Splendid Love

The Joy of Living

2011-06-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

Life is beautiful on its own. I realize this after I translated the short story Good Luck and Best Wishes from Chinese into English.

In the story, people live a primitive life with few modern belongings in a far-off mountainous area; however, they enjoy life enormously. A bowl of fermented spirits, a flowery bun, colorful strings, spices, scented pouches, and longing for love and marriage bring them great joy of living.

Mom teaches her teen daughter how to hold a needle and how to use a thimble to sew flowered cloth into the shape of a heart to make a scented pouch, and how to spread aromatic spices to make the scented pouch bulge. The girl savors the pleasure of using a thimble to push a needle, the pleasure of pulling a needle through a cloth, and the pleasure of joining two pieces of cloth together.

Dad teaches his young boy to pound the spices in a mortar with a stone pestle, but spices jump out mischievously. Through pounding and pounding, the boy finally can make the spices turn compliant and burst into flowers, which satisfies him. As he pounds the pestle up and down, the house becomes filled with the aroma.

The atmosphere is aromatic and mystic and the practice means more than itself. The teenagers feel that it is something beautiful and worth expecting. The implication of sex education is evasive, beautiful and healthy.

On Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th lunar month), the young boys and young girls climb onto mountaintop to collect Chinese spicy mugwort plants, they feel like harvesting good luck and best wishes for the entire year. They enjoy being young, being together, being pure and being in love.

The story doesn't provide a specific time setting nor a particular place. There is nothing to do with politics. It is simply an ode to life. Living is meaningful and beautiful by itself. It doesn't take much to be happy.

Good Luck and Best Wishes is included in the short story collection Street Wizards and Other New Folklore , one volume of 21st Century Chinese Literature, which presents a kaleidoscope of Chinese folk customs and provides a view of the multifaceted and living China.

Favorite Love Quotes

2009-04-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

Plato: Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

John Keats: Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.

Harriet Lerner: Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships.

Anthony Robbins: It's your unlimited power to care and to love that can make the biggest difference in the quality of your life.

Mother Teresa: Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.

Henry Ward Beecher: Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

St. John Of The Cross: And I saw a river over which every soul must pass to reach the kingdom of heaven and the name of that river was "suffering". And then I saw a boat which carries souls across the river and the name of that boat was "love."

Lao Tzu: Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.

A. W. Pinero: Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

To the Oak Tree

2009-02-14T18:51:00.000-08:00

(Written by Shu Ting; Translated by Jade Meng)

If I love you-
I won’t imitate the climbing grandiflora,
Show off myself on your high branch;
If I love you –
I won't act like an infatuated bird,
Repeat the humdrum song for the green shade;
Nor the fountain,
Provide cool solace all year long;
Nor the sharp peak,
Enhance your height,
Set off your dignified look.
Not even sunshine.
Not even spring rain.
No, all of these are not enough!

I must be a silk tree in close proximity to you,
Stand by you as an image of another tree.
Our roots intertwine firmly in the soil,
Our leaves touch each other in the clouds.
With each flow of wind,
We greet each other with regards.

But no one else understands our language.
You have your strong branches and solid stems,
Like daggers, swords, and also halberds.
I have my big crimson flowers,
Like deep sighs,
Also like valiant torches.

We share cold wave, windstorm and thunderbolt,
We share brume, flowing mist and rainbow.
Seem to be separated forever, actually bond together tightly all the life.
This is great love,
This is fidelity with determination:
Not only love your valiant stature,
But also love the position you insist, and the land you stand on.

About Love

2009-02-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

The real happiness in life is to love and to be loved.

Love is the most beautiful language in the world.

Love means accepting each other totally.

A real lover can make you feel relaxed and confident all the time, and can inspire you to be your best.

Love can create miracles.

Love is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

To the world you may be an ordinary person, but to one person you may be the entire world.

Love can be as simple as a bowl of soup in the morning or a cup of tea in the evening.

Love is the best beauty product for women.

The secret of keeping young is always staying in love.

Pass through your black hair, my hand

2009-01-13T19:30:00.000-08:00

Pass through your black hair, my hand
See through your innermost being, my eyes
The deep love flies away as transient as fleeting clouds
Why the deep, blue sea has changed into mulberry fields

Take my helpless hand, your hand
Light up my dim eyes, your eyes
If the cold world is still hard to be changed
At least I have you to melt down snow and ice

I don’t need empty promises any longer
I don’t believe fabricated lies any more
I don’t mind spread rumors anyway
I know we don’t call for honey-sweet words anyhow

Unable to grasp your silhouette, my hand
Unable to hold your back view, my eyes
The deep love flies away as transient as fleeting clouds
Why the deep, blue sea has changed into mulberry fields
Pass through your black hair, my hands

Translated from a Chinese lyric with same title