Friday, December 31, 2010

New Experience?


Our first year in college was the first time we tried to study in co-ed classes. There were really very few interactions of any kind. Sure there was curiosity, but none was shown. The choir at Truth Lutheran Church was a very good one with four part harmony and provided an opportunity for some limited interaction. The chorus I directed at Friendship Corner was also a mixed voices choir. We got along very well, but we only focused on our music as we spent quite a bit time just to learn the music.

One day I was approached by a girl from our church. Her name was Hu Jen-Hua (胡建华). She was then in her last year in First Girls School in Taipei, which was known as the best high school in Taiwan. Hu was well known as the best student in the high school. She asked me to walk her home. I was very excited and pushed my bicycle to follow her to her home. She was a school basketball player as well. We chatted quite a lot about our b-ball games, and about her good friends at school. Every time when her school had a game at Three Military Court near her high school, I would ride my bicycle to watch the game and then walk or ride back home with her. She came home to visit with my mother a few times, too. We enjoyed each other quite a bit but, as she was still in high school and did not want anyone to see us, we only met after dark. Of course, since we were in China, there was never any physical contact! She told me quite a bit about her family friend Wang Shan Yi (王尚义) ,the famous young writer in Taiwan. The story she told was quite interesting, but not quite the same as she told in her book later, of course, that is another story.

This strange relationship lasted for almost a year, until after she entered Taida in the Foreign Language Department - directly, without taking the entrance exam. She had talked earlier with my father, as she regretted her choice of the Foreign Language Department. She wanted to change to Medicine, but it was too late. She could not change until after she started the Foreign Language Department! So she met and talked to both of my parents at different times, a situation which was very unusual in China.

She represented Taiwan in her second year to an international student conference. I heard that she married there. And so our brief period of unusual encounters ended at that point. The following picture was given to me by her in March of 1958, her senior year in high school.

No comments:

Post a Comment