Musical Voice 《音乐代表心声》
For Lucia also known as Jiang, a piece of music, Long Distance by G.E.M, and its lyrics relieved her mind, which was desperate for love and comfort from her crush on a Chinese boy. He neither noticed her existence nor rescued her from the desolation of seeing his love affair with another girl prettier than she was. Instead, my penpal studies hard in her new high school and always tried to get a high mark. In addition, she met new friends whom she could chat freely with about her feelings and inner thoughts. However, she had a slight problem that cause her shyness and loneliness, and I found this within a letter she sent to me: “My friends in middle school are different from those in high school. I do not know why. It does not feel the same, as my best friends in middle school do not backchat me, no matter what I think about other people or the secrets that I tell them privately. For instance, I once told one of my friends in high school that I hate sitting next to boys. Immediately, she told the boy who sat next to me in class by accident, about my secret. It was embarrassing. Middle school friends, like Ella and Tayla given me support in every possible way. Melissa and Piper helped me to gain confidence in music or other hard-to-achieve subjects, Cassie and Jody are friends who are always there for me, and Peggy is a fun-loving classmate from Grade Six to Nine. However, friends are not always the problem in causing my isolation, loneliness, shyness and quietness. There are also some family problems, like the fight between my grandparents and parents throughout my birth year, the Rabbit when I turned eleven. I denied telling you, my friend. It is just too sad and difficult for me to remember the past, and explain with a pen. I do not know the correct words to describe my feelings. Let’s just look forward and hope for success in the future, without turning back to the abandoned past.” Lucia seems to have no hope for her future in her high school life, but she will succeed in her future only by having one unique goal within herself. It is to be reunited with her grandparents in Xi’an of China, some day in her future, but it seems impossible for her now given her parents’ control of her life. Sometimes at night, she often remembers her fun-loving friends and how awful her parents made her felt by forcing her to studies in a better high school, rather than with her best friends.
Her favourite books are Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah, and To the Edge of the Sky by Anhua Gao, because these books inspire her to write narratives and study hard to achieve important goals in her life. Both authors suffered more through Communist China than she has through the modern world in Australia, so that is her motivation for success. I hope you have yours too!
For Jie, a piece of music, My Secret by G.E.M, and its lyrics changed his mind from a secret crush to ask with confidence for a true relationship against his stepmother’s wish. Their love journey is difficult for me to tell, but it is worth a try to let the world know their bravery for one single dream of reunited. As the days passed by, Jie lay on his bed looking at the dark sky where the stars shine above with a hopeless thought in his tired mind: “When will I be together with Ella?” He thought of her, her smile and the times they spent together at middle school in the same class. He smiled softly, like a girl. Jie knew that he would never be able to see that Filipino girl, again. She had moved to a faraway place at the edge of the sky, a place that his traditional Chinese stepmother would never let him go. Their chance of being together seem to be impossible. However, a miracle does come when Jiang comes into his life. She is a Chinese-Filipino girl born into a wealthy family at Darwin, the Seyer. She appeared in his first-year of high school that changed his thought of impossible, because she told him that everything is possible, if he tried his hardest to achieve. She even introduced him to a few of her life-long favourite books, which were her motivation to study hard. In spite of that, Jie nicknamed his new friend, “mixed-blood bookworm” and Jiang likes that nickname, even its rude. By then, everyone thought Jiang and Jie were a nice couple, and they wished them luck silently. It was not true. A few years later with Jiang’s emotional help at school and in the community, Jie became confident enough to ask his stepmother to be allowed to explore the edge of the sky, a city called Singapore. She finally agreed. In his stepmother’s mind, Jiang Seyer was a perfect wife for Jie, because the young girl was like a mirror or shadow of the stepmother as a teenager, in 1968. In 2014, Jie on his thirty-fifth birthday was finally aboard the plane to Singapore. He left most of his memories in Darwin, except for those with Ella and Jiang, his crush and best friend. Nobody from Darwin ever heard of Jie again, after the death of Jiang about five years later on her last visit to her grandparents in Xi’an of China, 2019. Jiang died happily. She have everything that she wanted it to be, like helped Jie reunited with Ella and herself being together with her grandparents.
I am similar to Jie. I once had a crush on someone in my middle school as well, but I do not think it was love. At the beginning of a new school year, I forgot the boy, because I have chosen to study very hard in an advanced high school for the last three years before university. For me, studies always come before anything else.
For Stephanie, music does not meant anything to her, but friends and families are what meant the most. She assume her mother’s mistake by taking great care of her maternal grandparents. Her mother never told her who her paternal grandparents were. According to the mistake that her mother made, the girl’s grandparents disowned her mother, because she had been a misbehaving daughter who left them behind in Communist China at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. She travelled to Darwin for marriage to a Filipino man of the same age as her, in her early twenties. However, it had been the worst mistake that she had made in her life, and she has undergoes the terrible consequences. After all, she remarried an American-Chinese professor, Min Chen happily in California, and they had two children. Stephanie found these truths in her mother’s diary, two years after her death. The mother and daughter have only one similarity. It is that both of them fell in love with a Filipino boy: Stephanie met James Seyer, youngest brother of Lucia. He was the most popular and talented boy within the Nightcliff community, and in high school. His talents were technologies, writing romance narratives, and patience with children. He had many female followers. But none of the girls was his ideal girlfriend. In middle school, he had his first girlfriend, a Chinese girl of beauty who was talented in dancing and nothing else. Her name was Melanie Chen, a girl famous for never use any cosmetics. A stinky and ugly rat, Sweet Candy was her only companion, founded near the trash on her eighth birthday. Her classmates nicknamed Melanie as Stinky Loner. But she was diligent and intelligent. After Melanie’s relationship with James started, she became the most popular girl. All her enemies in the past have now turned into her friends. They would do anything for her, no matter life or death. The perfect couple had not lasted long, until Mr-and-Mrs-Chen arranged a perfect marriage for Melanie with a Chinese boy according to their traditional believes. The isolated boy left this city with his family, and came to Stephanie’s after he finished middle school. On his first week of high school, his love and relationship began with Stephanie, because she looked so like the Chinese girl he had loved in middle school. For most of Stephanie’s life, she struggled in a marriage as a replacement for another female. She finally confidentially divorced James in her late fifties, and now lives with her children, grandchildren and maternal grandparents in Mackay in Queensland. Her mother, Lydia and stepfather currently lived in California happily with Stephanie’s half-brothers, Johnson and Jackson. Her birth father and James became friends, and they both died two years after their divorce. She never attended either of their funerals or saw their grave that lies below the Baguio City memorial in Philippines.