The Way She Lived

While I was wandering around the back alleys of Beijing one summer, I received a phone call from an unknown number.

"Is this Sisi?"

"Um. Yes. Who is this?"

"My name is Liu Ye. We're cousins. I actually study in Beijing right now. You want to have lunch tomorrow?"

". . . Are you sure you have the right number?"

And that was how, within five minutes, I gained an entire branch of family members. Liu Ye's grandpa is my waipo's younger brother. Like her, he eagerly signed up for the Communist Red Army in '49, marched to the Western frontiers and conquered/ liberated the minority groups there. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign in '56, when Mao encouraged everybody to voice their true feelings about the revolution and then oppressed those who did, he was a little too honest and was forbidden to return to the Mainland. And so, he stayed, fell in love, and grew old.

The next day, Liu Ye knocked on my door. Three gentle, patient, taps. She complimented all the dishes that my waipo set on the table, even making sure to pick out the best piece of chicken and put it in my bowl. She nodded a lot, smiling behind her bowl of rice, but she came alive when she started telling me about her college journalism club. And Xinjiang. And dreams of going to BYU. And having relatives in the city. Her mouth was always curved up, poised for any reason to laugh, and when she did, she sounded like bells and Minnie Mouse.

Before the summer heat gave way to the autumn chills, my family flew over to Xinjiang and went on road trips with Liu Ye and her family. Over the desert sand and on ill-paved roads, Liu Ye and I rode in the back of the car, sharing music, secrets, and thoughts on our purpose in life.

We became family on that trip.

Liu Ye, in the pink blouse and yellow crocs.

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I wish I could write more about her adventures while interning at Disneyland, Florida, this summer. Or about the trips she took to Provo to visit my family and check out the BYU campus.

Instead, I'm struggling to write about her in a way that you, or some of my siblings who haven't met her, will know her. I want you to understand her. I want you to love her. Because, in a selfish way, you can then tell me why I feel this lost the last couple of days. I alternated between being obsessive about the drunk driver who killed her and filling my mind with meaningless fashion blogs/ news/ emails/ chores so I could salvage some sort of frivolous normalcy.

Gosh. Sorry. I can't flesh her out right now. I watched a clip of our road trip, with the camera panning to Liu Ye briefly, just to hear her laugh over and over again. And still, the best thing I could come up with is bells and Minnie Mouse.

Despite my inadequate descriptions, trust me, you would have liked her.

The Reality of Powerpuff

This week, I was told, twice actually, that I was "too nice."

I guess it's a compliment and a constructive criticism meshed into two little words.

They want me to change. But what is the alternative supposed to look like?

I guess the Powerpuff Girls got it wrong. People don't really like "sugar and spice and everything nice." Not really. But I'm not too hot about becoming Mojo Jojo either.

Maturity

Somebody told me tonight that being mature means that you know what you want.

And if it's hard? If it hurts? If you've done nothing about it because you've lacked courage?

Well either way, I aged tonight. Hopefully the maturity comes later as well.

The themes of the week

Chinese TV shows. Brochure content. Manipulation. Not necessarily in that order.


And if two people tell you that it's true, then it's probably true. But then I guess I knew it all along.

Words

When somebody tells you that you've wasted their time, I guess you should just shut up and shut down.

{done}

Digesting Memories

Growing up, I've always hated eating boiled eggs. The yellowish-blue ball of hardened yolk would lodge in my throat and had to be washed down by gulps of water. When I left for college, I swore that I would never touch another boiled egg except during Easter. But every day during the summer in Beijing, I would wake up to sugared tomatoes, steamed buns, chewy wooden ears . . . and two boiled eggs. Waipo would faithfully repeat the secret to her father's longevity (he died in a traffic accident when he was ninety), and watch me patiently until I squirmed and ate everything on my plate.

But after the summer, when I returned back to America and had to figure out my own breakfast every morning, I would always reach for the eggs and start boiling my water. I still grit my teeth when I ate them, but somehow I wanted to keep doing it. To show her that I hadn't forgotten.

When Chelsea left for college, I also took it upon myself to continue her idiosyncratic habit of mixing cereal with yoghurt, even though I used to tease her about it.

Other times, I was obsessed with baklava, barbeque chicken pizza, subway chicken teriyaki sandwich and co. because each bite was a way of holding onto them and pretending that they're still there to force me to eat those things.

And right now, I would really like some Pear and Gargonzola.

Mourning

I've deleted that email so many times, only to try again, bleeding out a line here or there.

How do you even write to one of your best friends whose father just passed away?

No wonder Hallmark makes so much money. For $3.99, you can buy an emotional cop-out. Instead of saying I-cried-about-your-dad-today-in-the-library-and-how-can-I-even-say-anything-to-adequately-soothe-your-pain, you can tie a neat bow around a "I'm sorry for your loss" four by six card stock and feel that you've done your job.

