50 Years of Friendship - Letter to an old time friend

                                   50 Years of Friendship  (Letter to an old time friend
2/27/2017

So how shall I begin? Talking about one of my best friends of all time I need to go back 50 years in memory lane.  

It was in 1965, I believe, on Double Tenth Day（雙十節）We, the freshmen who entered the best university of Taiwan only a month or so before, standing in the huge square where citizens from all trades including students from many schools gathered to celebrate the birthday of the country, the Republic of China.  Barely knowing  anybody around me from my new class, my eyes caught a smiling face next to me, or behind me, I couldn't recall precisely. Right there and then a beautiful friendship is born which lasts half of a century and is going strong still.

I remember vividly one of the topics we chatted about.  It was a long day standing in a public square, forced to tune in to dry speeches one after another, to while away time we started chatting.  Believe it or not when we talked about our most favorite movie, we both mentioned  "Lawrence of Arabia" starring a young handsome Peter O'Tool who made his debut in American big screen just a couple of years before.

We have since kept in touch no matter where we were, we made the best effort to write to each other, even arranged several meetings in those decades when we both were set apart in different regions of the States where both of us were transplanted to since we left college.
I remember visiting Pearl in early '90 in her Houston home and she returned the favor by visiting me in San Jose, California shortly the following year.  Now she is relocated to Southern California, with a relative shorter distance ( translated into 6 - 7 hours car drive ), our prospect of seeing each other greatly increased.

Pearl and I were college classmates.  We managed to maintain this precious yet fragile connection alive in the past fifty some years rain or shine, distance or not, in bad as well as in good time.

Dear Pearl, I wish you a very happy birthday, you are neither older nor younger to me 'cause I age alongside you all this time.  Please take care to preserve yourself so we can continue to meet and chat for  many more years to come!

Grace Liu