Sunflower’s trip to Latin America was already planned several years ago. She knew that Latin America was a   dangerous place and therefore she learnt some Kung Fu, so that she would be able to protect herself in case of any attack. But when she was actually there, she realized how silly she was. Everyone said to her, “if you are robbed, just give them everything you have, don’t try to fight with them!”

When she first arrived she lived in a very remote area with dark streets, every night when she got off the train station she always had to ask the way home because she had no orientation at all. The gentleman at the newspaper stand said to her one evening, “little Chinese girl, you want to go to this place on your own at this time of the night?” She nodded. He went on, “I think you better take a taxi.” She didn’t really take his word at the beginning because she walked home two nights already. As soon as she was rushing through the crowd, she could feel that someone was trying to open her backpack. She turned around immediately. All she saw was a well-dressed young guy smoking and looking up to the sky. She stared at him aggressively and he did as if he hadn’t done anything at all. She then jumped into the next taxi. The next day an Argentinean lady told her in an interview about the social security problem in this country and that her daughter was just robbed recently with a gun near where she lives.

She was glad to leave this dangerous place after the first week. Both her body and mind were tired to this self-protection game.

One month later she went back to Buenos Aires
A young Chinese immigrant girl told Sunflower before recording their interview: “I was robbed yesterday in front of my Japanese school, 10am in the morning!” Instead of being sad, she reported happily, “One grabbed my school bag and ran away on a scooter the other at the highest speed.” She sounded more impressed by their efficiency than the loss of her property. She said, “I was robbed finally!” Her boyfriend next to her also said, “I hardly know anyone who has not been robbed in this city. When I was young, we were four kids and got robbed by one guy who claimed to have a gun. We surrounded him on the main street at the wall and gave him everything we had. The street was full of people and no one knew what was happening.” He told me this in a very casual way.

During Sunflower’s interpreting job in a Jewish-Argentine company, her young boss came in one day and said, “I only parked my car one street away from the factory yesterday and was robbed with a knife!” He didn’t sound sad or angry.  Sunflower asked him, “why don’t you sound annoyed at all?” He smiled charmingly, “It doesn’t help, does it? I’m 40 now and I’ve only been robbed twice, it’s not so bad, is it?”

If you like, there are still endless exciting robbing stories: the car window gets smashed at the traffic light and the handbags of the ladies get ripped off, robbing with knife, with gun, without anything, with or without violence……etc—any taste you like. The interesting thing is that, people seem to be so used to it that it’s nothing as tremendous as you would feel in Europe or Hong Kong.

Sunflower’s martial art didn’t serve anything but another type of Kung Fu helped more: Sunflower’s Argentinean mother taught her  “Be-careful-Kung Fu” was more useful. As soon as she got into the car, button locked down, handbag on the floor. She always carried a little amount of cash with her.  She always put a few little notes in her jeans pocket to be ready for the thieves. She even thought of the dialogue with the thieves, she would say to him, “HA! You’ve come finally! I’ve been waiting for you!” Then hand him the money and say, “I hope this can help you”. Fortunately or unfortunately they never came.

2 months later
Weeks after, these dangerous scenes of rumours have become part of the daily life. Sunflower walked almost everywhere, at almost any time on her own. Sometimes she even had a nice picnic on her own in a nice park, after eating she had a nice siesta under a tree in order to become one with this city. She often thought: Buenos Aires, you are such a lovely city (apart from the rubbish and the thieves)!

After living in this dangerous city almost half year, she was not scared anymore. She was even nostalgic when she left. As she was leaving this city, she listened to a Buddhist master’s talk on the “universal Kung Fu”. He said, “the real Kung Fu we have to learn is “Qi Kong” but the [Qi] is not氣[Qi] (energy) but棄[Qi] (to let go).”

Indeed, if there were nothing you could not give away, what else could they steal from you?

Farewell for now, but we will see each other again I
暫別但還是會再見の一
To all who like to read The Daily Craze

Some of you might have been wondering where the Sunflower has gone in the past months and why she isn’t writing anymore? I hope I can give you some good answers.

