A Journey

It was a journey to heaven, and a journey to hell. The difference is just that we were able to come back. So here I am, back to normal life, faced with the same trivials and longing for a change.

Year after year, J University has been sending students to compete in the CCTV Cup English Speaking Contest. There are several times of getting the third price, but they have just gone that far. I don't know why, there is always some ambitious people, whether teachers or students, want to break this record and even dream for the highest. Most of them prove to overreach themselves though. Last year, they come back with nothing, and this year- they aimed even higher. As for me, all these remained unknown, so did my ambition, goal, or proficiency. Like I said, to the amiable question master, I was there because I wanted know how far I could go. And it turned out I could not go merely out of J University. This I believe, I am not yet good enough to win a prize. But how do I distinct the deceptive portion of the result from that which was real? If I were the 19th to present my speech, maybe there would be more people listening to me, and a higher mark given to me. That way, I might have the chance to get a third prize ( we hurried home as soon as Vally’s results came out without daring to think further about any results. And that night I still didn’t get any information from Mr. Wang, so I figured I lost it, totally.), and I would be a little bit more confident about starting all over again. I failed, in the second most important endeavor to change my destiny. About myself there’s still a lot unknown. While my teachers and parents were left with disappointment, me humiliation.

After such an experience, it’s always hard to look back to see my previous expectations, but it seems I’ve been used to that.

“We are not going there for practising.” “20,000 students, there’re 20,000 students in J University. You’re their representitives.” “If you don't believe it, just try it out: this single competition is to change your whole life.” “I bet you haven’t realise how important this competition is to you.” “You are the most competitive of our contestants.” “If you don’t get the first place, I will put a dog in your dorm room.” “You’re among the best.” “You can do it.”

These encouraging or trusting words still linger in my mind, I need to keep track of them before I forget them as my mind all too often selectively desert those humiliating memory. ( As a special form of remarks, encouraging words before a contest whether from teachers, parents or peers actually did nothing more than setting me wonder about how in blazes these people look at me, and how much of their remarks was true. There was clear contrdictions in Professor W's words, for instance. The night before we were setting out, he phoned me in person, telling me to work more on my prepared speech because I was “ the most competent contestant among the four of us”. I was surely inspired to some extent and held it as one of the things to cheer me up until I have finished my part and heard him expecting Vally-our last to compete to grab the first prize and went to Beijing. Clearly, if he thought for sure that I was the best one, he would not, at least at my face, express expectations for Vally to reach that high after I ended up among the average. Liona, who sometimes would say she had advantages in oral English over others in my face (I would never do that, even to a peer clearly inferior to me), and sometimes pick my shortcomings in a speech as the advice of a friend, which all made me think that she didn’t take the hint and was a little bit conceit-when she said to me “you are the best”, I really began to wonder what a person she was and what on earth did she think about me. Oh, all the previous judgment was in vein, especially concerning to make a final judgment on someone. If I could only know all those people! )

I realized a serious problem, for the coming 300 days before my chance of redemption occurs, I am to live in the swamp of humiliation whenever I remember this day.

Days ago I was still dreaming for a free trip to Beijing, and now this. Not really. I was only flickering about the idea of going to Beijng, not really thought I would ever have such a chance, if I there was no such thing as luck. But this is just a dream, not an ambition, so I’m not disappointed.

The moment I walked out of the Forestry University Library, I was like a bird breaking free. “I am not disappointed at all,” I told Stephney, “that was the best of me.” Then we made the most of the free lunch and laughed and enjoyed till the end of the day. We splept at 00:20, when we finally grew tired of watching the digital television. The whole place and time were about English, and all about dream. I can’t think of any other moment when I was as happy as this one. Though not at all about ambition and success, this was the highest moment ever occurred to my life. Whenever I remember this day in the future, I shall always feel the sweetness of the life. Words cannot describe it anyway.

Whatever, the most important is that, if I didn't draw any lesson from this experience, I would never get a similar experience ore as this one. All the efforts will be in vain, all the humiliation will dog with me whole college year, and the worst prospect, the rest of my life will just become dim and fade away. As my age grow older, it will be harder and harder to alter the course of my life.

If I was asked what is the most important thing to be done to the environment now, I would answer, to arouse people’s realisation of the urgency of global warming and its by-product climate change (though I never thought people as a whole would do). And now, for me, the most important thing to do to myself is not to finish my homework, not to listen to English programs, but to realize the dangerous situation I am in. If I still let myself stick to the J University lifestyle, I will ruin my whole life.

URGENT! URGENT! URGNENT!!!

