Friendship

Friendship is something special. When it comes into the lives of you and your friends, distance and time do not matter. When it does not belong to you, you could only wish for it.

 

I myself have two dear friends, Hua and Ping, whom I met in college.

 

In the third year after the Chinese higher education system on college entry exam and selection had resumed, my sister and I joined the millions of college applicants to compete for the four percent of hope to get higher education beyond high school. After two years of wholehearted preparation for the College Entry Exam, applicants around the country were united by the stressful subject tests for three hot days in early July, 1979, then, anxiously waited for the results. Small percentage of them got relieved at the pass of the required score a month later and carefully picked out five choices of universities that accepted students nationwide and five choices of local colleges. In the end, quite a handful of disappointed applicants got their weary hearts hammered by the irreversible fact that the unpopular universities with their unpopular majors that provided the country desperately needed students got the privilege to cut in to go above the second choice of the student, who had been thrown out by their top one choice, and proceed the selection without consent with the applicants. To prevent wasting all the hard work those school admission officials had put in, salt was cruelly applied to the fresh open wound by the official announcement that no more try would be granted for next two years if the admitted students refused to attend the schools.

 

At the good news that both my sister and I were accepted and the bad news that I was left with no choice to attend the college against my choice, my dad desperately hoped and tried to find me at least one companion for my trip to the college twenty four hours away by train. After countless trips to the College Entry Exam Office in Beijing, dad dug out the names of other two equally heartbroken young girls, Hua and Ping, and contacted their parents to arrange our first trip together to the university. Unhappy with the university but glad about the companionship among us, we met in the Beijing Train Station for the first time when we were only eighteen years old and had become best friends since.

 

After graduation, we lived in different cities, worked on different jobs and had our own separate lives, dating boyfriends, getting married, having children, and then coming to America. We three did not get many chances to see one another when we all were still in China. However, each time we got together, we would jump right on yakking without bothered with any preliminary, as though we had just chattered the day before. I came to America first, giving them a chance to banter about me during their holiday gatherings. Hua came a few years later, and then eventually Ping jointed us four years ago. Living apart far away, we still cannot conveniently meet, but once we get on the phone, our girly chat could last as long as up to four hours and we could comfortably talk about anything without any reservation.

 

This is how I value true friendship. When you open a dialogue, someone is ready to talk. When you want to give, someone is comfortably to accept. When you are proud, someone is happy for you. When you feel down, someone is by your side soothing you. When you are whining, someone shuts your up and tells you something worse could have happened or would be happening. When you are unreasonable, someone points it out and wakes you up. True friendship comes into your life without its end in time and distance. Time makes friendship richer while distance makes it more precious.