Wu Yong'an - Do Not Forget Us 汉译

--Written on the Eve of the Reunion<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

To my classmates who are at the reunion, I extend to you my best wishes and hope that the event is a success. What is better than being back in time and reliving the four years of youth that you thought you had forever lost but magically regained? What is better than May in Hangzhou, shaking hands with old friends who are suddenly twice as old, getting lost on a campus that was once so familiar, searching in the most remote corner of one’s memory for an anecdote that seems somehow funnier than it was in actuality, and the sweet, sweet feeling of revenge upon seeing or hearing of a few A-students who are lower on the social or economic totem pole than you are?

To those of us who can not be there, I offer my consolations. Do not despair. At least we don’t need to sweat in the gym to lose those undesirably gained pounds or to dye our hair to gain back those irretrievably lost years in order to look better in front of our classmates of yesteryear, especially those on whom we had a secret crush. We don’t need to spend hours upon hours matching their names with faces in the old pictures to no avail, for all have changed in appearance and some even have different names. Not being there spares us the Alzheimeric sense of being in a wrong reunion when some John or Sarah or Philip or Jennifer comes up to you and claims to be your old classmate.

True it is we will miss the banquet, the laughter, the new scenery, the Tiger-run spring and Dragon-well tea. But when all that is over, when all the anticipation, the excitement, the talent shows, the four-star hotel, the delicious food of the reunion is over, we are the ones who remain unspoiled. We keep our innocence and purity. We are still the virgins in the Land of Reunion. We look forward with more keenness to the next reunion, at which, when it takes place at a time ripe for us, we will not be coy. We will laugh louder; we will drink deeper; we will reminisce longer—we will be there.