preface
The Chinese schoolgirl of 3 study abroad Moscow, study in a foreign country, fall in love, had encountered hooligan to rob, also had done a dancer in order to survive in red light district. Before returning home, the three ate a huge meal, got drunk and cried and danced in Red Square, “This is the last memory of me and them.” Lingling was the last of the three to leave Moscow, where she had been for fifteen years, and she told me these stories.
1
In 1993, when I was 18 and fresh out of high school, I went to Moscow with my mother.
The first year to learn language, the second year began to formally enter the university, learn the major of bank credit.
There were only four Chinese students in the class. Besides Lili, Honghong and I, there was also a boy. The three of us girls are particularly close.
Lili is from northeast China. She loves to laugh and has a good figure. She loves singing, dancing and being sociable. She said to us, he must be looking for a man with high education, high IQ, money, talent and handsome soul mate. All the while lili was beaming with joy.
However, Lily’s later love experience is far from as beautiful as she imagined.
On May 9, 1994, the day of Russia’s military parade to commemorate the victory of the Great Patriotic War, Lili and I came to Red Square to watch the parade.
Winter is long in Moscow, and April is still full of snow. The trees began to sprout in May, but the weather was still very cold.
The perimeter of the square was crowded with people watching the parade. Next to Lili and me stood a Chinese boy, staring at lili. It looks like he’s our age, crew-cut, tall.
“Which school are you in?” The boy asked.
Chat just know, the boy work in Russia, is not a real job. Perhaps because of loneliness, Lili and he had a strange way up.
At the beginning, he was so kind to Lily that he visited her at school almost every day. I remember once, when we were just getting out of school, he was waiting at the school gate with a large bouquet of flowers in his arms, Shouting Lili’s name. “Lili, marry him,” Russian students chanted as they watched.
But this man especially love to drink, drunk to hit people, Lili he has been hit many times, each time is particularly hard.
And two people good for more than half a year, Lili miscarried twice.
On a cold Moscow night in December 1994, with no one to be seen on the streets and the treetops howling in the wind, Lili came back to school crying near midnight. The boy drank too much again and beat her black and blue. This time, Lily finally broke up with her boyfriend.
Later, the boy also came to the school to pester Lili, and we called the police. After that, he didn’t go again.
2
Lily had just broken up with her first boyfriend when she met another man.
He was a Russian translator for my mother’s company, a short man in his forties who was Also Chinese. He usually wears a suit and tie, with his back combed and a briefcase in his hand, and speaks with great vigor.
He often worked as an interpreter for the local police station and several big bosses and was well connected in Moscow. Of course, he already has a family, wife and children in China.
They met in April 1995 at a dinner party of the Chinese Villagers’ Association. That night, the translator invited her to play in the casino. In Moscow, casinos are legal and women can drink, eat snacks and have desserts free of charge. That night, the translator won a few hundred dollars and gave lili all of it, offering to buy her clothes and pay her tuition.
Lily followed him that night.
She went out with a translator for half a year, and they didn’t talk about their responsibilities. In fact, the middle-aged man is just lily’s meal ticket. During that time, Lili did not worry about school fees or food.
Lili told me that when we get along with each other, translators feel like her elders. Only in bed did she often feel sick. After all, he could be her father.
It wasn’t long before the interpreter’s wife found out about them. The translator’s wife went to the school to look for Lili. I stopped her for Lili and assured her that Lili would not associate with the translator any more.
Lily is not a bad girl. She studious, but the family economic conditions are not good, go to school on their own work. At that time, school classes were not so tight and many students took advantage of holidays or breaks to work for money. Lily is the same.
At her poorest point, Lili was penniless after she paid her tuition fees and lived for days on the food I took from my mother’s house.
You can’t imagine how terrible it is for a girl to be in a foreign country without money.
After breaking up with the translator, Lili started working for a Chinese boss. In the summer vacation of my junior year, I went back to China. In order to earn more money, Lili saved up enough money for the next semester’s tuition, and stayed in Moscow to work.
One afternoon in June, I got a call from Lili. It was about 11 p.m. in Moscow.
“Help me! Lingling, try to help me. I got arrested by the police…” Lili told me over the phone that her company had been robbed and her boss killed, and the police had taken them to the police station.
Coincidentally, the translator hired by the police department is lili’s “ex-boyfriend”. The translator used his connections and money to smooth the relationship, and the police did not bother her too much.
In fact, Lili was one of the victims. On the night of the incident, the gang broke open the company’s doors. They are particularly vicious, first with a knife stabbed the small boss, from the 6th floor to throw people down, the small boss died on the spot. Then he hit the boss on the head with a baseball bat, leaving him unconscious. Lili cowered under the bed.
In order to solve the case, the police sent Lili to the Moscow women’s prison. Two months later, lili was released after her boss woke up in the hospital.
The day Lili came out, Honghong and I went to the prison to pick her up. She hugged us and cried for a long time.
Because of Lili’s case, the school suspended her studies. Later, through a translator, Lili was able to go back to school.
When the translator sent Lili back to school, he also gave her tuition fees for her whole senior year.
After graduating from university, Lili went back to China and went to Shenzhen. I worked there for two years and met a divorced man. The man sold his house in Shenzhen and returned to Shenyang with Lili. They opened a shop. At last her life was settled.
3
Before her junior year, Honghong didn’t have a boyfriend. Honghong was petite, short, pale and had good grades.
In her junior year, Honghong got a black boyfriend. The black man was the son of an African tribal chief, one year our senior. He had openly expressed his love for her in class and had gone up to her and kissed her. Hong Hong said she was completely touched by such enthusiasm and direct emotion.
