Choice leaned against the back of chair, tranquil, motionless and meaningless. Here she stared immovably at the centre of her palm that now wrapped in the new callousness, a soft spot rooted on fire. The melancholy poured down and engulfed her against the different atmosphere —the noisy massive carriages in the London underground. The hurried wheels of the tube rushed towards the night as before which never ceases, with its rumbling wheeze which pulsed through its veins. Suddenly a rapid halt, those old fading recollections aroused, from the far buried depths stretching across the train-ful crowd, a few steps away, wafting and shifting, in the fluttering plume, onwards and upwards. The forgotten memories came alive, veiled as fog, lulling her thought into the vague vision, in a realm between a dream, and a reality.
5 years ago, at the time Choice drove her BMW, wore her stylish clothes, and kept the eye-charge and head-turn of her elegant gesture out there at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank – International Trade Department. She glowed glamorous radiance just then.
The warm afternoon of that early summer, the windows fronted upon the clouds cradling the soft weakening rays of sun, leisurely scurried before me. Inside, the still room, I packed the past , and then the native land of its youthful memories into the drifting baggage, a swift shadow keen to absorb the atmosphere. The unspoken wind on my side watched over me, hush, to and fro. The woe of the farewell prodded, with small soft fits of sullenness, sadness and slow sorrow swirls of coldness, flush after flush, throughout my body.
But all stopping, in an inexplicable boisterousness flapped in, which came over my face facing upon the unknown world before, a sudden wild mood - somehow bewildering- with great rapidity, to drag me out of the extending cooling stir and force a halt. The confused feelings now awaited the adventure of Mayflower. At that time I was still young.
Choice’s smile came out at that afternoon, fluid and obscure, sheeting down along her long black hair, waving for my departure.
The following morning I soared into the sky as a bird; in a moment the homeland was many thousands of miles away, ahead of me was Hong Kong marching on. My fate was written in the skies.
In the summer of 2000 an email from Choice slipped in. She would pop into Hong Kong for an international conference. Soon, at the teatime, Choice, who wore in white dress, was just sitting in a table next to the window. It was a coffee bar at the hotel, there sneaked in the dappling sunshine, her shadow all but covering the curtains behind, enveloping all my eyes and moods, like a smile.
I walked towards Choice, too soon, our glances met, and smiled at each other.
I sat down opposite her and we were soon slipping into our warm-up conversation.
The scene went on, passing on from word to word, smile to smile. But she looked not as her old self full of radiance of intrinsic vitality with a lick of pale fragility across her face, lacking her usual sheen and colour, slightly.
“ A little cough, nothing serious, just a sort of busy, recently.” Choice said, smiling calmly.
“Do you take medicine, Choice?” I asked, genuinely.
“ I have gained how to give myself an injection from my mother-in-law before departure,’ Choice kept her smile and peace, relieving my worries.
The tone she whispered calmly, her porcelain fingers caressing the cup, petals of green tea whirling its way in the clouds of tea – vapour, lapping the air. The arched lines around her lip corners sending up flickered through the bright leaping and swaying music. It was snug and softened in my heart on the spur of the moment, a blending of feeling with partial surprise, partial sympathy, plucked the stings of my heart. At the moment I smelt the aroma and savoured it in.
I, too, admired her bravery, her daring. The power of this sense seeped through, incessantly, on and on。。。。
We went down to Pacific Place, Admiralty, after dinner. Choice was very tall, in her five foot six height, her limb of soft and slender contrasted with the brown slim Hongkongers. The mysterious white long dress, like plumage of swan, reeling down, past the twisting shadows of the crowded, over the winding streams of lights, whirling the tips of lingering nights, there was Choice’s black long hair, lustrous as a fleeting silk, descending down.
Her ankle was slim and delicate, just as lotus roots, while Choice was charming, in her buxom figure, well-proportioned line and graceful movements.
Choice always lightened up public eyes in amazement at the split, her beaming opened, under a veil of evening in after a bustling emptiness, where she moved energetically and determinedly.
“I would head for England on the MBA course,” Choice told me in her call the next year.
As with other beauties, Choice could be distinguished by her constantly passionate yearning for the acquisition of knowledge as her yearning for understanding the meaning of existence. This time her wealthy husband had supported her pursuit.
At the turning of the following year, the realm of the clouds floating in the Beijing skies, upon Choice, with her and greeted her back. Now finally she was home, having made her journey back.
Choice stared forward, she did not know how long she would stay this moment. It could be lifetime settle, or it could be short. As she marched on, watching the array of the old scenes go by, shoulder by shoulder.
After a while it was said that she was employed in a Germanic company, working at a glamorous position with well-paid salaries.
These, ultimately she abandoned, abandoned herself into the punctuated routine work and took the transparent suitcase into re-entry where now awaited her.
Choice departure for the new advance moving on brought her husband unspeakable torment. At last he did not put it into speech. He drank down the cup of bitter coffee, a rush of disturbing frustration of her restless obsession of drifts sprang up, a film of woe on his throat on his strained tolerance. It was kept bitter and chilly in the wind’s sad sighing.
I was waiting for her legendary voyage within a dynamic path before.
Choice was born of a family of what her father occupation as the chancellor of a university, immersed in the values of the spiritual life - meditative and pondered exercises, as befitted Choice’s thought, where she breathed, struggled, reflected, grew and marched on the tracks in her brain– in which the footprint of her life depended upon, which intended audience could not fail to understand how she had become, and finally the vision would crack up
。。。。。。
The China town, London is a poor filling up a bustling and thriving air where visitors of Chinese from the world has halted and relaxed in. In the circumstances opposite, the faces and shadows of wait staff, kitchen-hand, drifted, rushed, and buffeted, with prosperity of the town outside their minds and their visions, who gave this place another character: soiled and exhausted. It was supposed to offer jobs for illegal immigrants on the hard-earned wages. The voices and faces of people lifted in wreaths of palish smoke.
That was what it was like, the China town, as all the world was.
It was the whole expression of certain sort of life.
The Chinese elite, for various reasons, are not able to obtain the similar decent occupations by working permit constrains, which they used to have in China. The pattern of occupational choices does reflect the world of reality.
Arriving at London to conquer the certificate of the Chartered Accountant was Choice’s determination and decision for re-entry. She headed on and
and the minute she did not ask any compassion. She left with nothing, the sole journey of excruciating but brilliant exercise, of body and mind.
In a scant two year, in the streaming emerald wine and sparkling blaze of lights in the dusk, in the flood of the crowd heading on work elbowing each other at dawn, Choice was among.
The shadow, a shadow of solitary hovered around, restless.
She has changed, not only the pace faster and faster, but the body, much thinner now. The wages of two part-time manual jobs in China Town contained her fees of the Chartered Accountant, her fees of everything.
Once Choice possessed a lot, in any case, the fineness and cosiness of her life would retain, and would endure in prolonged time. But now she withdrew, and put it behind her, in a big way.
In such a decision which Choice made, I would vacillating and therefore the force of admiration and respect rose up to thrust upon me and hold me tightly. Drifting people
drifting way in so foreign a place, a time. For a while, those thoughts drown me trembling, the tears was filling up, on the eyes, on the throat and on the heart.
Note:
Recently, it was said that Choice has conquered the successive Chartered Accountant exams and was beginning to practice in an accounting film, working at a part-time day job.
With love and God bless her lots
≠Paleink
2005-07-18