The guardian angels in one’s life: 14 (The young man I met in the mountains)

 

The details of how I came to meet this young man, three years my junior, a final year high school schoolboy at the time (July 1975), will have to go into my A Collection of Spooky Stories, because it’s too long a story for this blog.

    I’d given him the nickname of 胡老大 Hú lǎodà / “Hu old big” because he was the oldest of the group of three boys I’d met in passing.  (老大 = “leader / the oldest / the boss”.)

    We hit it off (platonically) right from the start up in 梨山 Líshān / “pear mountain” where we met, and kept in touch for the rest of my time in Taiwan (1.5 years until November 1976) — me in Taipei in the north, him in 嘉義 (Chiayi / 嘉义 /Jiāyì) in the south.

    We kept up correspondence after I returned to Singapore and after I came over to London, by which time we’d known each other for only about three years.

    Yet, knowing I didn’t want to take money from my mother, he offered financial help.  I got a letter from him (snail mail days) saying that should I need any help financially, his father had a sugar cane field that they could sell in order to send me the money to live on in London.

    His family wasn’t stinking rich — it was only a sugar cane field they owned.  Still, a sugar cane field at that time could go a long way towards the cost of living in Taiwan, yet he offered to turn that field into cash for me.

    I found a part-time job in the end, as a telex operator with British Monomarks which saw me through my university course, so I didn’t need to take him up on his generous offer after all.

    It’s incredibly touching, though, that a friend of only three years’ standing should offer to sell off a piece of family land to see me through my studies.  It’s not like I was in hospital, or in serious trouble that I needed to be bailed out of.

    Thank you, 胡老大 (d.1979), for the thought behind that kind and supportive, not to mention generous, gesture.  It was enough to see me through spiritually, knowing that there were friends out there who would step forward to help me out should I end up needing it.

    I’m eternally grateful, and feel honoured to have met you.

(London, 1977–79)