Memoirs of the Fourteenth Birthday in My Life

Opening words:

I am leisurely in peace and sit around this evening. I cannot tell when my heart went empty; I cannot focus my mind on doing anything.
My father once told me that a diary is a gift you give to yourself in the future. I guess he is right, for whenever I feel depressed, I will head into anything I wrote in the earlier time; and whenever I am reading them, I am judging my temporal decisions and behaviors. There is always a time in there that I suddenly realize how stupid I am in various kinds of things. I learn from it. That’s it, and that’s all.

So am I today. I take out a booklet on which I once wrote it when I was in junior high school. Among the pages, I find a mini-serial titled We Are Fourteen! It’s about a group-camping birthday during that time. However, I roughed it just as homework for my teacher instead of a diary for me, and many of the paragraphs looks much more like a waste book. Most of the spectacular parts only remained as an outline.
Right now, frame by frame, the detail of that time is recurring upon my eyes. I’d like to capture it, as a gift for the future.

Text:

It was a special year when I had my 14-year-old birthday in that school.

It was a sunny day; we were playing football on the mini field in that school. Maybe I was too determined for a goal, I tackled him, heavily. He fell and got up, with some dirty words spilt from his mouth. I was provoked, and wrestled him to the ground. I wasn’t aware that his right foot tangled mine; I lost my balance and crushed on him. He moaned. I thought he was acting craftily and said: I should’ve sent you to hell!
Well, his arm was disjunct and my future seemed to be fucked up. I was deprived the rights to go to the class for 2 months. I was punished to stand in teacher’s office all day long. And I feared that whether I would be sent to the court…. It was like that suddenly I was cast away from this big city and became the Robinson Crusoe on the isolated island----And after I “confessed my penitence” in the school broadcast, I was totally isolated. And what I said after he got injured became the centre of my teachers and classmates’ condemnation; they called me the enemy of the public, the child slayer, accomplice of Lucifer…and whatever you can imagine in your worst nightmare.
From today’s point of view, the thing that happened can be a blessing in disguise. Not only because I learned what is a true friend, though not all the people offering help to the outcast have a pure goal, and what I have to cherish is the pure friendship that Nig, Kim, Jim, Quasi, Gott, Wayne, Hiki granted upon me. But I learned also how to speak under any circumstances. Had the spur of the moment be restraint by any labor of the man, there would be no more war. However, if at least I learned the diplomatese, I would be like pardoned Camu when he crushed Nig’s collarbone half year earlier. And I would be able to gain advantage from both teachers and the headmaster when Mike waved my bloody shirt.
So while the 911 bodes ill for the American people, the 922 became the jinx date for me. One year after that unfortunate event, a blade licked two of my fingers and left a pool of red on the desk. In hospital, a doctor stitched them 14 times with a needle to sew it up.

That’s a little about what happened in that time. I realize now that these things don’t really change my character. Boys at their age of adolescence are easy to get diffidence and self-constrain.
And in the January of year 98, remotely, there were rumors about the arrangement of a group birthday party. As the time went by, the credibility and the excitement increased.
We were going to Dian Shan Lake.

Till the final lesson before this party, it happened to be Chinese lesson. Our class master Rosie said: En…today is 31st March and tomorrow is 1st April, aren’t we have a classmate welcoming his birthday tomorrow? Is it Quasi?”
We laughed and clapped our hands. Then Rosie told us that we must write travel notes about this party.
Grunt and sweat came from us, but joy was our theme that day. When Rosie said class was over, the classroom was on fire! No, but all of the four classrooms on the third floor were on fire!
Wayne shouted in his vigorous and firm voice: the member of my group, come to me!
So Kipling, Gott, Hiki and I, and Diaz with her girl group gathered together, discussing our shopping plan, to E-Mart or Carrefour. We then decided to go E-mart, because it’s larger and nearer.
On our way, we saw lots of people of other classes, by bike or on foot. Yu and I need only five minutes to cover this distance by bike within 10 minutes today. But on that day, we talked and amused each other and walked for totally 45 minutes!
Entered, we all gave our bags to Gott to check, I took care of the barrow. Gott was having a rough time, he had to carry nine bags and pay our bill---- we would return his money later, interest free.
Though I’m only 14 by then, thanks to our government’s open policy, I had already gone to super market like E-Mart for abundant of times. Everything seemed so familiar to me. What we were going to buy is dispensable bowl and chopstick, fruit like pineapple apple tomato grape peach etc. These were for a fruit salad competition which was going to be held during the party. As for the barbecue, we bought a box of butter. We should have done shopping within 30 minutes. However, the girls really had talent for window-shopping: one stood beside the shampoo counter, two gathered in envying the newest suit, three were trying the newest album by Zhang Xinzhe, they didn’t buy anything and spent over an hour…and on this thing I wrote the very sentence in the travel notes I handed in to my teacher: I will never go shopping with them!
Thank god I didn’t even stand a chance to.

