Childhood friend – Wang Ying

As I mentioned before, I feel like I’ve grown apart with my friends in China. And the further away I am, surprisingly the more vivid they become in my memory. For example the recent Sex and the City movie stirred up so many thoughts of my childhood friend Wang Ying. You’d be surprised to hear that the very first time I heard of the show Sex and the City was on a school bus ride home in Grade 8 in Vancouver. Guess what I thought it was? I over heard my two friends talking about it on the bus and I was too shy to ask them about it because I thought they were talking about PORN!

I’m not kidding…

I was thinking OMG they’re brother and sisters, why are they talking about PORN?!

I thought it’d be too weird to ask them about it, so I kept that thought to myself. I was being reintroduced to the show a year later by Wang Ying while I was spending my summer in Beijing. She was in love with the show back then, I’m not so sure if she still is now. But I do remember her wanting to buy a necklace with “Carrie” on it.

The moment Wang Ying popped into my head, a few other episodes of encounters with her stepped through. I remember one summer going back to visit her, she had a poster of soccer player Beckham on her washroom door. I asked if she likes him and she replied, “Hell no, why do you think it’s on the washroom door?” and then she told me that she got it as a gift. The same summer, I went over again to hang out and I noticed that the poster located to her bedroom door. So I asked her if she likes him now, she replied, “Well, the guy I’m having a crush on likes him so he’s on my bedroom door now.”

Another scene that sort of got stuck in my head is when I offered her a sneaky trick. This was back in another summer I went back, but I’m not exactly sure which summer it was. She came with me to a book market to grab some reads. Before we left her house, her mom gave her some money and told her to buy a studying guide and mentioned that she could keep the rest of the money for other purchases. When we got there, she couldn’t find any study guide that she think will be useful. I told her to just the cheapest study guide and keep the rest of the money for other uses. (Yes, I’m sneaky like that..) But guess what she said? “Huh? Why? I didn’t see anything I like. I’ll just give her back all the money she gave me.”

When I was still studying in Beijing, I hung out with Wang Ying a lot. She always strike me as someone who’s got it all. She has the family that I’ve always wanted. She not just lives with loving parents, but I can see just how happy they are together. It’s not the fake happiness, it’s real, I can sense it when her mom offers to cook for us for dinner, I can sense it when her dad comes home late from work and still comes by to say hi, I can sense it whenever she wanted something her parents would go get it for her, whether it’s a computer or a rabbit or a dog. I wanted all of that as a kid, but I never got any of that. Well, I guess I do get some of that, but it’s being segmented into pieces. Like I’d get homemade breakfast by mom, on occasional weekends.

Nowadays I don’t really talk to her at all anymore. I don’t even remember when was the last time I saw her, maybe 4 years ago? The closest connection we have is through xiaonei, how pathetic is that? But as I said before, there’s no way to touch base through emails or msn anyway. I’ll just have to wait till I see her again.. maybe she’ll still be as funny as giving as I remembered her by.. or she might be completely changed to someone I can’t even recognize…