The staunch study-lover Sulan didn’t went for work immediately after graduation. Instead she made up her mind to continue her study and get a master’s degree. Since she yearned for universities in Beijing, she went all the way to that unfamiliar city where she only knew herself. She rented a room near to the university she was striving for, and began her preparation for the coming graduate exam.
The fruit of four months’ in Beijing was fruitless. The direct cause responsible for her failure in the exam was she switched major and undertook a totally new subject for herself. Those articles which had brought her pretty good pay impressed a quite wrong idea on her mind that she wouldn’t be rejected by Chinese language major, for all her writings, plus her love for writing and goal as a professional writer, she stubbornly gave up her own major English and resolutely took up Chinese literature. It didn’t happen to her that writing literature was totally another story different from studying literature, hence people’s saying that writers were mostly not from Chinese majors. So Sulan’s failure was just in expectation.
Sulan packed up her luggage and went back home from Beijing a bitter, gloomy and totally lost girl. What to do now? Just then two of her best friends from university, who now were both middle school teachers in Shanghai, beckoned to her from Shanghai. Tempted by friendship, Sulan turn around from Beijing to shanghai.
She stayed in Shanghai for only two months, during which the first month spent in hunting job and the second bearing the job. The problem was, she found the kind of regular nine am-to-five pm life style was far from what she wanted. She hated struggling unreservedly off metro and onto bus, two or even three hours spent on the way everyday; she’s worried about the condition that one was left not much at all of what one earned, after rented house, transportation and etc paid; what made worst for her were the intense competition and complicated relationship between colleagues. She resolutely chose to leave again, going on to seek her ideal life way.
“Sulan, don’t be so ideal-oriented, learn to be realistic. It definitely won’t help you much when you expect too much from life----“ Pearl remonstrated her on the phone. Her striving had been preliminarily rewarded. Now a white collar in exquisite smart suits, she walked in that prosperous city and looked forward to future with confidence.
The next stop after Shanghai for Sulan was the seaside city Ningbo. She became a teacher in a private college, with neither too stressed life nor too little salary, which could afford her to do a little traveling after supporting herself pretty well. But inwardly, Sulan was in a totally lost and confused condition. She secluded herself in the peaceful campus reflecting on her life passed. What was it that she had been pursuing all the traveling and wandering way down here? What kind of future exactly did she want?
With low spirit Sulan opened her email box that day, and discovered in there a strange email, which was from the other side of the sea and addressed Alex, saying he’s coming to China travel this summer holiday and would like to have her join him if possible. Alex? Sulan searched in her mind for a second and memory brought up that American boy’s warm and kind of shy smile.
It was two years ago. On her way to Beijing, sick and dizzy of the long distance’s train, Sulan loitered around for a little fresh air. Passing by the dining department she saw somebody studying a thick physical book there, which amazed her. She walked up to him and said hello, the boy Alex raised his head smiled shy and warm smile. Then they talked all the way to Beijing. At parting they exchanged email addresses, saying “good bye”, after which one went to the Forbidden city of Beijing and the other California of USA. Not much correspondence ever since. And the thought of meeting him again after two years as a good traveling companion interested Sulan.
The traveling in the southwest was an unforgettable memory. Sulan and Alex camped in deep primitive mountains; put up in Tibetan temple which was filled with rats and staleness; tasted Tibetan-flavored feast in Tibetan people’s home; roamed from one place of interest to another with ever-lasting fun from finding faults in those English guiding instruction------ the companionship between out-going emotional literary student Sulan and reserved rational scientific student Alex was so pleasant and agreeable that Sulan felt herself happy and free like wind during that half month.
When the traveling came to the end, and time came to say “good bye”, Sulan’s eyes welled up. Sad that the good time must end, that good companion must leave, but apart from all that there was something else growing deep in her which brought her tears streaming down. The last word Alex said was, “ Su, your English is so wonderful and you love learning language so much, that you really should try to go abroad for further study.” The excellent graduate student in Berkley university said this with a serious look in his eyes.
A year later, before Sulan boarded the plane for USA, she went to Shenzhen to see Pearl, after five years’ absence from each other. Their last meet was far back in their first year of university, when both of them were still young green girls.
But now after five years, at meeting they could hardly recognize each other, more exactly Pearl couldn’t recognize Sulan. Those fleeting years had shined that short-haired plump girl with big glasses while in middle school, and molded her into a strikingly attractive woman, with slender figure and smooth hair and an exquisite face with light make-up. Simply dressed in blue jeans and white shirt, Sulan had a kind of free and unrestrained charm which was fostered by her very free and unrestrained life, and to which Pearl expressed her open jealousy. Probably this was also the very point loved by that Mr. Right oversea. Sulan smiled with bright and dancing eyes, scenes of past time surging up in her mind wave after wave: unsatisfactory study in middle school, confusing and hurting love in university, drifting aimless years after university, then the strenuous work of preparation for Tofel and GRE ------- all of those hard work had finally cultivated a brilliant and radiant pearl out of the original tiny insignificant sand grain.
They remember a prose once read in middle school, saying girls could be divided into four kinds, wind, flower, snow and moon kind, each with different styles. Then Sulan must be of the wind kind while Pearl of flower. Free as wind and beautiful as flower respectively, they have got and were still facing different yet all beautiful scenes life unfolded in front of them. And here we close the story of the wind girl and flower girl in their first one-fourth years of life.