By the way, we also bought 27 chicken wings. Total sum was 142 rmb and after Gott had checked out, everyone took a part from the things we bought to carry. And I got those wings, because when I had my 14th birthday at home (I am older than most of them), they were deeply subdued by the food my father cooked, especially the fried chicken wings. Though we’d barbecue the wings this time, they asked my father to bloat the wings. Father was willing to do so, just a while with salt, pepper, onion, garlic, ginger, cinnamon… he completed it.
Nothing else to prepare at home, it’s needless to bring bed sheet, pillow or thermos. And the bowel and toothbrush is required, though I’d be too indolent to bring them also. But mom put those things into my bag for me without my sniff. I borrowed torchlight from my aunt. The walkman sent by Nig as a birthday gift is brought with Disney’s music: Aladdin, Beauty and Beast…. A pen was put into my bag in case of whatever might happen. And last but not least: money, four ten-Yuan notes and ten one-Yuan coins.
At night, I took out the Geant sports suit my mum bought me from the wardrobe. I only care for top brand as Nike or Reebok today, however, in those days, Geant was like something I would wear to attend a feast, and I enjoyed myself in it. How I have changed! And that Geant suit in my wardrobe today has become too small to put on.
Anyway, everything that night was making me walk a further step to the peak of my happiness. Subconsciously, I tried to restrain my excitement so as not to have leery eyes next morning. But I failed to; even something exciting today can hold me up late at night and leave me head aching in the morning.
Thanks to my exhaustion that night, I fell asleep pretty early. I was dreaming of flying on my hands or driving a plane. And that plane crushed on a loud ringing faraway----the alarm clock dragged me back, it was only six o’clock in the morning, April the 1st.
Picked up a little breakfast, I was on my way. The sun of the early spring hadn’t showed up, and it was a little cold. I met Wayne en route, and we talked. Mum told me on my leaving, that I should take care and not to catch cold in the countryside, so I knew for the rest of my time that the countryside is always colder than “Shanghai”. That’s how I was laughed at by aunt that when she was going to Pudong, I told her to put on more clothes. “At least that place could no longer be considered as suburb.” She said. It’s interesting that around these years, three of my aunts and my mum always get together and play cards once a week. I could join them if it hadn’t been for the college entrance exams….It is sweet to have a family reunion. The older you are, the stronger the feeling is.

On the bus, I almost drowned myself in the pure delight of the Disney music. I finished two cassettes only. Nig tried to persuade me to play cards. And I’m a rookie at cards playing. But we won for several rounds. At 9:30, we arrived at our destination: Qingpu Youth’s Camp. It’s opposite to gate of the famous Da Guan Yuan.
As in all the Chinese schools, it’s a compulsory and inevitable task to give “admonishment” before any activities. The vicious Pandora (one of the faculty in my junior school) made that admonishment which occupied our time to urinate. Seeing that her speech was poorly resounded, Pandora then declared a bunch of disciplines that we must follow.
As for me, I was gazing upon the soil of the suburb. It seemed hard to tell the distinction between it and the urban soil. The grasses were lawns with the early green of spring. We stood in a valley surrounded by a ring of trees. There was a path where Pandora stood that led out of the little valley to a spacious hillside. I could see in obscurity that there were some colorful “sculptures” on the little hillside in all forms of little animals: tortoise, rabbit, elephant, tiger, etc…
Suddenly my eyes were caught upon a chest which was held in Ed’s hands.
“Hey! What’s in that dude?” I asked.
“…Nothing…it’s just some firewood that Quasi brought us.”
I didn’t take any suspicion on his uneasiness.

