INVITATION

I looked at your photos today. What a joy, my dear Beibei. I know every decision I made was to be with you. I left you because I wanted to be with you. I can still feel your soft cheeks breezed over my face, you little hands and strong legs in my arms. I can still feel your little body, warm and heavy. When I held you you looked at me, you knew me, and you smiled. Some nights, you would not sleep without me. When you were able to talk, you would say - mama, don't go away . I would stay by your bed, hold you hand and wait. Sometimes you would wake up from a noon nap startled and crying. The winter days were dark and cold. You cried bitterly. I would comfort you, holding you tight, humming sweet words to you. You loved bathing, but hated being dressed. Before we towel dried you, you were crawling away happily. Later, when you were older, you would come to me after bath, naked, saying - mama, smell me. I just had a bath and I smell good . You would stretch your lit...

Summer days in the past were not as hot as they are now. We could still wear long sleeves in June. Winter was cold with lots of snow. If a winter went by without two to four feet snow, the elderly ones would worry about drought in the coming spring. School was over. It was just five in the afternoon. The children, eager to go home, waited at the school gate to regroup. My group contains nine children, four boys and five girls. We would walk in a line with two boys in the front and 2 at the back. The leading boy was a 5th grade. He hold a stick in his hand to scare away dogs. The road, which was not paved, but a narrow dirt space between houses, was muddy in raining days and dusty otherwise. Almost every household had a watch dog. They were usually big and unleashed. When they bark, some of the younger ones would cry. We were taught of various techniques to survive dog attacks, but probably when that moment came, we would be lucky if our legs could run. Our school was located ou...

It is hard, I recon, to translate classic Chinese poetry into English. I took a comparative study of English and Chinese classic poetry in college, and have to say, structurally they are incomparable due to huge cultural and language differences. Chinese classics, like the Dream of Red Mansion , the Journey to the West , or the Outlaws of the Marsh , are even more difficult to translate. I have the English translations but they fail to catch the spirit and vividness of the originals. It is interesting to read them side by side, as a reminder of how disparate the two languages are. This is not to deny the humongous work that the scholars had to undergo to complete the project. It is just sometimes impossible to loyally and artistically translate a masterpiece into another language. Of the handful female poets, Li Qingzhao is my favorite. She lived in the late South Song Dynasty (1127-1278), a chaotic period when central China was under constant inva...

I was reading when Beibei came into the room. Sometimes when Beibei is bored, he would turn to me for attention and TLC. So I put down my book and sat beside him. - What happened? I asked. - Nothing. He shook his head. - I just want to be here for a while. His long eye lashes fluttered like butterflies. As I sat close to him, I smelled something from the fleece jacket he was wearing. It smelled like fried rice with egg. I got closer, sniffing. Definitely the cooking smell of fried rice. - You smell like fried rice! I exclaimed. - Really? He sniffed around his clothes a bit, then raised his head, and with that look in his eyes and that smile at the corner of his mouth, before I could protest, he jumped on the bed, up and down on the mattress, giggling and wiggling his body between the sheets, comforters and pillows, trying to smear whatever smell to the stuff on the bed. I pretended hard to be mad, but what I could only do was laughing. I laughed and laughed. We laughe...