Night in a cheap hotel. Forty-five euro including breakfast. The room is so small, like a place for one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, but the French-style balcony is always better than English one. I sit on the old high-back-chair thinking there must be one thousand dead people used to sit on this chair and spent their hotel time doing strange or boring things. Turn on the desk lamp, I start to write you a letter. But my eyes can’t see anything clearly today; especially I can’t read clearly the trails of my writing. White paper too sharp for eyes, black ink too weak to read. When I look at the dictionary, every word is blurred. The optician in London told me the power of my short eyesight is growing, getting worse. They said I can’t do laser surgery because my corneal are too thin. Will my future is a world of blurness?

I look out of the window. I can see the black clouds at the bottom of the dark sky, and I can see the dim lights in somebody’s house which is not far away from this hotel, and the shadow of trees by the street light. But that’s all, no more details in the street. I remember once you told me about an American eye doctor, who invented Bates Method. He taught those short-eyesight-patients how to use eyes properly. He said keep your vision centered. When you regard an object, only one small part should be seen best. This is because only the centre of the retina has the best vision for detail. Rest of retinal area is less able to pick up fine detail. Does this mean I don’t or can’t use the centre of the retina to see things properly? That I like Monet, Van Gogh and all these impressionists, see the world blurred too?

I want to see you only at the centre of retina and everything else blurred. What am I doing in this busy Continent when I just want see you?

Amsterdam is the constitutional capital and largest city of the Netherlands in the western part of the country where the Amstel River is joined by a sluice dam.

amsterdam

I only stop in Amsterdam for one day. I am going to Berlin. I don’t know why I don’t feel like to stay. I don’t know anything about Holland, and I even didn’t know Holland , Dutch, the Netherland meaning the same place. Why a country have so many different names? Before I thought these three spread somewhere differently in Europe.

There are only two things I know about Holland: first, the Communist Dutch man Joris Ivens made a film called The 400 Million about Chinese against Japanese invasion; second, all the tulips in China are said from Holland. About Joris Ivens, I saw a film camera been exhibited in the Museum of the Revolution in Beijing. It is the camera he gave to the Communists army at late 1930s. Maybe that’s why Chinese Communists started making films since then.

Amsterdam Central station. A large place. A place for temporary stop and for passing by.

So many people here, but nobody will stay here more than one hour.

From platform 15 to 1, I cannot find a place to sit my bum. No, there is no single chair or bench in this Central Station. The passengers hold their pizza in hand and eat it without a seat. The passengers stand and drink paper-cup coffee without a seat. A man, with a huge suitcase and a big rocksack, talk in mobile phone in a strange language. A language without any similarity with other language I have heard in my whole life. He keeps talking in the phone and his face is sad. He talks in the phone for so long, and it seems like he is being sucked by the telewave and disappeared in the phone-zone. In that dark phone-zone it is no seats either.

The train to Berlin will be departure at 8:15 p.m. Five hours to wait. I decide go for a walk.

Outside station so much water. And houses like doll house. In front of one house I meet a man drinking coffee on doorsteps. I stopped to look at house because I saw some familiar leaf with special fragrant. Lush wisterias climbing on a big tree. I always love this plant. It is so Chinese. It was growing everywhere behind our house in my home town. And it is growing in your English garden as well. I put down my heavy rocksack and try to have a rest.

Man on doorsteps looks at me and asks in English, “Would you like a cup of coffee before you start walking again?”

“Oh. Is that convenient for you, to make a cup of coffee?”

He smiles. “It’s no problem. I’ve already made a pot. So I just need to fetch a cup for you.”

He goes back inside of house. Quite dark inside.

We sit on doorsteps and drink a very bitter coffee without milk. I dare not ask him about milk, thinking maybe Dutch man doesn’t use milk.

“I am Peter. And you?”

“Zhuang Xiao Qiao…Well, just call me Z, if you want.”

“Z?” He laughs. “That’s a strange name.”

In England, people tell me if somebody says something “strange” means they don’t like it. So I don’t answer him.

Then he asks me:

“Are you Japanese? Or Philippino? Or maybe Vietnamese? Or Thailandese?”

I a little annoyed: “Why I couldn’t be a Chinese?”

“Oh, are you?” he says, and looks at me meaningfully.

His smile reminds me of you. A bit different. He wears a black leather jacket.

“Do you like plants?” he asks me, because my eyes were still on the wisteria.

“Yes, I like those vines, wisteria. It is originally from China,” I say.

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that.”

He starts to look at the plants as well.

“My father told me that wisteria is very long-lived,” I say. “Some vines surviving 50 years. They climb the trees and they can kill the trees.”

“You know a lot about plants.” He looks at me: “So why are you running around the world?”

“I don’t know.”

“ China is far away from here. And you don’t have anybody travelling with you?”

I nod my head. Not knowing what to say.

People in the street are in a hurry with their bags, they must rush back to have dinner with their family. Everywhere people live in the same way.

“And are you going to the train station now?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“ Berlin.”

“ Berlin. A nice city. Have you been there before?”

“No.”

“ Berlin is cool.”

But I don’t want to know about Berlin, I think only of my home. So I ask, “Do you live in this house? Is this your home?”

“Well, not exactly my home. But I rent it.”

“Can I ask what do you do here?”

“Me? I just came back from another country. Cuba. I was there for ten years.”

Cuba? Why Cuba? Live there for ten years as a Dutch? Is he also a Communist like Joris Ivens?

I start to watch him, instead of watching the people in the street.

His eyes meet my eyes.

I look up his home. It is a beautiful old house.

“Don’t you want to change your ticket? Then you could stay with me for a bit until you want to go.” He looks at me sincerely. He is very serious, I think.

I shake my head. I put my empty coffee cup on the stone step. I look at my rocksack in front of me. I stand up and ready to go. But suddenly my tears come out without me noticing.

The man is surprised. He doesn’t know what to say. He gives me his hand and lets me hold it. I hold his hand, tightly. I don’t know him, I don’t know him, I tell myself.

Now the big clock on platform shows 20:08. There are seven minutes left. Sky is pink outside. Waiting and feeling lonely. Now there is no time I can go back to the centre of city.

A big train station is a bleak place. This station is bigger than any station in London. Waterloo Station, King Cross Station are just too normal compare with this one. Travel alone, makes me feel sad when I see all these couples hold each other’s hand and wait patiently.

A floating dust, that must be how God see a little human drifting on the Earth.

I feel difficult without you. I become language handicapped. I got so many problems to understand this world around me. I need you.