Connections and making friends from online, translated…
There are, two oils at my house, it was, from a friend, Li whom I’d met through my blog.
Li was from China, she’d followed her love to settle in Taiwan, she’s excellent in portraits. I’d recalled how as I first got acquainted with her blog, I was attracted to how delicate she’d painted, especially that picture with a Tibetan elderly woman, with a young girl with frostbitten cheeks on her back, there’s that deep sense of gratitude toward life in the elderly’s eyes, that moved me so.
And so, I’d, asked her, to fulfill a dream for me.
Since I married, my husband’s grandmother loved me like I was one of her own grandchild, she is a vegetarian for over a decade now, lived very plainly, died peacefully at the age of ninety, I’d missed her very much. The photos from back then isn’t as well-developed as it is now, and, grandma didn’t leave behind a lucid photograph of herself, I’d sent Li a black-and-white photo of grandma, and described the elderly’s life, and asked her to use her artistry and imagination, to paint a portrait for grandma.
A year later, Li told me she was finished, and hoped that I can drive down south, to pick up the portrait. As I took the portrait from Li’s hands, my tears started falling, it was, as if, I got to see who’d passed on many years ago again, and, that regret I’d felt for so long was, taken away by Li’s passion.
Affinity is such a weird thing, although we had nothing in common, but through interaction with each other online, we’d felt the temperatures of one another’s life. one summer, I’d invited Li and her family to come to my mother-in-law’s home to stay, she hit it off with my in-laws. Li’s own in-laws died in a fire accident, and, she’d shown the same respects as she would her own next-of-kin to my in-laws. She was in awe at how deeply my in-laws loved one another, took their photo, to use it as the subject of her painting.
Not long thereafter, Ling told me, hoped that I can take my in-laws to an exhibition, because she’d painted a picture with them as her subjects. That time, we’d gone especially to her art show, she’d painted for the local elementary schools for free, and now, owns her own art studio, and won numerous awards for her pieces, and even gotten interviewed on television too, and as an immigrant to Taiwan, she’d, assimilated to life in Taiwan, chasing her own dreams, becoming a model citizen.
Awhile ago, she’d posted a yellowed photograph to share with me; that was when she just married to Taiwan, was pregnant, and her very first time going to travel with her mother-in-law, the two of them stood underneath the Queen’s Head in Yeliou, smiled shyly at the camera. Many years later, I acted as a host, took Li and her family to visit Yeliou, that day, the tourists from China cramped up the geology park, and, Li still insisted on standing in line underneath the scorching sun. As she wrapped her arms around her youngest son, I saw tears out of the corner of her eyes; she said, that it was, a beautiful memory, although her mother-in-law is no longer around, but, she’d taken her own child, to visit all the places her mother-in-law had been before, to remember the memories they’d come to share.
I’m truly grateful, for the internet, for allowing me to meet up with Li, a beautiful inside AND out, artist who originated from overseas.
So, imagine the adaptations, adjustments this woman must’ve made in moving here, and, she’d done quite well, became a part of a family that loved her dearly, and, this is a case where friend can connect through the internet, and, you get to meet a ton of interesting characters who share the same interests as you online too…