Busy travelling
The Sunflower’s life has been filled with lots of travelling in the past months. In December 2007 she had a marvellous trip to Lisbon where she was totally overwhelmed by the beauty of Portugal, although she got food poisoning on the last day. In March 2008 she went to the world famous romantic city – Rome, where she found the reality less romantic than the fantasy. She felt a little bit disillusioned amongst millions of tourists, rubbish and unreasonably expensive restaurants. However, it was the first time in her life she went to a vegetarian Gourmet Restaurant, where she had the most delicious and expensive deserts of her life. At the end of July she had a round trip in Ireland and went to England to visit her host family. She brought her very cool Wellington boots with Leopard pattern because she knows that the Great Empire is always wet. She didn’t want the weather to destroy her trip, and to her delight, it did not rain in the whole two weeks!! (Well, not heavy rain, it only drizzled a lot.) The landscape in Ireland is as amazing as the prices there. She drank neither Guinness nor Irish coffee but she found many other interesting things in Ireland, such as the colourful houses.

She coincidently met a Chinese restaurant owner on the Dingle Island who is a Hakka Chinese (Sunflower is also). This lady is not just a Hakka but a Hakka who comes from the same village as Sunflower’s mother! The world is so small! What a Yuan Fen!! She was so thrilled to speak Hakka again. Her Hakka fellow woman even treated her and Prince de la Bun for a genuine Chinese meal, which perhaps two westerners who meet abroad wouldn’t do. Cultural difference again, you see. In September, Sunflower will go to Turkey in order to experience the famous fasting festival in Istanbul and in the meantime she will go on some short trips in Switzerland and Germany.

At the end of this year the Sunflower’s discovery is finally stretching to Latin America. Her provisional plan includes Argentina, Columbia, Costa Rica and Mexico for about half a year including working and visiting friends. She is very excited about this trip because visiting Latin America has always been her wish since the first day she learnt Spanish.

Miss China
2 months ago there was a “China, Japan & Korea” event from the International Club of my university. My friends, who are the chairwomen of the Chinese student union, asked me if I could do a presentation about China. Later on, a German friend said, “how can Sunflower do that?” Why not? His explanation was, “she is from Hong Kong.” Well, we’ve been part of China for about 10 years already. I was quite happy to jump from “Miss Hong Kong” to “Miss China”! I even wore my beautiful Qipao (a traditional Chinese dress) which I bought 8 years ago and seldom have had chance to wear. It was the first time I spoke in front of almost 200 people, the feeling of being on the stage was interesting. I only saw black in front of my eyes due to the strong lighting. I had a Korean and Japanese crash course and introduced myself in Korean and Japanese. The audience was screaming as if it were a concert. Very amusing!

Midsummer Night’s Joy
The 3^rd July 2008 was another highlight of Sunflower’s life. A very special friend of hers from Hong Kong came to visit her. In order to give him some wonderful memories of Germany, she organised an intercultural event with over 70 people coming from all over the world. The event was called:

 “Midsummer Night’s Fun: Clash of passion – Crossover of Chinese and Spanish world”

She found many generous and helpful friends and shops who sponsored and helped the organisation. There were presentations about Hong Kong and Mexico, a buffet with over 25 dishes, intercultural games, 17 prices for the lucky draw, live music, a Kung Fu show and Salsa dancing. Sunflower had so much fun running on the stage and behind it. Her dancing school prepared a salsa choreography for which they had been training for a month. During the dance, she blacked out and forgot so many steps. However, no one realised. Two of her favourite professors in Romance Studies also came to provide support. At the end, everybody had a wonderful time, I hope. And she was exhausted for days after this intensive evening.

The income of this event is donated to 2 charity organizations: Action5 (Germany) and Azahar (USA) for different worldwide projects for children so that the Midsummer Night’s Fun we had could spread around the world.

Sunflower has to leave
Now, I hope you understand why I need to say farewell to this blog because I’m also preparing for my graduation simultaneously apart from all these wonderful projects.