Wayne was in charge of our group, and he got the key of our dorm from Pandora, leading us up the hillside. I was anxious about how our dorm would be like for I adapt poorly to the new environment.
It had just stopped raining, and on the hill it was muddy and sludgy, with many shallow holes. My shoes is a “Wolf”, it was a treasury to me at that time. I walked in extreme caution.
Closer, I found the “sculpture” on the hill which I saw at first was actually our dorm in forms of lovely animals! There were two big buckets along the flowery lane, and the water we used to wash and drink afterward was all fetched from here. As we walked further, we found that the artist who created the sculpture-like dorm hut seemed to have exhausted his inspiration, because the rest of the huts were all in original form which a wooden frame house should be.
Another couples of steps, we made a left turn. Finally Wayne stopped by a hut. This hut was raised up on a half-meter-tall support. On opening the door, we found the beds were all shakedowns, with the unpleasant smell. The sheet felt damp.
As soon we saw the “beds”, we lay down immediately to take a break. Gott was poetic if not mentioning his sloth in not taking off his shoes. He took out a piece of paper, saying: “let’s name this hut ‘Lofty Palace’, shall we?”
“That’s cute.”
“So be it!” He wrote the characters on the paper and stamped it on the top of our door. I didn’t know where his idea came from; even Tao Qian’s bed would not stink a thousand years ago.
So after Jim had seen the name of our hut, he told Nig to use his special handwriting, to write a very big “Kennel” on their wall, echoing ours. And other group did this “hut baptizing” one after another.
Here’s a picture showing the location. Oh! By and by, the W.C. still stood for washroom.

Our group had only 5 members while the others had 6, thus our room tended to be more commodious. It was just after we had settled down our packages, Rosie called us to aggregate.
We had our box lunch together and visited an exhibition about the traditional tribes in China. There the performances bored me enough. And the whole afternoon, I was in the video game hall with Nig. I spent 3 Yuan in there. Then I came back to “Lofty Palace” for a nap. I woke up at about 15:10 and in 15:30 we’d have to aggregate again.
All the people from four classes were brought to the lakefront at 16:30 for barbecue. A lake is magnificent enough for a shortsighted man like me. “The water down the vales seem to tread the sky”, I was subdued by the grand lake before my eyes, thinking that nowhere and never in other place of Shanghai can there have been a deeper beauty.
At last, we reached the barbecue area, and everything in our bag was to apply itself into usage. Butter, sausage, bread, chicken wings, fruit, knives, dishes all lined up. The girls were busying with the fruit salad for the competition and I couldn’t wait to get a stack of firewood into the stove. I burned several pieces of paper, put them under the wood. Only a few minutes passed, the wood became the coal which could provide a special taste for the meat. Everyone had an iron stick about one meter long in his hand, and some of us were cooking the sausage, some wings. But all these things were hard to put on a stick and difficult to bake. While I got a dish of raw meat which distributed to every group, I made a meat stick one meter long, very heavy, to bake on the fire. Till Wayne came for the raw meat, there was only little left.
On touching the fire, the oil in the meat began to boil, making the seducing sound which could irritate your tummy. Then some drop would fall down on the burning coal, producing the palatable air into your nose. Some other groups were also busying barbecuing which made the whole area under clouds of smog. The fruit-making girl, after smelled the scent of the meat, couldn’t help buttering the chicken wings and cook them. When my meat was cooked, it was crisp and greasy and delicious while the miserable “wing-men” were still in trouble with their food. The wing is thick, so its inside was hard to get cooked even when the outside was burnt. They could only stare at my gluttony.
Oh! I almost forget, every one of us was required to bring a cooked course that day and I brought 20 fried chicken wings. And I had also devoured a “sesame oil artificially departed chicken” brought by Linda, two sandwiches brought by Gott. After having played my knife and fork, Kipling and I went into a bamboo woods. Each one got a bamboo stick in hand and was playing with it on our way back. Jane was walking behind us at that time.

I didn’t know Jane’s name till that day, I had just begun to notice her for about 2 weeks. Last week I saw her passed by our classroom, twice. It seemed strange that I had never seen this girl before. But who cares. Rumors about she and I started to spread from this day on. And after Linda helped me to get a chance to talk to her, which was witnessed by many from my class, I was interrogated on it by Rosie and her class master, and she never dare to talk to me any more. But the versatile Wayne told me her name that day in Lofty Palace.

