The Mountain Town

Looking back on this long journey of more than ten years, the starting point lies in that university campus built against the mountains. The wind was gentle back then, and the days passed slowly. And yet, the prologue of our story began with your “meltdown”.

Do you still remember that freshman year final exam in “Introduction to Modern Literature”? The test lasted well into the evening. The questions were tricky and specifically asked for examples from the tutorial readings, but you only realised after handing in your paper that you had written entirely about the main lecture content. On the stone steps outside Yasumoto International Academic Park, you realised your mistake. You ran up and down the staircase, shouting in frustration. To me, though, you looked inexplicably vivid and endearing.

That night, the four of us — you, Kelvin, Jerry, and I — went to Citylink for rice noodles. That was the first time I truly saw you. Perhaps it was from that steaming bowl of rice noodles that I found it hard to take my eyes off you.

In our second year, just to have more time with you, I carefully planned to switch groups in the Classical Chinese Poetry class, transferring into Professor Tsui Wai's group. Then, using the excuse of needing student assistants for an information day event, I brought you in to help. We had dinner together at Ootoya that evening, and later shared cake at Langham Place. In casual conversation, we discovered that you also loved Cantonese opera.

The memories of the mountain town are always accompanied by poetry and the scent of books.

I remember once, to complete a quatrain assignment, we agreed to meet at the Institute of Chinese Studies. We naively imagined we could emulate the elegance of ancient scholars composing beside flowing water. I brought a thick volume of The Complete Rhymes of Poetry, heavy enough to stop a bullet. We sat from afternoon until dusk. The pond water flowed endlessly, but our verses came slowly. You always composed with ease, while I needed solitude to write. Fortunately, I did not end up wasting my effort, and we both received good grades in that class. During those days, we admired each other through the constraints of poetic meter and drew closer through careful word choice.

I once stayed on the phone with you until dawn discussing a philology paper. I once quietly laughed beside you during a literature history class when you were called on to read a poem filled with obscure characters. We were regulars at Lee Woo Sing College's Shanghai restaurant, loved to have dim sum at Lu Ming Room, and shared cold brew tea and black vinegar chicken lunch boxes under the shade of the trees along The University Mall. Later, you joined me as a member of Professor Wong Yiu Kwan's tutoring team, and in our senior year, we even boldly skipped class together to travel with him. The years in the mountain town were especially brilliant because of you.

I remember that afternoon when we read The Songs of Chu together at House of Moments. Sunlight streamed through the blinds onto the tea table as we opened annotated texts by Wang Yi, Hong Xingzu, and Tang Bingzheng. Surrounded by the fragrance of tea, we read Greater Siming, Lesser Siming, and the fantastical imagery of the Nine Songs. The light slanted westward, the tea cooled and was refilled again and again, yet we remained unaware. Years later, I can no longer recall which commentaries we discussed, but the character "君" ("you") in Mountain Spirit has taken on clearer strokes ever since.

You once said you could not imagine a girl standing by my side. The one caught in the moment is always the last to see.

No matter the distance we once endured, or the ordinary future filled with life’s daily necessities, whenever I recall that figure running on the stairs of Yasumoto, the profile of you writing poetry by the institute's pond, or the afternoon we read The Songs of Chu together, my heart finds its home.

These years in the mountain town were filled with elegance because of poetry and wine, and complete because of you.