Vanity Fair and City III (64)

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The sky is very blue. It is hot and it rains a lot. It is just like the summer in China. “I feel so lonely in this city where I was born and grow up.” Said Joyce.

I have an old e-mail box. Haven’t checked that mail box for a long time. Days ago I checked it and felt like a lightning bolt. Joyce has written 3 emails to me in May. She said, she would visit China next week and planed to visit me too---But those 3 emails were written in May!

My fault! She must feel extremely disappointed when I did not reply her emails! I feel so sorry… I apologized… Not to mention what we talked after I got her emails.

…

Several years later, Joyce visited China again, for her love that has been lost in the past.

I think as we walk further and further, we will lose something here and there at this time, at that time. Joyce said she lost her soul in China. So in May she came back, but still, she lost it again.

Joyce is Chinese born in Vietnam. Like her brothers and sisters or other Chinese born overseas, she always wants to marry a Chinese man. Maybe other people in other cultures do not understand, but I understand. Our parents, our grandparents, our grand-grandparents might be poorer in materials, but they were not poor in spirit. Something has been passed down from generation to generation, so even though we live in 21st century, we still keep those things which were prevalent in grandmothers’ area. Yes, in some people’s eyes, those things are outdated, but some of them shine throughout time and space.

And Joyce found that one. But for some reasons, they couldn’t be together. Joyce said, these years she has been missing him. She is in Vietnam, but her heart is in China. She learns to do business from her dad and meets all kinds of men in Vietnam, but she just missed that one. That one. She met him at campus. He is a teacher. He is cultured. He is polite. He is from north China. He is my teacher too.

They even talked about “forever”… Yes, Joyce is willing to give up everything in Vietnam, for him… I wished they could be “forever” too. She is my good friend… But finally, she came back Vietnam, leaving her soul in China.

Perhaps outsiders will say we should forget the past and move on. But it is we who are involved, so we can not release ourselves as easily as you think. Love is a net. The vertical threads and the horizontal threads are woven together; we are just the moths trapped in the net, unable to escape.

Maybe one day we will understand, everything will turn into nothing. But who knows when that day is.

There is no “right” or “wrong”, but there is “happy” or “sad”. It is a Fair, where we choose and be chose; where we gain and lose.