And have we? Do people in mourning want more than flowers and a card when the sense of loss is so fresh? When we try to make consolatory phone calls or emails, are we just putting them in uncomfortable positions because now, on top of dealing with funeral details, they will also have to return phone calls and repeat the same conversations over and over again? Maybe the Hallmark way deserves more credit; perhaps it is selling privacy behind all those cliches.

And yet . . . I know I would keep resurrecting that email from my deleted items. Because, privacy or not, somehow friendship just cries out for more than a bunch of cliches.

Mood Ring

I had officially instituted this weekend to be my time to be sad. I had three different plans for tonight. I ended up canceling all three of them. I was even upset that I forgot to wear black today. Depressingly, I wore my fun green top with billowy sleeves, complete with my multi-color tribal necklace. All not very suitable for my self-imposed period of mourning. So I tried to seclude myself as much as possible. Sort of worked. Sort of didn't. I seemed to bump into everybody that I know. I even made a new friend. I then tried the mental isolation trick, aka putting my earphones on. But eventually a note would break free from my pursed lips, and before long I would find myself humming along about how much I love life.

There were some successful sad moments. At times I felt like hiding in the TA office and just crying it out. I wish I had. I needed it. But just at those moments when I tired of repeating conversations in my mind and reviewing what might have been, I would feel a sudden burst of excitement. I was finally, properly, melodramatically sad! Unfortunately that would undo all my previous hard work. After all, it's hard to feel down when you've succeeded at something.

I pity boys. They have to try to understand female creatures like me.

Dilemma

I'm not a liar but I have trouble saying how I really feel. But during those rare moments when I am being absolutely honest, I look in your eyes and I wish I'm lying.

Come back

She waits.

She watches all the others in the the brilliant azure skies and yearns to join them. But why should she ever want something more when she's got everything that could possibly make her happy?

You hope.

You wish that she'll forget the outside distractions and turn around to look at you, remembering once again that to her, you are the world.

She pecks at her cage impatiently. Chirping, always chirping about what she sees and what she thinks she can do once she's out there. You listen, feeding her confidence and ego but afraid of what this might mean.

It happened. She wants to break free. Free of this cage that doesn't seem like a cage. Liberated from the constrains that really only existed in her head. Set loose to explore the unknown and grow to be strong and beautiful.

No! You cried. You don't understand! You will only be truly happy here, safe, and with me.

Deep down, she knows that you're right. She just needs to figure it out on her own.

Shakily, you open the cage doors.

She steps out, hesitantly.

Crash! The cage doors close.

Startled, she turns around, expecting that the option of going back will always be there.

She looks at you pleadingly, wanting you to smile as you did before.

All of a sudden, the skies seem angry and dark.

Turning your back to her, you shoo her away.

You walk off, hoping that the hawks in D.C. play nice.

My SAT of life

In my SAT prep classes I always emphasize to all my students that in the Writing section, transitions are the most important things to look out for. Standing in front of the class, five foot one and all, I religiously extoll the merits of the Kaplan methods for SAT essay writing and tell them that with Kaplan's secrets they are on the road to success. It wasn't until recently that I find it all kind of ironic. Perhaps it is I who need to internalize that concept more than they.

I haven't been doing so good with all the transitions in my life so far. It's sort of hard to know exactly which transitional phrase I should be using when I don't even know what my next paragraph is going to be. I sit there, poised with my favorite black ball-point, trying to figure out all my different options. Is it going to be an internship in Washington D.C. ? Going home next summer? Taking another stab at the whole marriage thing again? By now my students should know that the key to forming good transitions is to have a plan. Well I had a plan. A plan that I really didn't think would change. I so confidently bought our honeymoon tickets without realizing what a pain they are to return. I feel like a typical SAT student who is panicking in the middle of the 25 min essay section, all because the once marvelous essay plan doesn't seem to be working out so well. I want to abandon the plan, indeed I almost feel like I have to, and just leave the testing room altogether. What's the point of continuing when you've already screwed up the beginning?

But (which is a delicious transitional word), yes but, there's always a chance for redemption. That's what transitional phrases are for. Even though I have no clue what random nonsense will flow out of my pen tip the next moment, I can choose my transitions. I can choose "Despite feeling lost and lonely at times, she keeps herself occupied with good friends....", "Since she's messed it up once, who said she won't mess it up twice?", or even "However, after a year or two of growing up, they realized that they needed each other..."

I guess the point is, in choosing my transition, I'm choosing how to go on. After all, the momentary freeze in the testing center is just that, a momentary freeze. I cannot just fly home on an impulse, abandoning my school work and my job just so I can lick my wounds elsewhere. There are lessons to be learnt, stories to tell and paragraphs to be written even in, or especially in, awkward transitions.

Now that I'm gingerly feeling for the right transition, all I have to do is wait for my next paragraph to form. And the next, and the next. So on so forth, and eventually I'll have a whole essay.

You see, despite all those rumors, SAT really is not that hard after all.