Straw Stem Column (Study Abroad Notes)

Straw Stem Column (Study Abroad Notes)

Testimonial 1.3

Time torments me. I tried all the methods, all the people begged, all the good things were said, but I was still like a frog falling into a deep well, the scenery outside could be heard, the rain was falling, but my mind and body were completely trapped. There has been a showdown with the tutor, and the study has withdrawn, but there is no way out and no hope ahead. I can’t get a passport, so I can’t go abroad.

At 26 years old, I was stuck like that. I don’t have any plans anymore, I just stay in the dormitory all day with her. That night, she was invited to dance, a stranger. Her long hair blocked her shy expression, and she smiled timidly. I asked her straight for her phone number and address. She hesitated a few times, but gave it to me anyway. She is a junior at a neighboring university. So I went to her a few days later. It’s cooked like that.

She knew my predicament and didn’t have any advice, just listened, and that was her character. Am I using her as a straw of last hope? Otherwise, how could she be so perfect in my eyes, but I have platonic pain in my heart? A few times she stayed in my dormitory, but the two of them talked about the trivial matters of childhood in the candlelight, until they couldn’t hold back their sleepiness and fell asleep. There is no hope, only nostalgia for the past, fear of the passing present, and unimaginable tomorrow.

It snowed on the day of early December, and the sky was gray, and the ground was muddy after the snow had melted away. I slept until noon and came out, went to the small hospitality cafeteria downstairs to have lunch (the tutor gave me an account number, I could eat “free”) and ordered two dishes by myself, and ate lonely. There was no one around, and I looked at the snow outside in a daze.

Someone knocked on my desk, “Young man, I heard that you are going abroad, how are you doing?” I turned my head to see that it was an acquaintance in the research institute who nodded his head, he had been working for a long time, and I was still a doctor, so I didn’t have any in-depth contacts on weekdays. I haven’t seen him in a long time. So I told him about my predicament. He listened intently. After listening to it, he said, “You are stumped by this little thing?” I know the head of the police station in our area. Let’s have dinner with him in two days and ask him to help with this little favor.”

I looked at him in disbelief, and he was standing, smiling, and I was sitting there in a daze, and he said, “Don’t worry.”

And so it was. What could have been done was finally done. I finally got a letter of introduction for my passport application. When I got the red passport from the Municipal Public Security Bureau two weeks later, my heart jumped suddenly, as if I saw a lost treasure.

He appeared in front of me as if he had been parachuted in, met me by chance at my most desperate moments, asked me crucial questions at random, and happened to know one of the most important people, and immediately followed up on the matter.

This incident made me, who has always struggled on my own, know what mercy, silent, deep mercy is.