A passionate Hawaiian melody. Bare feet turning. To the gentle beat of a guitar, garlanded arms swayed in dance.
Those hands, those slender fingers—one moment fluttering above the head like butterflies, the next sweeping beside a slim waist like willow branches.
The silhouettes of four pretty young girls were cast against a white screen. A gas lamp threw a strong beam of light upon their light-footed singing and dancing shadows.
The hula, filled with the flavor of the southern seas, held several hundred pairs of eyes spellbound. It stirred the lawn of the newly rebuilt Overseas Chinese Middle School in Rangoon and drove away the lingering heat of the summer evening.
When the music ended and the screen was pulled aside, the crowd burst into an uproar.
The dancers were four younger boys. They had gathered wildflowers and woven them into garlands. They had strung together green leaves to make their split grass skirts.
“Do you still remember the names of those four boys?”
“Besides you and me,” Yang Shuangxi, who had settled in Hong Kong, recalled in a letter, “there were also Huang Yanzhong and Wang Shanzhong, who later worked in the Burmese-language broadcasting section of China National Radio.”
“It really is amusing to think back on it!”
Looking at his photograph, I could see that Mr. Yang’s hair, bleached white by the years, was just like mine.
Ah, time! It has wrinkled our skin. But does the youthful passion of those Burmese Chinese boys still burn in our hearts?