With Rosy Woo on the steps of the Observatory at Vassar
The lines in the gym for class signup were intimidatingly long. English,
drama, sociology—the desks were slammed with wannabe students. I was a
freshman, and I had no idea what to take. Then I saw Mrs. Chin sitting alone at
a desk, and said, “Chinese!” I was probably interested in Asia because of my
father, who was stationed in Okinawa in WWII. One of his great regrets was that
when Marine intelligence wanted him to join a trek to Chang Kai Shek’s HQ in
Chongqing, probably because of his expertise in poisonous snakes, his
commanding officers would not give him permission to go.
Chinese language became the only through-line of my studies, which
were all over the map. I loved going to
the old observatory every day. The mice didn’t worry me. I thought it was one
of the coolest places on campus.
As a rising senior, I went to live with a friend of Mrs.
Chin and family in Taipei, beginning a lifelong friendship with Changping. (Which
reminds me, she called me yesterday and I better call her back!) And en route
home, I stopped in Hawaii, where East meets West and vowed to return after
graduation. Which I did. Over and over. I was supposed to go with Changping to
Taiwan, too, last year, but The Covid intervened.
I tried to track down
Mrs. Chin to send her a letter thanking her for the effect she had had on my
life—I even owe her my journalism career, because my boss said, “Well if you
can speak Chinese I figure you can speak English”— but I was too late. I read
in the Vassar Quarterly that she had
died.
Thank you to Rosie Woo,
from Mrs. Chin’s class, for these photos, the only ones I know of me at Vassar,
and for sparking this reminiscence.
With Mrs. Chin's class, dressed in her qipao.
