Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Photos
She's setting off back to China on Thursday, that's within three days. She has seldom spoken to me during the four years since we got to knew each other. Tonight she sent me a message saying that she wanted to take a photo with me. I was so honoured because at least I worthed to be stored in her photo album.
I know her little. Most stories about her I know are through gossips. Her crush on the ladykiller, her affair with a bartender, her current British boyfriend... the net of gossip is so powerful that none of her emotions are saved from getting into my ears. So when she led me to her room, I knew her little, but I felt I knew her all.
Her boyfriend took the pictures of us. He's very shy. He didn't introduce himself, he didn't make any noise when he changed the angle of shooting, and he didn't say goodbye to us when he flahsed back to his place. She didn't want to talk to me about him either. All I know about him is that he's good at playing cricket, and he bought her a television. All the other negative information I know about him is from the gossips: he stalked her, he was overly jealous, in order to see her after one of their breaking-ups he spreaded the news that he had gotten cancer. Very intense love/attachment, that he had for her.
'I will leave him my printer after I'm gone back to China.' She said. Tenderly tenderly she spoke, as she always does. That's a way of speaking we always associate with girls from the south Yangzi River area. We call that little voice and soft language of Wu, and it used to be a virtue for girls to pursue, although it's quite old fashioned these days. But she never changed the way she speaks, no matter when she tried to say cao in Beijingese or f**k in English. Tenderly tenderly she said them, as if they were some sort of impursuable power.
The night when she started to mix those words in her language I was coincidently with her. Not the whole night, it happened I was there the moment when these words firstly bursted out of her soft soft lips. We were having a party that night. We, as in me and my normal social circle. Not really anyone of us were good friend with her. All of a sudden, a girl staggered in, with a glass of red wine in her right hand. Red wine, that is, I remember very vividly, as if the hint of redness is about to soaked out of my memory and flood out from my temple. It is the beautiful glass she held, I think, made the redness of the wine so obvious and memoriable under the condition of two candles' light. 'Drink with me, anyone?' she had that sort of drunker's stammer. She was drunk. Then she said the word cao! She left. Didn't come back to that room that night. That's my impression of her.
At some point I started feeling very melancholy. This girl, who seems very little related to me, has been in my net of gossip, encountered me in one of her important step towards growing up, and she just took one goodbye picture to me. When she flies back on Thursday to the vast land of China there's not many ways I can see her walking around with any of her boyfriend, arm in arm, looking happy or sad; there's not many ways that I can hear her speaking softly softly and bursts into those funny swearing either.
I think in the photos, we looked two happy close friends. ¶ 10:59 am
I know her little. Most stories about her I know are through gossips. Her crush on the ladykiller, her affair with a bartender, her current British boyfriend... the net of gossip is so powerful that none of her emotions are saved from getting into my ears. So when she led me to her room, I knew her little, but I felt I knew her all.
Her boyfriend took the pictures of us. He's very shy. He didn't introduce himself, he didn't make any noise when he changed the angle of shooting, and he didn't say goodbye to us when he flahsed back to his place. She didn't want to talk to me about him either. All I know about him is that he's good at playing cricket, and he bought her a television. All the other negative information I know about him is from the gossips: he stalked her, he was overly jealous, in order to see her after one of their breaking-ups he spreaded the news that he had gotten cancer. Very intense love/attachment, that he had for her.
'I will leave him my printer after I'm gone back to China.' She said. Tenderly tenderly she spoke, as she always does. That's a way of speaking we always associate with girls from the south Yangzi River area. We call that little voice and soft language of Wu, and it used to be a virtue for girls to pursue, although it's quite old fashioned these days. But she never changed the way she speaks, no matter when she tried to say cao in Beijingese or f**k in English. Tenderly tenderly she said them, as if they were some sort of impursuable power.
The night when she started to mix those words in her language I was coincidently with her. Not the whole night, it happened I was there the moment when these words firstly bursted out of her soft soft lips. We were having a party that night. We, as in me and my normal social circle. Not really anyone of us were good friend with her. All of a sudden, a girl staggered in, with a glass of red wine in her right hand. Red wine, that is, I remember very vividly, as if the hint of redness is about to soaked out of my memory and flood out from my temple. It is the beautiful glass she held, I think, made the redness of the wine so obvious and memoriable under the condition of two candles' light. 'Drink with me, anyone?' she had that sort of drunker's stammer. She was drunk. Then she said the word cao! She left. Didn't come back to that room that night. That's my impression of her.
At some point I started feeling very melancholy. This girl, who seems very little related to me, has been in my net of gossip, encountered me in one of her important step towards growing up, and she just took one goodbye picture to me. When she flies back on Thursday to the vast land of China there's not many ways I can see her walking around with any of her boyfriend, arm in arm, looking happy or sad; there's not many ways that I can hear her speaking softly softly and bursts into those funny swearing either.
I think in the photos, we looked two happy close friends. ¶ 10:59 am
