Yang Yun
The recent celebration of the Chinese New Year and our Valentine Day of last week brought back memories of the time Mary and I spent in China as teachers of English at Southwestern China Teachers University. To highlight some of those memories, I want to recall Yang Yun, a young 21-22 year old Chinese student as a senior English major who was one of 20 students in my English class.
Yang Yun wanted me to call her Dora, a name that she chose to be called by her foreign teachers of English when she first entered the University. She was one of 60 English majors to graduate that year from one of the six leading universities in China that train teachers.
Southwest China Teachers University is located in BeiBei, Sichuan province, about 25 miles from Chongqing. Chongqing, located where the Jailin River meets the Yantze River, may one day be the largest city in the world. It was then around 12 million.
BeiBei, a small “rural” city of around 400,000 by the banks of the Jailin River is known as Spring City. A beautiful large park with water fountains is a show place in the middle of the city. At night the fountains are highlighted by colored lights. Different flowers, roses, gardenias, and chrysanthemums show their colors in their seasons. The park is always full of people enjoying their outing. It is a place of beauty in the midst of rather drab, plain sandstone buildings.
At the university, six students live in a small narrow room. Each one has a bunk bed, a small desk and they store their belongings and books by or under their bed. One bare electric bulb on a long cord hangs from the middle of the ceiling. There is no heat or hot water in the dorm. Most buildings south of the Yantze have no heat.
Yet, Mary and I found the students are romantic and appreciate beauty where it can be found. It is no wonder that the art work in China is about flowers, birds and nature. The favorite pastime of the students at the university was a walk to downtown BeiBei to visit the park. The flowers and plantings on the university grounds were well cared for. Outside our apartment door was a trellis laden with wisteria.
It is in this setting that I strive to present some of the thoughts and words of Yang Yun, a young romantic. Before leaving China, I asked my students to do me a favor and write something that I could take home with me so that I could recall them. Her thoughts follow:
“The things that linger in my mind are only those common flowers, the flowers I saw in your room. They dance in my memory all the time as if to urge me to write something about them. So I bundle these flowers in my memory and send them to you. I hope that these flowers with their beautiful petals, delicate colors, nice odor and special meanings in them will go to America with you.”
“Wintersweets (Lameihua) Pine, bamboo and plum are called ‘three friends in winter’. In history vast poems are written to praise them. For they contempt the cruelest chill, despite the toughest storm and still sing the ode of life deliberately in the coldest winter. They represent bravery, persistence, dignity and deliberation. People often compare themselves to these three gallantries or regard them as encouragement of their actions.”
“Wintersweet is a kind of plum. It flowers in late February. In the dead of winter the golden budlets dottiing the boughs drive away the depression posed upon by winter. The delicate petals of wintersweet not only bring back beauty to mother earth, they fill the world with vitality, with delicious fragrance, but also the coming of hope, the arrival of spring.”
“Orchids (Lanhua) Compared to the bittersweets I saw in your room, they are more frail. Its color is paler and its odor lighter. Chinese compare orchids to gentle people of high virtue. Its tiny and pale blossoms stand for modesty. Its slender stem and quietly elegant odor represent detachment, self-possession, self regret, etc. ‘To make golden orchid contact/friendship means to become faithful friends.’”
“Azaleas (Duyyanghua). Compared to the others, Azaleas are much more common and earthy. They blossom in deep valleys quietly in the spring. Once upon a time, there was a handsome lad and a beautiful maiden lived in a valley. One day in spring, the lad was forced to enlist in the army and leave his beloved beauty. He promised to return the next spring as they parted at the foot of the mountain. But years came and went. Flowers opened and withered. No information came about the lad. The maiden’s heart broke and she died of painful missing. After her death she became a cuckoo. Every spring she would return to the valley and wait for her sweetheart. She searched and called all over the valley restlessly until her throat broke, and the azaleas covering the valley were dyed blood-red.
We call azaleas Duyuanhua. Duyuan means cuckoo and hua means flower. We also call azaleas Yingshanhong which means to redden the hill, because the scarlet flowers clothe the hill. Azaleas then become a token of eternal love and persistent expectation.”
After graduation with a B. A. in English, Yang Yun remained at Southwest China Teachers University. After three more years there, she received her Masters emphasizing English literature and completing a thesis about Chinese education reformation and social needs.
We are no longer in contact with this very pretty, very ambitious and romantic Chinese lady. It would be good to know what happened to her.
Her final gift was a poem by Percy B. Shelley, published in 1824.
To _______
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odours, when sweet violets sicken
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped on the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone.
Love itself shall slumber on.
- Percy