I can not skate. So when Wayne, Gott and Hiki went skating, I had to stay put and play chess with Nig till 19:00. And there followed our birthday ball.
This was a foolish yet exciting dance. The stupidity is that the dance took us two weeks to practice. The excitement is that it was a chance to “dance” with all the girls in your class. The only thing I remember is that most of their hands were cold, one or two were heated maybe by the fire nearby. Jo tried to avoid eye contact with me when it came her turn to dance with me and seemed to want to withdraw. Her hands are neither cold nor heated, neither skinny nor fleshy, a subtle in-betweens, unpredictable.

Then there came the most exciting moment in the camp----night. It might have been inappropriate to call it “most exciting”. From this day’s point of view, doesn’t anything that makes me put ants in my pants or even a tachycardia in my heart all turn into a flash in the pan at last? Agitations and stimulus are ephemeral and like happiness in water, as soon as they are dispelled, what reappeared before our eyes is the cruel reality of life hidden at first. My weakness is that I tend to sacrifice too much for a day’s joy and devote myself to days’ repent. Perhaps the joy even has to obey the mighty law of the conservation of matter among this world; the joy we spend today becomes the anxiety of tomorrow. However love prevails in this law, it is endless.
When we got back to Lofty Palace, under the dim light of the hut, all of us lay on the “beds” drowsily. I played chess with Wayne for a little while, Gott and Hiki played cards. Kipling was already snoring in his bed. We called that “sleeping lady Kipling”. This nickname was given by us because Kipling often acts like a girl. He enjoys haggling over every ounce and putting a finger in every pie. He speaks in a high-pitched sound and often screams when he is teased upon by one of us. By the way, he is a fast runner.
The world began to rest now, but the people inside were ready to do something.

Let’s turn the clock back by ten minutes.

On our way back to hut, there were so many people on the lane that it raised dust and mud. The girls of our group made a fruit salad called “kaleidoscope” and won the second prize of the competition. Right now, the fruit salad was miserably lying in the plastic bag in my hand. I took some pieces of fruit into my mouth from time to time. And the granules of the Chinese gooseberry rolling on my tongue emphasized the delicacy of the fruit.
A heavy pat suddenly struck on my shoulder. I turned back.
It was the fat paw of Mike, and by then I found that the boys of our class were all around. There seemed to be something special going on.
“Gentleman, you shall be sure to keep this in mind,” he said like a agent from FBI, “that we are going to carry out our Code Coyote at 1:30 tomorrow morning. Once we have gathered, I will go informing the girls and then we will have our party tonight!”
Most of the people there, nodded like Ku Klux Klan receiving their missions. God knows how Mike gave this code such a brutal name. What’s more, he didn’t even tell us the content of this code. Anyway, it was exciting enough for us to have a party in the midnight. The only thing that challenged me was whether I could take a good nap before it.
There was one thing more to deal with. The teachers would have a room check at 11 o’clock.

“Ha ha ha ha….” A series of hot guffaw came through our window, making me shuddered in the cold of the early spring.
“Ha ha ha ha….” The sound came nearer. I stretched my head out of the door, it was Leo. He leaned against a tree, laughing crazily and vomiting hard. Sunny stood beside him, holding his arm. Some steps farther, several guys of the other class were watching.
“What’s up?” I came up and asked.
“They just drank too much! A big box of beer quickly taken by eight of them, and Leo and Swift had a fight just now. The girls seemed mad; they had gone to the ballroom.”
“Where did they get the beer? They bought it?”
“No, Quasi bought it at home and hid it in a box, he let Ed brought it here.”
“OH!” Shamefully, I realized how Ed had cheated me in the morning.
“Hey! Shame on you, you loser!” Leo shouted without rhyme or reason. Then he kicked on the tree, and began to take off his clothes! (Some one had taken a photo of him with no clothes on.)
Our PE teacher Fay was now ordered to control the situation. He came up and tried dragging his arm.
“What’s wrong with ya, asshole? Get away from me!” Leo was really drunk, how on earth dare he blasphemed our barbaric PE teacher! If it were on the other day, Fay wouldn’t surely beat him black and blue.
But on this day, Fay knocked a hut open, cleared the people inside, seized Leo and raised him up. Leo was still struggling hard on Fay’s head with dirty words cast upon Fay. As for Fay, he just threw Leo onto the bed in that hut, quickly locked the door. “Loose his madness” He said, coolly.
“Curse you!” Leo wouldn’t stop.