So how can I change? We have to change, though a little bit late to realize as this word has already been so overused as to become a cliche. (this was a question bacause even until the end of the semester, it still recurred to me. I was afraid that I would ever come to the point of admitting I had been extravagant with my time because of the special environment, and yet I dread even more that I would ever forget this issue. So the most urgent thing to do to solve this problem is to solve it right now. I’ve tried several ways. One way is to remind me of the peers I used to have who was once less competent than me and is now spending time in a much better university. They spent their time with their future garanteed while I do not; they have the potentiality to have a better job than me even if I am more competent just because they have a better university; they would one day live a superior life, pity me and think I am helpless. These thoughts were to some extent encouraging, but will not last long because after I work under this guideline for a short peroid of time, I would soon find that they were after all among the imcompetent, still struggling in the whirle I was in and never seem to have the potential to get out-which I think is helpless, thus I lose their incentive-one doen’t get inspired by his inferiors. It was the same with all the other incentives I tried before, the question is I devide people as my inferiors too quickly and with my own standard, I can hardly find someone I admire, especially in temperary China, not to say among my peers or teachers. So it just hits me: I can find a person as my idol and teacher for a period of time, during that time, all I want is to challenge him, weigh him down, and walk into his heart and mind. That makes sense, I need to set up system on that. It begins now.

I like Stephney. She has all these strengths that I don’t. Good at ping-pong and badminton, has been learning painting and music since childhood, very clean-looking, self-concious, special love and disciplinary sense for architecture, wide range of hobbies and strengths, honesty, loveliness, very pleasant personality and still more. I am blessed to meet her. She’s the among the few very helpful and lovely friends I have met in my life.

I thought my life was crazy enough to have me put my so-called homework on hold to prepare for an English speech. But, compared to hers, mine was nothing. If I was her, I had already gone crazy, but she’s still so pleasant and pleased. I have a lot to learn from her, and I believe there will be more. There was some qualities in her that are worth studying and even copying. Especially when I look back now and compare her attitudes towards life at least in my point of views to the one of Any Rand’s people in retropect. I hope I will have more chances to get to know her better in the future and learn more from her.

Now I know a little bit more about friendship. A friend is someone from whom I can always draw inspiration, someone leading me to be a better person by his/her wonderful and amiable example. So is it with anyone with same qualities even if they only appear in foreign countries, in the older time, or even in novels. She can be my example and teacher, so does anyone else with same qualities that I asmire. That idea, though not mature or complete, is at the heart of the project I am building right from scratch.

I used to wonder, is friendship so precious as to every writer praise it, raising it up high to the sky. I didn’t know the true importance of a friend to me in my life until I tasted the sweetness of friendship. Until now, I have find just three friends in my life. The first one is F. She is in Sichuan Foreign Language University now. Good for her, though her dream used to be the one in Xi’an. Firstly she trusted me and know me better than any other people I’ve ever met. And then by her example she let me know how few books I’d read. Every single day that I spent with her was encouriging and meaningful. We exchanged little conversations full of insights and our young but original thoughts about life and future. I missed her. Friends are someone I am always willing to listen to with my mouth shut.

Jiaying is another one, but she’s different. She’s more everyone’s best friend than my best friend. She has the most important trait for making a good friend of everybody-funny. She’s the one who I spent the most time with during our darkest days all through high school life. She was the candle that lit up my life. Maybe I was being selfish to have the grudge that her light did not always turn to me and sometimes too cold to warm me up. I missed her any way. Now she has grown up and had her boyfriends, at least now and then, she’s no longer the little one as she was before.

And now of course, Stephney. Let me just call her my soul mate. I don't care whether she agrees or not. I hope next year it will still be the two of us. Then I will be a better person with more knowledge, insights and skills so that I will be better able to have deeper communication with her. Friends are good in this way because with them in my life, I simply want to be a better person. And to some extent I always will.

About V, I think he is like a troubled youngster, someone desperately needing rescue and care. Maybe easy for me to say, but I think he is mentally immature and rely heavily on others for his own validation. He lack the most basic self-concious(back then by this word I meant some knowledge about the actual state of oneself, and even though I was talking like blaming him, I had no idea about who I am-the eternal question of humanity. In fact, the question was so big and complex, and I was too ignorant to switch on my inherent faculty of thinking. I have a new definition for self-concious now-by which I mean to live my life conciously, to feel, to think, to judge, to act consciously and make that a permanent state of being of my life.) Plainly, he didn't know himself at all (frankly, I didn’t either)… It’s really weary(this particular kind of weariness is something I am still suffering from now and then, if not constantly. I would always find myself in a situation where I have to solve some problem out of obligation, rather than self-intrest, which is the most common one when I am in school. Another kind is that the problem is what I wanted to know, but the efforts needed to find about it is out of proportion with the benefits I will get when I get it solved, and there is also the risk of reaping nothing despite all the efforts. The third one, which I just found myself in yesterday, is that when I firstly form an real exciting idea, and expecting that to be extrmely helpful once I get it carried out to some extent, but as it is so big a venture and is unpresedented in my practices, especially when the time is limited, this kind of feeling will come and strike me, and remind how little I know at present. ) to comment on him, though I have seen and thought a lot about that. So let’s just put it on hold. The stories about him will be still more. One thing, however, I want to make straight: he is like a mirror, and I saw myself in high school when I look at him now. (The more I am honest with myself, the liker I was to him, which is really staggering to me.

