Ｖｉｓｉｔｉｎｇ Ｍｙ Ｓｏｎ ｉｎ Ａｕｓｔｒａｌｉａ

Ｃｈｅｎ　Ｌｉｎ

For the last few years, I had been haunted by the idea of going to Australia and visiting my son and his family there. I wanted to go there before I became too old to move around. I wanted to see how my son and his family enjoy life there and see the charms of Australia, the driest continent in the world.

At last I was ready to go. It was summer days when I boarded the outbound plane in Shanghai. The temperature was about 30 degrees centigrade. When I reached the International Airport in Sydney, it was winter and the temperature was about 15 degrees centigrade. Carrying my baggage, I shuddered and went to the exit. My Son Xinghuo was waiting there. We took his Toyota and rode to his house in a suburb of Sydney.

Xinghuo went to study in Sydney in the spring of 1989. In the following years he studied and worked and acquired the permanent residence. Two years later, his wife and their son joined him. In 1995, my son got a bank loan of 300,000 Australian dollars and purchased a house in a suburb about 15 kilometers out of Sydney. The house measures more than 100 square meters in floor space and it has a 300-m2 garden. Altogether the small residential community has 17 houses.

During my three-month stay, I never had a neighbor come over for a casual chat. A friend or a relative occasionally came to visit, but they never stayed for long.

The community is quiet and lawns have trees and flowers. The road is 10 meters wide and the walkways with its lawns are also ten meters wide. Shoes on a small platform outside the house have never been stolen. I often take a stroll at nine in the morning or at three in the afternoon. The winter sunshine in Sydney is as love as the sunshine in October in Wenzhou. I saw towering trees, lawns, birds fluttering their wings or walking on lawns, old people watering their gardens, young mothers pushing baby carriages. One day I got lost and asked a lovely old couple for directions. They immediately fetched a map from their car and checked out the name of the street I said and drew a map on a piece of paper for me. It was the first time I met such friendly and helpful foreigners. The quiet community reminded me of the Peach Blossom Spring described by Tao Yuanming (365-427), a poet of the Jin Dynasty in ancient China.

I planned to return to Wenzhou in mid September. Before I left, my son drove me to a few places on the Tasman Sea near Sydney. The first place my son, his son and I visited on the first day was Circular Quay in downtown Sydney. Crowds of pedestrians passed the waterfront. Some people lounged under umbrellas by the street and enjoy coffee. Xinghuo bought three tickets and we three took a cruise around the Sydney Bay. Each of us was served a cake and coffee was free of charge. I was thirsty and the coffee tasted very well that day. I stopped before I had three cups of coffee. The sightseeing was wonderful: it was a cerulean world. The sky and the sea were overwhelmingly blue. Between the riots of blues was the white Sydney Opera House, which looked like geese taking a nap in blue dreams.

The next morning, Xinghuo and I tripped to Brighton-Le-Sands. There were few tourists that day. A few white seagulls meandered on the beach whereas a few swirl leisurely above. The gold sand on the beach felt soft under my bare feet. Two blond boys were picking shells nearby. Their mother called out, “Danny”. I splashed water toward them and called “Danny” too. The two kids smiled at me and waved. A teenage girl was jogging on the beach.

Then my son and I visited Bondi Beach, the second beach on that day.The waves with white caps rushed in toward the beach from the sea. The sound of waves was like someone laughing lightly. This reminded me of my years at Hangzhou-based Zhejiang University. I remember taking a trip to see the giant tides on the river on the 18th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar. The huge tides came in like charging soldiers with their spears and horses roaring on a battlefield.

The third beach we visited that day was Cronulla. The short beach had a lot of rocks. We stood on the causeway and watched tides roar on their way onto to the beach, smashing and splashing into pearls.

The sightseeing reminds me of my boyhood years in rural Ruian. Though I was in Australia, I missed my hometown. Then I came back home. □