Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [46]
She asked me how long after we were married would she become a permanent resident and I told her if I got help from friends, probably about two years. During that time she could have a multiple-entry pass to live in Hong Kong for short periods, and I could go to Beijing frequently on assignment. We would be together quite often, and besides, I said, “Meeting after a short separation is like a second honeymoon.” She seemed excited and full of expectation. We said we’d get married the following summer so she could finish her studies first. I asked her if I should meet her parents and she said she’d arrange it for my next visit.
I thought I was the luckiest guy getting married to such a gorgeous Beijing woman, and she was eighteen years younger than me. After I returned to Hong Kong, I happened to see an advertisement for properties in Taikoo Shin, so I quickly placed a down payment on the apartment I’ve mentioned before, and started to build a nest for two.
After completing the paperwork on the flat, I made a long-distance call to Beijing. Wen Lan’s father answered and told me she had gone to Germany. “When will she be back?” I asked, and he abruptly replied, “After she gets married! Don’t call her anymore!”
I hurried to Beijing and phoned her classmates who’d been at the professors’ when I’d first met Wen Lan. They said they were really not close friends and hadn’t kept in touch since that night.
I remembered that Wen Lan had said her major was French, but she was also studying German at the Goethe Institute. I rushed over there to look up her records. I found out she had withdrawn from her studies. A secretary who knew her told me she was going to marry a part-time German teacher who worked at the institute. She wouldn’t tell me his name. I pushed my way into the dean’s office. The dean was a well-known China expert with a Chinese wife, so he probably had some understanding of the wiles of Chinese women. He listened very patiently to my story and said he could not give me Wen Lan’s German contact information, but he promised that if I wrote her a letter he would forward it to her.
I went into an empty classroom and sat there, staring blankly, for a long time. I picked up my pen several times wanting to write her a few words, but I just couldn’t think how to start.
Three months later I received a letter from Wen Lan. She told me she was married to a German who had been her German teacher, an executive in a German firm in Beijing, and it had been love at first sight. The two of them were living in Germany and they were very happy together. She didn’t say which city they lived in and she didn’t apologize—it was as if nothing had ever happened between us. She explained herself in only one sentence, the theme of which was that she was like a sparrow that wanted to fly away on the wind and was impatiently longing to spread its wings today, because tomorrow would be too late.
Before 1992, a mainland bride married to a man in Hong Kong had to wait two years before she was granted permanent residence in Hong Kong. (After 1992, she would have had to wait five years.) This inhuman discrimination policy was a violation of basic human rights and a disgrace to Hong Kong. If Wen Lan had married me, she would definitely have had to wait two years to live in Hong Kong, so I didn’t blame her for choosing to marry a German. I even understood why she had chosen to “ride a donkey while searching for a horse.” What I was genuinely indignant about was that she had so thoroughly misled me and hadn’t even bothered to tell me anything about her change of heart. I realized that she was a woman who cared only about her own personal advancement, and had no concern for other people.
That night I ate alone at the nearby Singapore Restaurant and read an e-book on my cell phone. I use a K-Touch cell phone. K-Touch used to be the king of counterfeit, but now it’s a famous international brand. The phone has every function you could want. The interface uses something similar to Sony technology and the functions combine all