The Dream 

August 21, 1999 

     I want to talk about the dream that started my morning. It felt so 
real  that it still makes me want to cry. 

     I am in a big house. it is supposed to be my parents' new house at 
Sh------, but it looks much more grandiose. I am in my room when a family 
member - I’m not sure who - brings me a letter. I open it and find it is 
from Mr. Y. S. The content is not much: I’ve been fine, how have you been. 
But considering the facts that I have not seen him for more than a decade, 
and that I was madly in love with him, and that he was the very first 
person I ever loved, the letter seems like a lighthouse on a dark night at sea. 

     The letter is short, and written in English. I finish reading the 
letter and say to myself: I’ve got to write a reply; my English is good 
enough now to write a passable letter. But then I change my mind: I’ve got 
to find him, I’ve got to see him. So I rush out of the house. 

     I find myself in front of the group of buildings just outside W----- 
Middle School, where X. M.(a former classmate) used to live. The buildings 
look different: they are much higher than I remember, and somehow much more sombre and threatening, but I can recognize them as the same buildings. I am pacing to and fro in front of them, when suddenly I see him coming out of one of the buildings with a small girl. Oh yes, it is him! Ever so young, and so handsome, and tall and slim, and with the same dark wavy hair, the same bright eyes, the same prominent cheeks, and the same full lips. He looks a bit more tanned than before. He is radiating youthful charm as he did years ago, when he stood in front of the blackboard, an excellent 
twenty-four-year-old English teacher, and when I, a twelve-year-old 
schoolgirl, was sitting at the back of the classroom, watching him, 
admiring each of his movements, taking in every word he said. The result was that I became the best student in English in my school, but he saw only a few of the tests in which I scored the highest. He left just after teaching us one semester. 

     Now, coming out of the building, he is speaking very kindly to another 
schoolgirl, who obviously has some kind of problem. He is taking her 
somewhere to solve the problem. In a few seconds they are gone. Just like 
that. I go into the building, and find out that there is a school there, 
where he is apparently a teacher. 

     I stand at the entrance of the building and wonder whether I should 
wait till he comes back, or do something else to get back in contact with 
him. 

     At that point I woke up, more because of the delightful shock of 
seeing him after so many years than any other reasons. 

     I woke up, and it was early morning. I said to myself: I’ve got to 
find him, I’ve got to see him. I could try the internet. His wife majored 
in computer science, didn’t she? She should put their names on the web. 

     I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to see him. I can try the Chinese web; 
I can try the American web, too: he might be in the States since he spoke 
such good American English.      I just got back from China yesterday. Pearl, my best friend, was asking me whether I wanted to see Mr. Y. S. again. I said, where am I supposed to find him. She said she wanted to see her Chinese teacher again, in ten or fifteen years for example. Now I know that I want to see Mr. S.: I want to receive a letter from him one day, out of the blue, as I did from Mr. C., my middle school Chinese teacher. 

(--- I did try to find my former English teacher on the internet, and after 
a few unlikely hits, I found an exact alphabetical match one day and 
emailed that person. But no reply came.)