The great gift of family is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
-K. Hailey
Two and a half years ago the earth shook in Lhasa and a Chinese girl came walking up to me to introduce herself. We've been friends ever since. Life introduced us.
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Only this time, we weren't just friends...
We lived together in her apartment, and I learned what it meant to be a young Chinese professional: survivor. Words like: rickety, moldy, dusty, broken, dangerous, old, stressful, uncertain... would have populated legions of conversations regarding the general environment. Case in point: She plugged a small hair dryer into the wall for me to use and the power went out in her room. She called the landlord who sent an irritated young man to look at it. He arrived with nothing except some wire clippers which he used to knock the switch off the wall in a shower of whitewash. Later, he grumbled his way outside where he flipped another switch a few times until the electricity came back on. My friend gave him some yogurt and shrugged happens all the time. We decided that outlet was off limits.
When she wasn't busy we walked around, bought bread at bakeries, ran errands, took pictures, stayed warm, chatted, met her friends. But she was often busy. Add that to the list of defining words.
So I spent time with her younger sister. I spent time listening to a quiet girl who doesn't get heard much in the noise and rush of China. I spent time wandering with her in buildings adorned with cross and decorated with paintings of stories that she didn't know but that I was overjoyed to tell. I spent time with the truly beautiful, ignoring all the rest.
As the days slipped by and friends were met and made and milk tea was drunk and streets were walked and my friend remarked for the second time that it's so good to have you here because we have a routine now I realized that I had somehow just been assimilated into life in general, my pulse melded with the city, my chopsticks clinked in sync with theirs, my feet stomped to keep warm alongside everyone else's. I had been adopted into her family, having met all of its members, spit my fish bones out on the table next to them, laughed about nothing in particular, developed a language of shared experiences that only we could possibly understand, been bored, been cold, been tired, been irked, been amused, been accepted.
We weren't just friends because we were family.
And I realized that had it not been for an earthquake I would never have had such a family.
That is how, from Wuhan, praise went to the Shaker of the earth and the Introducer of all things.
