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By Hepingdao Victoria, British Columbia Deep into the mirrored wall, I watch you shifting in hundreds of forms. What a great wall that chains across your finger- tips to the end of another world. I see a shadow moving in a snowman's suit transformed to a green tree full of gifts You are gifted with hands creating the most exquisite food out of plain materials; In a rush, you washed sands into gold grains; With a wave of a wand, you dug a tunnel through the roughest mountains. Are these just rumors? Stories have become legends, some have been buried beneath the snow with bones clacking under railways. Tears of words scatter over the wounds of ice. Isn’t a peeled banana still the same? I will hold back what cannot possibly be translated. More than a hundred years later, a figure, carved out of stone, stands up against the blue gigantic sky. Who is it? murmur the rustling snowflakes. Through a piece of glass, I see him breathing in fires. A dragon lost its wings? How could such a tiny creature be the descendant of a giant species. I put every cell of you under investigation. Do we possess the same type of genes? I simulate all kinds of hypotheses by computer programming. There might be no big differences, regardless of the shapes of heirloom faces. We might even share the same origin, like streams merging into a river. At the top of mother- land stands that mighty Man with his descendants migrated across mountains and plateaus through the distance of time like rivers flowing into the ocean of human beings Into the future, I stand looking back into the mirror of history reflecting, evolving... Note: A large number of Chinese were attracted to BC from California during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. In the 1880's, Chinese workers comprised the main labor force in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia. Completion of the transcontinental railroad was a condition of BC's entry into Confederation. After the completion of the CPR, the government of Canada passed a series of humiliating laws against Chinese workers. Such kinds of racial discrimination policies were gradually abandoned during the post-war period. More than 120 years later, the contribution of Chinese railway workers is recognized by the installment of The Chinese Rail Workers Monument. In the 21st Century, a large number of Chinese immigrated to Canada. Most of them are either well-educated as technical immigrants, or wealthy business immigrants. Background InformationA former professor and senior geologist, he traveled across continents from Asia to Canada, then to Africa, where he managed projects in Mali and Niger. He shifted his career to study Computer Science when his last project in Congo was terminated by both a civil war and a gold depression at the turn of the Millennium. A graduate from the prestigious Peking University, and after 23 years as a full-time student, he earned many degrees, and is fluent in Chinese, English, and French. He divides his time between his job as a software developer, his family as a father of an 18 year old son and a 9 year old daughter, and still makes time for his hobby as a poet. He has published more than 100 poems in Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. He is the founding president of a non-profit organization, the Chinese Literature Society of North America, which publishes a leading bilingual (Chinese and English) literary magazine, North American Maple. Among his many accomplishments as editor-in-chief, he organized the "HuaHe Cup" 2007 Chinese Mainland and Oversea Poetry Competition, having successfully invited 32 Chinese literary magazines and newspapers from Canada, USA, Australia, and Mainland China to join this international non-governmental effort. He created one of the most influential Chinese literary websites outside of mainland China, http://maplereview.org, where he has built the largest Chinese poetry database, an innovative Chinese Character analyzing tool, and Chinese-English-French dictionaries, by combining web and search engine technologies with Chinese Literature, English and French languages. His devotion to Chinese immigrant literature has been well-recognized by congratulatory letters from the Honorable Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, the Premier of BC, Gordon Campbell, and Victoria Mayor, Alan Lowe. |