The black man is very rich, so Honghong doesn’t have to work to earn money for the time being. Instead, she rents a house with the black man outside the school. It was the third floor of an old Russian building. It was dark inside. The room was not big, the walls were dark, and the furniture was old.
Hong Hong said that her boyfriend often looked for women outside. It wasn’t long before Honghong broke up with him. Lost the source of income, but also do not want to go to work.
She went straight to The red light district of Moscow. In the red-light district, Most of honghong’s customers are Chinese men who earn $100 a night, but have to be nice to each other or their tips will be discounted.
For a time in my junior year, I lived with Honghong. At that time, I was working for a Chinese boss, and Honghong was making money in the red light district.
One morning, Honghong clutched her stomach and went back to our rented house. She was tortured all night by a Russian man and stayed in bed for two days before getting out.
It felt like our youth was wasted, but Moscow didn’t believe our tears. It felt like our youth was wasted, but Moscow didn’t believe our tears.
However, the red husband is also met in the red light district.
Towards the end of his junior year, a recently divorced Chinese man went to the red light district and met Honghong. Two men and women in a strange land came together.
Honghong told me that although he knew she was a dancer in the red light district, he could walk into her soul and be her soul mate.
Before the start of her senior year, Hong Hong and the man returned home to get a marriage certificate. After graduation, he went back to China and settled in Dalian. Hong Hong used her savings to buy a house and open a clothing store in Dalian.
Before Lili and Honghong came back to China, the three of us had a big meal together, got drunk and cried and danced in Red Square, which is also my last memory of living with them.
4
When they came back, I wanted to try something in Moscow. What if I could do something?
In 1998, I was selling shoes in a place called barrack in Moscow. A few months later, before I returned to China in June, I deposited the $3,000 I had earned from several years of working in the Moscow Financial Bank.
The return to Moscow at the end of August coincided with the Moscow financial crisis, when many small banks collapsed.
To get my money back, I’ll line up at the bank as soon as I get off the plane. Tens of thousands of people are lining up to withdraw their money. People are lining up for several streets. Moscow Financial Bank is a large state-owned bank with a large number of deposits. Banks also worked 24 hours a day.
People in line are afraid to leave the line, nearby small vendors selling food on the street. In the evening, I will sit in the street, sleep on the road.
On the third day, my turn finally came. At this time, I can’t settle the account according to the bank interest any more. I just want to get back the $3,000 deposit.
The bank clerk saw my hair hanging and gave me $100 in interest on top of $3,000. I knew she really pitied me.
A Chinese working with me deposited $20,000 in another bank because the bank went bankrupt and didn’t get any money back.
He was so drunk, they said, that he shouted hysterically in front of the bank.
With my savings, I went back to the barracks and started working.
By October it was cold in Moscow. One day, While I was working in the store, I got a call from my high school classmate. He said he had come to Moscow, too, and was in the barracks.
It is said that thousands of miles of marriage a line, my love is so.
Just four months ago, in June 1998, I met this high school classmate when I was visiting my family back home. In high school, we sat in front of each other’s desks and liked each other. Although we left each other contact information when we met again, I didn’t expect him to come to Moscow to meet me.
A few days after he arrived, he found a job selling shoes, too, for more than $400 a month. Although he didn’t earn much, he was economical and could save a lot every month. He is not very talkative, usually not too busy, often come to help me carry things.
There was no one chasing each other, and we were naturally together. He is extremely kind to me. He knows all the books I like to read and can cook anything I like to eat. Who could be happier than me?
5
After two years together, we returned to China in 2001 with the money we had saved to get married. They hurried back to Moscow after the wedding.
Camp wages dropped, and my husband and I began working as salesmen for a company selling cans. They worked day and night for months on end, earning little except for rent and food.
With the birth of the baby, life became even more stressful. It is said that the poor couple is sad, and it is true. He was not good at words and he did not sell his products well. For a week he was on the streets of Moscow, carrying a large backpack and not selling a can of tin.
I had a big fight with him, and I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden, the bitterness that I had repressed in my heart for the past two years broke out. After the fight, he stopped making sales pitches and went to a medical clinic to help translate. The income from translation can support the basic living expenses. I was hired by a Logistics company in Moscow from Hong Kong as a financial officer with a salary of $400 per month.
Later, there were several financial storms in Russia, and we didn’t dare to put our money in the bank. We kept all the money we earned, but when we put it much more, we were afraid of being stolen.
One afternoon in September 2005, we rented a car and went to the bank to deposit our salary. Before I reached the bank, I was stopped by a group of men who pointed guns at my husband and took the briefcase.
In less than a minute, two or three years’ earnings, more than ten thousand dollars, were robbed.
I was devastated. What is the meaning of life?
The police soon arrived. The reply was that the car had fake license plates and that no leads were available. The case didn’t come to fruition until I returned home.
6
No matter what, life goes on.
Life is rough and tumble, and quarrels, insults, and cynicism form a major part of our lives. As the child grew, my relationship with him grew further and further apart.
In June 2008, without consulting him, I quit my job and returned home with what little savings I had left.
After he came back to China, he hardly contacted us. He didn’t come back until 2010, and we’ve been separated ever since.
No matter before or after returning to China, I always hear people say how good the country is. But after so many years, I always feel that my roots are here, on the land under my feet.
This is our experience in Moscow. It felt like our youth was wasted, but Moscow didn’t believe our tears.
Recent Comments