Echo

What a rainy day! Cats and dogs cannot even describe what we have been having for the last few days. The typhoon certainly brought torrential rain and flooded everywhere on this small island. Once again we witnessed the power of Nature!

I took the MRT (metro) to go to teach a class in the XinYi district this afternoon. People out in the rain surely didn’t look very happy. Wet clothes, shoes, bags scattered on the street, and the only pleasant sight would be the colours of various kinds of umbrellas. I shook off the depressing thought on such a gloomy day and dodged the stinging wind and landed on the front gate of Eslite bookstore. Arriving on the second floor, I noticed an array of new arrivals, the books and novels. Quietly on the corner stood a book which has the mysterious Indian fish pin and the colour of the red earth. I stepped forward and saw the author’s name-Echo. Oh that was one of my favourite writers from my high school days. I even met her at her speech event in my hometown. It’s been over twenty-two years since that day but I still remember clearly her talk and stories about travelling and living.

Life is just unpredictable, isn’t it? I of course am not the same high school student I used to be; and on the contrary I have also travelled and lived in five different countries myself. I have also tried to learn four different languages. Echo Chen was an amazing writer and artist. She was the legacy of Chinese contemporary literature. I picked up one of her seven books and thumbed through several pages. There again, the magic and power of her words mesmerised me over and over. Time went by like a click sound of the clock. I read the book for twenty minutes without noticing it’s my time to go.

Just like one of her famous song lyrics, ‘The Olive Tree’, do not ask where I am from. My hometown is far away. Perhaps we all have this sort of dream or feeling hidden in us but very few of us would actually act it out. So I believe most of us are good writers but only very few of us really make up our mind penning down the lines…
To you, Echo, San-Mao, I hope you never have to roam like a nomad in another world if there is really one.