the vassar years

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.