A special girl called Twilight.

Twilight was one of our favourite students at the first university we went to teach at, in Longyan. She was one of Peter’s students, and considering they were all very shy to start with, Twilight was pretty outgoing and confident. She got involved with anything happening on campus and was willing to give anything a go. She taught me some Chinese, although I was a terrible student, and she would run messages for us whenever we needed help.

Twilight on the right, with her parents in 2006.. They took Peter and I out for lunch one day when we were living in Longyan.

 

This is an excerpt from my book. I wrote a lot about Twilight. "The Chinese give a great deal of serious thought when it comes to naming their children. Twilight’s family name is Ma. This word means horse. Her first name means going a long way, being successful. The Chinese are inclined to use words as names, words with quite beautiful meanings. So her name meant ‘going a long way like a horse, and having a successful journey.’ It would be comparable to us calling our child ‘Happy Successful Kerr’.

When Twilight started university her father also chose her English name. We asked why he chose Twilight. She said because it not only means the end of the day but also dawn, so this name could mean the beginning of a day, a new dawning in her life, with a long happy day in front of her. Lovely isn’t it?"

Twilights mother cooked lunch for me when I visited Kunshan.

Twilight was a Longyan girl, and knew the place like the back of her hand. If we wanted to buy something she knew where to find it. China is a funny place when it comes to shopping. Although they have the shops along the streets, often shops are also on the second and third floors of buildings but all hidden away, and we were stunned at times to find all sorts of things one or two levels up. (When I was in Putian I couldn’t find the post office. There had to be one, but I never saw it. That’s because it was on the second floor of a building.)

Sometimes I would praise Twilight for finding some shop I wanted she would just say, ‘the sign is there’, but of course all in Chinese and unreadable by us.

Kunshan downtown. Note the motor bike on the right. Mother driving, father behind, holding a toddler all wrapped up against the cold.

 

So Twilight, like Alex, became part of our Chinese family while we were in Longyan, and we used her frequently as our translator.

While I was in China this month, I visited Suzhou, and Twilight is now a married woman with a baby and lives in a town called Kunshan, halfway between Shanghai and Suzhou. Once she knew I was going to Suzhou, I knew, come hell or high water, she was going to meet up with me, and so she did. We had two days together.

Twilight in 2013 with her baby and husband. Note the heavy clothes. It was around zero this day, freezing cold, having snowed a couple of nights before. One tiny heater was on, but everyone wears many layers of clothes rather than use heating.
 

Twilights apartment block. They live on the 8th floor.

 Her baby is two months old, and her and her husband run a small engineering factory. At the moment her mother is staying with them to help with the baby. Actually, having a baby in China is very different from what we are used to. The new mother has a woman, usually the girl’s mother, come and stay with them for at least the first month.  The new mother does nothing for the first month, and I have heard is not supposed to bath or do any work, concentrating on caring for her baby. In Twilights case, her mother is staying on for some months.

No space goes to waste. This little plot of veges was planted outside their factory. Someone is caring for this little garden. The blue is the side of a chook pen. Unfortuantely the cabbages did not like the recent snow, and they looked a bit the worse for wear.

Twilight and her husband came and picked me up from Sam and Ethel’s place in Suzhou and took me to their place in Kunshan, also driving me around Kunshan, as I had never been there before. It was a lousy day, cold, bleak and wet, but I have to say that Kunshan is a really nice place. It’s a new city, built around 10 or 15 years ago, clean, well set out, and most people seem to obey the road rules.

I took this picture above through the car window. You will notice several tall black things, one just to the right of the power pole. China has a couple of nice months of weather during spring and autumn, but the rest of the time its stinking hot or freezing cold. Up north although the winters are freezing, during the summer, the weather supports tropical plants easily. So there are many palm trees around the cities in China. But palm trees do not like the cold and snow, so all the cities wrap up their tender trees for the winter, giving them lovely warm overcoats.  Here you can see some palm trees with their winter coats on. In the spring they will all come off, and lo and behold, back to tropical trees again.

One of the buidings in Kunshan's downtown. It's a shame it was such a lousy day, none of the pictures give a very good impression of the place. But this is one town that I could happily live in. On a good day it must be really nice.

 

Twilight took me to her home for lunch, prepared by her mother. So we had a good meal of fish, pork, and noodles, amongst other things. Like all Chinese, they tucked away a large quantity of food and were constantly urging me to eat more, more, more. I just couldn’t keep up with the Chinese appetites, no matter where I ate.



Oh well, you'll just have to tip your computer sideways. I don't know why it has done this, the original is the right way up and I have loaded it and flipped it several times, but it will not load the right way up.

Twilight features a great deal in the book I wrote about our first year living in China. I had taken a copy to give to Twilight. Here I am holding my book, ready to give it to her. We were having lunch at one of my favourite restaurants in Suzhou, a little dumpling shop at the In City Mall. The last school I taught at was in this mall.

  She always had a soft spot for Peter, and has kept in touch with us over the years. After we finished our year teaching in China, we had three weeks travelling, and both Alex and Twilight came to Suzhou to meet up with us for a few days before we came back to Australia. It is rare to see Chinese people display emotion, but when we were at the airport, Twilight was sobbing her heart out as she was saying goodbye to us. She will always have a special place in our hearts.