The mental reflection is acting exactly like a mirror, so alike that I began to wonder the magical relationship between human mind and the nature. Others and me, past and now-they began to connect.

When I was in junior high, I always told my mom, “Mom, I love you.” Mom told me: “love is more valuable if you just put them in your heart.” But I said, “because my heart is full it is overflowing.”( And now looking back, the overflowing thing is not love, but heavy dependency and gratitude. ) Whether joking or serious, words are the outlet of our heart and thoughts. I used to say to my classmates that N University was not good enough for me. I thought I was joking, but later I had to admit it’s just another overflowing from my swelling ego back then. Now I see that kind of unconciousness overflowing in V. He said he want to be transformed to F University after he got a prize. He later added it was just joking, and we didn’t believe him as he appeared to be so conceit and unreal. but later I came to realize this was another outlet of his inner voice and strong desire.

He overreached himself. His ambition is much too far away for him to reach. OK, stop. I said it was dreary to talk about him. (because the more I talked about him, the more it is like to talk about myself. And that was a huge project to analyse myself and really mean more than just a lot to me. so I would rather be careful and precise in the future when I am more capable of it than rush and pass harsh judgment on me.) I hope he will never have the chance to tell me his “secret”.

This evening when I was carrying my food tray to a seat in the Second Canteen, the scene of the Westpath cafeteria in Forestry University suddenly came back to me. “Do I began to miss that?” I asked myself. (I was afraid of the feeling because that was a sign of finishing the tranformational period and being reduced to reality again.)I don’t know, maybe I just miss the English atmosphere. I will miss the boy outside C6 where we could see from the balcony of our Room 229 talking on the phone with his foreign teacher or friend. We were not surprised, it was just that how hard would that happen to us considering we are really in a sucking university. I will not forget the American boy who was asking an average Chinese girl out in the staircase. Just consider that we were never likely to have foreign exchange students on our shabby campus, not to say a romance. I will remember the contestants with their foreigh mentors. It was so natural for them to speak English whenever they want, but for us… I will keep in mind the boy from Ningbo Engineering University, who is also an English major, thingking hard about the war question that he got from V, a irresponsible junior who tricked him of being a sophomore(Vally is really perplexing!)

After I finished my part of the competition, we passed by with the two question masters, so conceit was I that I actually had the desire to say hello to them and hoped they could recognize me, say something really nice to me, so that I didn’t have to go home with nothing. But the moment they passed by without even attempting to look at people around, my ego bubbles burst. I realised who am I to think they must have remembered me? I has always been a nobody, and in this competition which was to change that fact, I already got passed the only chance to make a difference. I was going to be a noboby for still longer. And neither did I see the end of it.

Today in our Writing class, I felt a deeper anxiety that what am doing in this university anyway? I receive the worst possible education, if any, be accompanied by the least ambitious and most ignorant young people who don’t have dreams(that is horrable). I want to change, but I can’t turn the tide. So the tips to people younger than me: work horrably for your college entrance examination. If you ended up in J University, that would the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Your future would be more dim than ever before. This is a school who would be satisfied with the average score of 60.5 in MET-4 and don’t believe it when others told him their passing rate of MET-8 is 95.8%. What a dim future I was facing!

Again, I was suspended in the air. I couldn't go far enough to reach the sky, and back in J University, I was still been looked down upon. They were so mean that they don't even care to give me a Special Scholarship after I worked hard and managed to get the first prize twice in a row. Just now a girl in the Student Union called me and blamed me that the information I’d sent her was incomplete. “Have you some other hobbies and skills? Are you sure you don't have any posts in the Student Body, or in your class? Are you in any of the student associations?” I was totally intimidated by her. “No…no…I guess no…no more…” I didn't like her. Her name is Y. For the first time since I came back from Lin’an, I felt like crying.

“After I failed in the college entrance examination, I am always looking for a chance to prove myself.” Vally told me, “now I don't know what else I can do.” This is his last chance to compete in this game. And me neither. I appear to be very light-hearted, but I began to realise how serious this issue can be. I don’t know what to do.

I want to be myself. But I don't want to a nobody. If I am ever to win, speech contest is the only thing I can do now.

During the contest, two contestants in a row both sent a message to the crowd that they can’t answer the question because they were English majors, they’ve always been learning English and have no time for other subjects and knowledge. I laughed at them, but is that too a problem for me? I don’t know.

The world is complex and confusing, but it is the one I have.

To work hard and stay up into the midnight is not the hardest, the hardest is to still believe you’re the best after all these authoritative denials from both inside and outside the university.

On our trip there, while on the cab to the North Station, Mr. Wang asked the cab driver if he was going to by a car, which brand will be the best. The cab driver said, it was not about which is the best, but about which do you like.

I don’t quite believe that I will rewrite this article to the satisfaction of my heart, as I know that the confused construction and grammar of it is the suggestion of the confusion of my mind back then, and it was a royal reflection of reality by the way it was written. This is actually not finished, and I will just leave it there, as the rest is still unknown. And I kept writing my history somewhere else. Life goes on.