xhu

Bird that flies

Continued...


Friendship---Garden Grove

It had to be traced back to about twenty years ago, when John was still a boy. A boy who was good, bright and playful. He did not have many friends, like he never had any. Academics, he remembered. He was almost very very good at anything he did except one thing, he did not have any close friends, but never, he never got lonely. A wise man once told him, well, loneliness breed distinction. John knew what the old man meant, and it was never too late. The old man's name is Paul, he looked like a monk though. When John started to think about these kinds of things, he always found life is just very wonderful.

The soccer game was about over, cheerful fans were full of energy and ethusiasm. They had decided that if the Chinese team won tonight, they would go for cheer-up and have a party together. The Chinese team did win, John, at that time, joined with a group of newly entered university students everywhere from Chinese proviences, went back to the student residence. They had lots of fun and lots of beer in the party. After all, the local Chinese soccer team won a foreign team made everyone very happy. John was also happy.

John learned to play soccer sometime when he started his studies in university. He doesn't know why, he never liked sports very much. But he liked soccer. He even made friends with some foreign students, white and blacks while playing soccer. Back to his past in high school, he almost failed his physical education.

John was a good boy. He started to study arithmathtics when he was three years old. His mother was a high school math teacher in the village. He counts fast and well, then he adds, subtracts. He plays a lot. Nature is his truest love. John loved mathematic very much when he was 6 after he entered into elecmentary school, also Chinese, and after all everything school teaches. He became the number one in his country side elementary school. He played a lot after school, still. Sometimes his mom thinks he is not an obedient boy as she expected him to be one. She was the one taught him to count at the beginning. And he did pretty well.

John made some friends in his school with people living in the country side. John's mother is a high school math teacher. John made friends living in his neighborhood. That is all John can remember. These boys taught him how to play, and girl of his age spoke with him a lot. John later found that girls grows faster than boy. That is when he studied in high school already. John loves books since his early age of reading. He reads a lot of children Chinese historical stories. This or that. His family always can afford him to buy some good books like children's books. John's father was a country doctor, and later on, he studied in medical school for graduate study, then he could go back to city. That was why John said good-bye to his "new" friends and went to school in the city. His mom is rather still working and living in the country side. And she beared a new baby, John's sister, Wendy. That year, John just turned seven.

John was the number one still in his city school. He became the leader of the class. Not so strange, one with good academics always become leaders. He kept to be the number one in the school, not merely among his own class. He also kept the leadership in his class. John joined young pioneer as the first group among his age and became the representative of the young pioneer while he still kept the leader position in the class. And he now had some extracurriculum except his study, he blows horns for the drum and horn team for ceremonial of the primary school. He is proud of it because he has got some music talent that makes his life quite different from the others. He made some new friends when he was about nine, and as a young boy, he became the head of them just because he is the leader in the class. He wasn't a bad leader, just sometimes he could not hold his temper and tends to get angry at his fellow gang members because they could not fight the "battle" very well. Chinese young boy always emulate that they can fight in the "battle" with their "enemies". Johnhas got a water gun as a Chinese new year present if John can remember, a gun that can fire water into his "enemy's" bogy. Of course, the fight in the "battle" just can demonstrate how strong a male can be. After all, they are the one to pretect the nation from all occurances.

John loved his new school very much even though at the beginning some girls did not like him very much as he is the leader of the class, like forever. The school was just resides in John's neighborhood, like John, all school boys and girls are from the same neighborhood. They and their families know each other. As you may know, young boys and girls don't know what is good or bad. But adults always know. John loves movies, and school always organizes students for movies during the school years, like two or three movies a year, in the local movie theater. Every morning after John woke up, he just got some money from his father to buy the breakfast. And then he always got a little allowances for the afternoon, live five pennies for a pop cicle, milk flavour, sweet and sour only costs three. Sometimes, if John is fortunate enough, he can get some wild cherries for two pennies, two table spoons of wild cherries can make him very happy for a whole day.


沙雁

xhu

Continued...
  
  Bird that Flies

Garden Grove---Friendship
  
  沙雁
  
   After that, John started high school. Starting from grade six, his academic started to fall. He met some bad friends in the class. They don't study except making troubles such as fighting with other people, sometimes even the teacher. No one can do very much about them. John started to study less and then his math then english started to fall. His Chinese was good though as always. He still remembered the poems, fictions and prose fiction he has studied. By the age of about fifteen, John learned to smoke from some of his friends, the habit he never quited. After he graduated from the university from a western university and went to work in the Valley, he still smokes.
      
John's high school is full of adventures. He is supposed to go to a different high school other than the one he went. This one is better in general, rated pretty good in the city. By that time, students usually go to high school in their region, not by their choices. John's mother works in this high school after she came back from the countryside, then John went to his high school because of his mother. He still remembered the time when he played lots of pools and snookers, and his mother got so mad at him. So is the smoking habit. His mother always wanted him to study more like a good boy. John wasn't very bad after all. Even though sometimes he did not hang up the math assignment, but he always had not so bad a grade for him to go on his studies in high school.
      
A couple years later, John is facing the graduation from his high school. His academic is improved since he went to a good class, because of his mother again. He is pretty good at Chinese, chemistry and biology. He isn't that bad in math and physics. His english is a headache. Overall, he wasn't too bad as he became the number twenty five or six in this special class in the school, the class desinated for the academic achievement in the univeristy entrance exam for the whole school. So John passed the univeristy entrance examination and went on for college. By that time, John's father had been aboard in Canada for a while. Then while John went on for college in China, his mother and sister went aboard for visiting his father. They never went back, just because of the June 4 Tianmen massaque. They stayed in Canada, and John's father found a job working in the lab in a university in Canada. John found he still likes China though, but after one year of university study, he went aboard as well for further studies.
  
John had some good friends in his high school and one year university. Some playful friends but still having high academic standings. John played a lot with them, including smoking a lots together. All the time after the afternoon class, the backstreet of the theater next to John's school is their smoking heaven. They played a lots of poker and smoked a lot there. Good friends and bad friends, John did not care. He just had enough fun in his high school year while playing and studying and smoking and making friends. Even after graduation from high school, they together still played a lot. John never had any difficulties in his high school and university except real headache in english.
      
John was very good in english in primary school. By third grade, school had decided for students to study english. John was very good at it, and he made his family so proud of him. He could not speak the language like anyone else in the class, but he remembered lots of vocabulary and gramma. By fourth grade, school official decided not to let students to study more english, maybe for political reason. And John forgot his english, and as time went on, he became deficient in english since he did not study it very hard in high school. A regret! John found. He started to study very hard when he went to Canada, and suddently, his english came back. As fluent as it is, John's spoken and written english are among the toppest upon his graduation from university. He is especially proud of it.