I yearned for friendship with someone of the same sex, for a second sister who would stand by me through thick and thin and with whom I could talk about anything. There is a word in Chinese for this kind of female friend: guimi. I thought that the bond of this guimi and I formed with each other would be able to withstand any storm the outside world could throw at it. I would favor one particular girl in each of my classes, giving her a certain object I adored as a gift, or skipping breakfast in order to treat her to a meal with the money I saved. Even though we shared the same classroom, I would still anxiously pen her a letter and run to the post office to mail it to her. I would watch her eyes widen in surprise as she later accepted this same letter from the hands of a local party committee member. My ingratiating behavior may have worked briefly each time, but in the end these attempts always fell apart. I was like a clumsy suitor: after each failure I would try again, and with each new attempt I would fail once more.
I was jealous of those girls who had their own tight-knit cliques and were always laughing and giggling to one another. Oftentimes I would stare blankly out of my window and watch these girls walk by, holding hands. My heart would fill with envy as I watched them share a piece of bread or whisper something into their friends' ears.
One of my classmates later told me, "Wang Yang, you used to be such a snob back then! You always acted so stuck-up and enigmatic, like you were too good to consort with any of us 'commoners'!"
She couldn't have been more mistaken about my intentions! I yearned for nothing more than friendship with another girl, but I had no idea how to fit in. An iron wall seemed to surround them and keep me on the outside. Even though a few girls did approach me, their friendships were neither long-lasting nor loyal. They would always quickly find another girl to spend their time with. As a result, a sense of disappointment and failure filled my heart.
From then on, I would always stubbornly seek out relationships that were both loyal and devoted. I decided that I would accept someone no matter what they did—even if they were devoid of any merit whatsoever—as long as they gave me their complete loyalty. Their emotional world had to be large enough for me and me only. That was all I needed! I was afraid of sharing. This was an emotional hunger caused by the loneliness of my youth. This loneliness had left several marks on my consciousness. I lacked self-confidence. And as a direct result of this lack of confidence, I was filled with the desire to completely occupy someone else's thoughts and life.
If a girl possesses a handful of virtues and reveals half of them to the world, everyone else will think of her as an outstanding girl and thus be drawn to her. They will adore her at first sight. But if she reveals eight-tenths of these virtues, she will find herself the subject of jealousy and disgust among other females, and she will slip to the level of persona non grata. If she has no concept of restraint and actually displays all of her cleverness to the world, she will become an object of hatred for both men and women, a common enemy for both sexes.
Unfortunately, the teenaged Wang Yang had no understanding of reserve or restraint. As a result, not only did I never have any particularly close female friends; even my male classmates kept a respectful distance.
At seventeen, I carried a grimy yellow military-style backpack with straps so long that they hung down to my knees. I was the spitting image of an intractable loner. In order to maintain a look of depth and melancholy, I kept my facial muscles stiff, and I put on an aloof and uncaring mask for the world to see. My eyes, however, burned with passion and wild imagination.
The future seemed like a multicolored kaleidoscope glittering with a light dazzling beyond compare. Its brilliance and wonder could take your breath away! As a teenager, I was unable to restrain my impulsiveness. I wanted to shoot past the obstacles of high school and leap into the future with a single bound!
The future is unknown. All that we know is that it will certainly be richer, more exciting and more fascinating than the present. At the age of seventeen, what reason did I have not to be full of hope and yearning for the future?