As our vice president of the class, Wayne bore the sacred charges to save the “corrupting” girls in the ballroom. I went with him, as an assistant.
Even remotely, we could hear the disturbing and disgusting sound of rock music, with views troubled by the dizzy lights inside.
Foul atmosphere, evil noises filled the room. The first man I saw is Jack, he was dancing in a way which I could never understand. It was disorderly and unsystematic. Very soon, Wayne and I found the “four belles” of our class; they were dancing insanely, wildly twisting their bodies. Their faces were all red. Wayne told them to go back but they wouldn’t listen. But then, teachers arrived as Frollo and his army appeared in front of the Gypsies, everyone except our four belles rushed away from this room.
I don’t want to say too much about teachers’ brickbat. But after they had come to themselves, they were released from teachers’ dorm. And our dear teachers had strengthened their night supervising. There had been torchlight passing by our huts every fifteen minutes. And Quasi was brought to Rosie.

This interlude has stabled my negative stand for dance. I won’t deny that the experience on the ball two years later in my senior high school sharpened my prejudice. However, to be retroactive, dance belongs to a part of the ancient tribal mate-seeking ritual. That’s what the western ball for the aristocracy was originated from. The key word is mate. As in the history of China, dance is the tricks of mummers and actors, long despised by men of honor. So we can see for ourselves a little degradation of our society from here.

On seeing that our midnight action was seriously affected by what had unexpectedly happened, I went to Nig’s “kennel”, watching him playing chess with Jim. Just a little while, I fell asleep.
Thank god I had only slept for ten minutes when I was awakening by the winning shouts of Jim. But I felt very tired and decided to back to sleep. Returned, I saw them four still awake. I felt a little hot, and changed to shorts, covered myself with a sheet, watched Gott playing cards. I didn’t know whether Mike would cancel our code or not.
Little by little, I began to feel something itchy on my leg, like millions of needles piercing my skin. Quite uneasily, the feeling spread quickly to my body, my hand and my face even. Wayne said that I was not accustomed to the climate of this new place.
The fifteen-minute patrol of the teachers had stopped for a while. And most of the lights nearby were off. We lay down wearily. The watch showed it was 0:50 and I turned off our light. When I had just lain down, the lights next door was on. A figure walking on tiptoe approached our door. It was Woolf.
“Open the door.” He said carefully so as not to be heard by anyone nearby.
I was quite excited that he had come at last. But by my instinct, I kept my mouth shut. And five of us were so tacit that none of us ever made a sound at that moment----five cowards maybe.
Woolf tried again, but he finally left. I put myself silently behind the curtain and found that many huts’ lights were on. The boys came out of their room one after another, and gathered by the wood swing in the center of the five huts. There were about 20 boys out of the 28 in our class. The “kennel” of Jim and Nig was also soundless. They seemed to be like us.
Now I was between two fires. The desire of going out was calling me out while the beer events and the looks on the other four were suppressing this desire. It was like an invisible hand pressing me on the window.  “Let me just follow them and watch.” I thought and compromised with the invisible hand. I put on my shoes and brought my torchlight, walking towards them silently.

There came a heavy pat on my shoulder again.
It was Nig who had already been hiding behind Lofty Palace for a while.
“Imbecile! You just scared me to death.” I cried out, astonishingly and joyfully.
“Shh….” He stuck his finger to his lip, and then go zigzag with me following the boys forward. We kept our distance with great care. On our way, we saw huts of other classes were all closed without any lights.
When they had come to the lane, they stopped. Mike went to the girls’ dorm alone. The teachers must have asleep already.
With less than two minutes, Mike came out with six girls. Perhaps they had a little disagreement about where to go and they began to gabble.
Nig and I were hiding behind a hut, not very far from them. I heard one of them suggesting going to see the moonlight by the lake. And this idea was popularly agreed.
I don’t understand the admiration of the natural scenery. I believe arbitrarily it strange to enjoy the moment by the lake in a dark night. Not to mention the superstitious stories, the potential threats among the dotted houses which contained overworked and underpaid workers and their hungry dogs could be dangerous.
Maybe the proprietor of this camp had considered this. The camp and the lakeside area are separated by a little river. The only way to pass is a bridge with a two-meter-high steel gate in the middle. It is locked in the night.
But a door is only a block for ladies and gentlemen.

