby Chinese boys I had seen. HanSheng did his best translating between French and Chinese. The trip to the party was continuing intrigue: the nervous how-I-wonder-what-you-are, the butterfly stomach, the quiet wars, the velvet laughs, like stray lovers chasing.

We arrived at the party pavilion on the outskirts of Taipei, capital of Taiwan. The warm breeze of the summer night felt nice, and the ancient music mysterious and regal with its gong and drum. But we weren't exactly relaxed, suddenly exposed to the bright light, the ambassador and his entourage. I shrank from gazing at the men with my naked eyes, crazy thing that proper ladies just didn't do. After small talk and courtesies, the Cambodian gentlemen would ask the Chinese girls to join in their classic opera dancing, with rich choreography of hands meant for the god.

Just as I sat there thinking of the sweet smell of a man and wishing for one, you came before me, putting out your smooth big hand. This face of yours, handsome of a grown man, the clear onyx eyes glittering underneath the thick locks of hair, a full mouth resting upon the strong chin, half-smiling at me tenderly.

Nobody had ever looked at me that way before, you with your eyes so deep they shook the soft heart of a virgin. I grew suddenly womanly. For the rest of my life, I should forever remember that brief moment, when you stood tall in front of me, when I faced my destiny with a frightened soul, when everything changed.

The party went on. We teased, sang and amused each other well into the night, more dance, teaching how to dance, than word, weaving the bond between our secret mind and flesh. Small touching, tender looking, ancient ritual, melody, messages, and sweet submission. You stuck by me and never let go. How easy it was to cross over to fall in love with you, beautiful and nice and thoughtful, from a different culture. The language barrier made us more resourceful, that I listened and watched you with a purer mind, with awe and respect and innocence. You were the crush I looked for all my life, I had no other lover. I swore to be your faithful wife one day.

Late at night, you held my hands close to your heart, asking your older brother, another athlete on the team who spoke a little English, to translate back to me, "I've been watching you ever since you stepped into the van." I knew it was true.

So sad that you must leave so soon, to catch that next plane home, to go to war for your country.

Of course, I would let you take me tonight, if you wished. I was going to. But while my lips were soft and red and my eyes filled with tears, you kissed me good night and let me go. "Wait for me, my love," you said it in the most lyrical English I had ever heard.

While I could not have known the full meaning of war, it was clear that you might not make it out alive. Whatever your intentions might have been, however faithfully you had written me for the next three years, the separation had taken its toll. "You must not think hard of me, my little one. I would give the world to see you one more time in my life. Pray for me and this cruel war to end," you wrote.

I thought of you often, keeping your only photo under my pillow to warm my bed. It was a breathy shot of you, all chest in black and white, lounging in a hammock, flashing the twinkle of a smile at the camera. We had loved. I dreamed that someday you'd travel back to take me home to Phnom Penh, to be your wife, to tell stories about my Chinese ancestors to our children someday.

When I got a little older, I felt a loneliness. My heart mourning over my prospect as neither wife nor widow, my eyes started wandering after other men. The truth was, I quit the hope of seeing you again. Bit by bit, you became a faded memory of my past, like a cloud crossing the sky, the hollow wind blowing behind my ears. For while I was sleeping, you could have been killed…And I, still living, fully breathing and smelling the flowers of womanhood ahead…the college, the men of the moment, and someday a real husband.

No longer a virgin, I turned a determined veteran of affairs armed with weapon. This business of men and love was tiring. The pursuit of pleasure left me dejected, even when I was winning. I grew up slim and silky, with a cool cold heart.

One day, three years later, I got a call from HanSheng, saying that you came back in Taipei for the same tournament. You asked to see me. This, after months of no correspondence. I felt a dizzy spell, like a wife caught cheating on her husband. But I went to the hotel where you stayed, for old time's sake. I thought I could be brave.

The war had shriveled you into a thinner man than I remembered you. Your eyes grew darker, more pensive and piercing, telling me that life had dealt you a tortured hand. Your eyes, they immediately connected with my inner soul. Ah, there was no need for me to explain. I loved you, and we still loved, the magic had never left. You accepted me quietly. Your mind's eyes knew how I had changed or not changed.

Then I turned around, just you and you alone in the room, all the other people were gone. Time had come. Gently you lifted me to the bed, the way a precious flower was put on a pedestal. This was how you took me, the first and the only time. Oh my life. My pilgrimage to heaven, my way back to earth with you, up and down, in and out, sad and happy, caring, indulging, only you. My body and yours, swallowing each other whole. My sexy, my husband, all my life I had wanted this with you. I can't forget you, your gift to me, I won't let myself.

Next morning, I saw you off at the airport. That was the last time I ever saw you alive. Forever you remain young and glorious, strong and beautiful. I am sorry I was powerless to stop your death, but I always pray that you come back for a visit.

I am so lucky to have had you, here twice with me, to teach me the grace of love.