The force of unity

Work session and a story on marriage

This morning I don’t have to wake up at dawn. I wake up slowly and start writing my texts. I have a lot of time to write today because the only thing on the program is to go watch in a yurt the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. After a few hours of writing, I stop my texts to write dad’s photo captions. I finish the ones from Urumchi when Ayin and Harry arrive with a disc case to show dad his DVDs. So that I can finish the captions of the photos from Hami, dad takes his time on purpose to ask a lot of questions so that I can finish writing. Before leaving, I put both Word documents on a USB key to send them to Paris from a cyber café, after eating. I join dad, Harry and Ayin who are already downstairs and we go to the same place Harry took us the other day. It’s a very flashy place since the walls are very white and light the room well with the sun. Next to the reception, there is a large red character. Dad asks what it means and actually, it’s the merging of two of the same character that together means “marriage” and separate means “happy”. Dad finds it nice that for “marriage” the Chinese character means “doubly happy”.