What had happened next could make our teachers disappoint to the marrow of their bones. Diaz, light-footedly, leaped over the steel door on the bridge and then four girls followed her and succeeded to get across. Four boys went over the gate also. They were on fire, and soon disappeared into the darkness.
So was the power of the alcohol; it drives your self-restrain away, so many of us guffaw and heehaw after having it, some cannot help crying, and some obtain the audacity to tell their privacy to the public…. It could be the abreacting of part of the animal blindness in us.

While opening my mouth to show that I’m surprised with what I had seen, Wayne showed up with our teachers. It gave me a big shock.
The code leader Mike, seeing the situation, quickly came to Rosie: “Mrs. Rosie! Diaz and other four girls had gone over the bridge, what can we do now?”
Rosie knew nothing about what was going on. She was frightened by Mike: “Get someone to find them immediately!”
“Aye aye Madame!” Mike turned back and said, “You, you and you, follow me.” His role had changed so fast. And four people thus came to search and rescue the lost people.
Nig and I had joined them in chaos. Just at that moment, Wayne shouted: “Look!”
We watched towards where he pointed, fearfully at the moment, the stars in the sky of the suburbs looked so big and bright as I had never seen before. It was beautiful.
“The celestial image is changing!” Wayne acted like a stargazer, “And evil is prevailing! Have you ever heard that this place was cursed, and the gate of Da Guan Yuan used to close on its own?”
His words made me tremble. Luckily there were people all around, and he was just joking.
Later, all the runaway people were found, and the teachers were calm from the incident. They drove us back to our huts, ordering that none should ever leave their room, and tomorrow there would be a settlement.

I remember now at that night, before Woolf and Swift had finished their beer, I met Swift on the way, and I drank half a bottle of his beer. That’s the part I missed in the original text.

With a mind clear and placid, I went back with the other people. Some cadres of the class were ordered to stay. There would be an interrogation going on, I thought.
The watch on my wrist said it was 1:40 in the morning. I was disappointed by what they had done. And the beer they brought was what had swept our zest away. With these thoughts in mind and the snoring going on around me, I fell asleep again.
But then, some unspeakable noise woke me up. I couldn’t tell what it was. It was from Quasi’s room. I got on my shoes to check, only to find the moonlit sky laughing at me. When I had lain down, the noise came once again. It was the sound of the whole room burst into a suppressed laughter. So I went to knock on Quasi’s door.
John opened it. There were eight people in there instead of six! They were Quill, Kim, Ed, John, Marion, Quasi, Sunny and Gordon. It was a surprise for me when I saw the bandage on Quasi’s hands. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
Quasi turned his head back, unwilling to unveil his humiliation. All of them were lying on the ground except him. At this moment John whispered to me: “Just now, Rosie had criticized him on his bringing the beer. Then after we had come back, Marion blamed him, and he suddenly punched his fists against the wall!” And John showed me the direction towards which I saw some blood on the wall.
“We are telling jokes, come and join us!” Quill changed our topic.
“Why don’t you guys have lights?”
“It’s down, poor quality. Oh! I still got a roast chicken in my plastic bag, is there anyone who wants to give a try?”
“I’d lost my appetite.” “Thanks, I’m full.” No one seemed to accept his offer.
But I had already been suffering hunger and cold right then, we took the chicken to a rock table outside the hut, using torchlight. We sliced the meat one by one and biting riotously, like two barbaric from Stone Age. It had been a distinctive flavor to have delicious chicken on a moonlit night.
After we had had our food, we cleaned our fingers with tissue and came back to the room. Then we had a long time of telling jokes, porn ones, almost made me laughed until I gave out the chicken I had taken.
Heavy-headedly talked and laughed, it was four o’clock in the morning. I am easy to lose self control when I get excited. This was proved again three years later in the trip to Nanjing. Total two nights, I had been keeping talking with Arron and Will and only slept for two hours each morning. This might have been the symbol which a young man more or less should bear. Anyhow, this talk by the lake is the first time in my life that I stay up so late.
While we were saying jokes, a hag-like sound appeared by the door: “What are you doing?!”
It was utterly discomfited English teacher Sarah came to perform the room check. “How can you guys still act the giddy goat? Mrs. Rosie was totally disgraced and humiliated by you! Aren’t you going to sleep now?”
Without waiting for our reply or explanation, she said the same when she shocked the “kennel”.
Her coming was like a pour to the face; we were all muted then and fell asleep.

