第38期：Taking Children to College

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It’s September again.Again, I see the different facial expressions of the parents taking their children to college.It’s mostly the male parents who perform this duty.Sometimes both parents come.The highly personalized faces which usually differ from each other in a thousandand one ways fade at this moment into each other,and display the same look: fatigue, exhaustion, the timidness and cautiousness of a new comer, and the concernedness and fear that their offspring might be treated unfairly. Such long and exhausting journeys over here! So many complicated and time-consuming procedures! They corrode people’s élan. The gleefulness and dizziness usually found in“eighteen-year-old youngsters who’ve made it”disappear altogether. Close on the heels of their parents, they shuffle from place to place in the campus. To go through one formality, they have to walk long distances and ask many questions of many people, and their parents have to smile politely all the time. Everywhere they have to line up and to pay. The sun being blazing, they find themselves perspiring all over. They have to sit by the roadside for a rest and satisfy their thirst by drinking bottled water whose prices soar because of scarcity. No matter how dignified and classy one may look on other days, one has to, for the sake of one’s children, humble oneself, put up with inconveniences, and show one’s best smiles to find out what to do. I saw a father carrying a huge bed-roll. Bent with the heavy burden on his shoulder, he had to strain for a look ahead in order to see the way forward. His son, head hanging low, followed behind with only a small bag. It won’t be long before his boy will help the girls with their bags. I also saw a father and son coming near hand in hand from the fork of a road. A mere glance told me that they are from one of the poor rural areas. Both wore cheap T-shirts and had crew-cuts. Even smaller in build, the old man has graying hair and a tan. An arrogant taxi sped towards them and was on the point of knocking down the oldster.The poor man quickly jumped aside. It was a near escape. Then, only then, was he separated from his son. When the car shot past, they joined hands again, continued on their way, each being the other’s support. The sight nearly brought tears to my eyes.