My Sister's Eighteen Transformations
My younger sister turned eighteen that year, and she was studying at the Beijing Foreign Studies Institute. It happened because, during the Cultural Revolution, schools at every level—primary, secondary, and university—had shut their doors, and the cultivation of talent had come to a halt. Yet international affairs urgently needed skilled people, so Beijing Foreign Studies reached out to the only two foreign-language schools left standing, in Changchun and Shanghai, to recruit students. Since these two schools trained language specialists starting from the third grade of primary school, my sister was only sixteen when she entered university.
A few days earlier, she'd written home to say she'd be returning for summer break, telling us which train she'd be on and what time she'd arrive. The family divided up the tasks at once: my elder brother would take up her at the station, while my sister and I stayed home to prepare the meal, hoping she could sit down to good family dish at the moment she walked through the door.
I hear somebody knock at the door. I guessed at once it must be her, and went to open it. Sure enough, there she was, trailing behind our brother, who walked ahead carrying her luggage. But the instant she stepped inside and I laid eyes on her, I simply froze. My sister looked like an entirely different person. When she'd left, she'd been dark-skinned and thin as a black spider, all long arms and long legs—and now she'd transformed completely. She'd grown taller, her figure slender and graceful, her complexion a delicate rosy white. Her eyebrows arched upward in soft curves, her large eyes shimmered with a crystalline light, and her oval face was pure white as snow, with two blushes on her cheeks like peach blossoms.
I seized her hand and pulled her inside. My sister brought out the meal she'd prepared, and I sat across from her, studying her carefully, marveling at how strange and wondrous life could be—that in so short a time, a person could change so utterly. They say a girl transforms eighteen times as she grows, and it's true, every word of it. She was as cheerful and lively as ever, full of laughter, and at the table she told us all about her life at school, sharing amusing little stories from her days there.
Her lips were a rich, moist red, as if they might drip at any moment, and when she opened her mouth to speak, she revealed a row of teeth so white and even they might have been carved from jade. We watched her, our hearts swelling with a happiness too full for words. I thought to myself that she embodied exactly what people mean when they say beauty is a matter of the finest balance—add one measure and it's too much, take one away and it falls short. We felt proud, and blessed, to have a sister like her.
Our family lived on the ground floor back then, and the neighbors were close in those days—peering in through windows was nothing unusual. Word soon spread that she'd come home, and before long several neighbors had gathered outside our window, peering in, which made us all rather uncomfortable. So we invited them inside. My sister brought out the fruit candies she'd carried back from Beijing and offered them to everyone. One neighbor remarked that she was truly a phoenix that had flown out of a chicken coop. I didn't care for that remark at all—privately, I thought, our home was no chicken coop; it was a nest of phoenixes, and every one who flew from it was radiant and splendid.
The change in her was remarkable. The summer before, when she'd come home, she'd been nothing but a scrawny little monkey; this time, she was utterly transformed. The impression struck me so deeply that even after all these years, I have never forgotten it. Her lovely face remains etched in my memory forever—I will always remember how beautiful my sister looked in that moment.
ns216.73.217.93da2
and then Add to home screen.