I was frozen up in the morning. The early morning of the spring is nipping. I looked at my watch, it was 5:30, and I had only slept for one and a half hour. The folks around me were washing and dressing.
I thought I could put up with a day. So I did not open my bag for brush or bowel.
After the gathering at six, we got our free time to play around. I had planned to go back to sleep, however at that moment, my spirit was too high to shut down.
Boating is an indispensable event in Dian Shan Lake. I went boating with Ed and John because other four boys of my group preferred skating. We paid 50 Yuan as foregift and took a boat into the lake, oar by oar, rowing to the heart of the lake. It’s slow on man’s labor, and tiresome. I curled up my sleeves and still got spilt wet by the water raised from the lake. I guess I lack too much exercise those days, just rowing for a couple of minutes and my waist and wrist had got sour.
The clouds were high above the azure sky, and we were on a boat inside a dotted verdure lake. Many people were there rowing in idyllic. And the song of birds on the shore and in the sky is the music of spring. Anything at this moment could be our enjoyment. And this enjoyment, I knew, was countable.


Ed,John and I on the lake

A boat approached us in a high speed soundlessly. I turned my eyes from the shore; found that it was the boat of the “kennel”. Jim, Nig, Gordon, Quill were aboard, getting up on their hind legs. A “war” was inevitable.
To be more accurate, it was just a hit between the boats. We didn’t wish to get hit, so Ed and I desperately thrashed away. However, they had eight hands oaring and caught us soon, giving us a big strike on the head. Then they turned their bow and hunt for the next target and Nig left us a very big sinister smile.
We continued our journey and came to a very big local boat then, there was a women cooking their. A dog came up and barking at us which made us turn away quickly.

An hour later, we were back at where we had started, happened to meet the crew of “kennel”. They were all wringing. I knew later that they were seriously counterattacked by a group of girls during their raid. Well, there’s the saying that who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

The five gentlemen of the Lofty Palace did a villainy thing at eight o’clock that morning. It still remains unknown to most of our classmates, except for the faculty of the camp.
Gott took out a bottle of ketchup, wrote with it on the wall: THANK YOU FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY!” Wayne round up the so called quilt, and I bestrewed as much as the chips as I can. “Lady” Kipling poured some cola on the “snack cone” we made. This was an extreme protest against the poor service the camp provided us. And we locked the door.
Thank god that they did not even performed a room service!
Ironically, at the meeting on departure, our group was awarded the “Model Group” of this group birthday because of our last “silent” night. Every one of our group got a small medal. As the people runaway, they were harshly condemned on name by Pandora, and she also threatened us that if she saw anyone taking nap on the bus back, she would take that as an evidence of his not sleeping last night and would punish him for it.

On my way back home, by the mechanical vibration of the bus, I began to feel whacked. I was too afraid of being seen by Pandora, so I endeavored to stand my eyelid. Pity the willpower of human here was too weak and tiny; my conscious was getting weaker….
“Dong!” My mind was suddenly enlightened, feeling aching on the head. It was my head hit the window. Come what may! I leaned my head against the window pane and slept.
Muddle headedly, we were back at the gate of our school. I got home at about four o’clock in the afternoon. There was a NCE course for me to catch in SISU at six that night and I didn’t want to be absent. I opened TV and went to rest in my bed. How comfortable it is to lie in your own bed….
A “little” while after, I felt hungry and went for supper, only to find that the hands of the clock on the wall was pointing at ten. This was one of the countless moments that life slipping away in my own hands without my sensing it.

So are our lives and memories.

Wrote on 2002.01.26
Translated into English on 2006.01.20