How B Met My Mother

At breakfast with Dai Yi Yi last Thursday (morning after Dinner with H & E)
 [Dai Yi Yi, literally ‘Big Auntie’ is how I address my aunt, the older of my mother’s two younger sisters. The younger one is Sai Yi Yi ‘Little Auntie’. In Chinese, ‘big’ and ‘small’ are the comparative words for age.]

[Postings are not in order of chronological events.]

Do you know how I met him (B, the identical twin of H. Their last name starts with O, hence they are both Herr O. Herr = ‘Mister’ in German)?

Inserted preface: My mother played the flute for a long time a long time ago. She has a bachelor’s degree in music for it from a well-ranked university in the American Midwest. This story starts about two years before she traveled to the US, unknowingly for good. 

In 1978 (in Chinese, we say ‘one nine seven eight year in time’), I heard that the -----Famous German Orchestra---- would play in Hong Kong and I asked my friend if she would go with me and she did. We went to the concert hall on the day of the concert to by tickets but they were sold out. But then they opened the seating in the orchestra pit to students and we were able to get tickets to sit there. Of course I paid attention to the flute section and the first flautist (like first violinist, leader of the section). I was watching him and I thought he saw my eyes too. During intermission we left the hall and waited outside and he walked by and our eyes met. Then we went back into the hall and sat there and listened to the rest of the concert. Then after the concert my friend and I sought him out and we talked with him and we talked about how long he would stay in Hong Kong. It turns out that the tour would stay there a few more days and he asked me to come and play for him. So I did, he gave me a few lessons privately. It was really amusing, he barely spoke English, so we hardly spoke to each other but we could still talk through music. And I thought wow, what an amazing person. He is the section leader on tour with a world class orchestra, and he could be sight-seeing. But instead, he voluntarily gives his time to a student. So I feel extremely gracious to him. [There are concepts expressed in Chinese that simply don’t exist by a transliterated expression in English. What she said here was one of them, I have merged that and my fuzzy memory with ‘ extremely gracious’.] We continued to correspond for several years.

Then in end of 2011 (literal Chinese: two zero one one year end), in that year, we were going to visit Liane in Germany. So I went online to look for Herr O. (once a teacher, always a teacher and addressed as such). He has been retired for so long though, so he is no longer on the orchestra’s webpage. Then I search in google some more and saw that recently he had traveled with a group from a church or seminary to give a concert that appeared in the local news of the town that hosted him. I went to that church’s website and contacted the church, asking for Herr O. They said that they cannot give that information, you have to contact him yourself. Of course I do not have that information, that’s why I am contacting them. But I told them to tell him ‘it is R., from Hong Kong!’ and he will know. Days later she received a phone call from Germany.

Were you able to talk to each other? Dai Yi Yi asks.

‘Well kind of. But we talked with his son. His son is full grown and runs his own travel agency based out of Cologne, where he lives. We met him during our trip to Germany where we visited Herr O. at his house. They don’t travel anymore. But actually, the son, who had never been to the US, planned his own trip through his own agency to visit us last summer (2013).’

To summarize the events: My mother met a flutist in 1978 and they became friends. After three decades, they met again during my stay in Germany (lsdeutsch.blogspot.com – don’t think I ever posted anything about this meeting though). After meeting again in Germany, Herr O. introduces my mother to his twin brother who lives in Hong Kong by email. Twin brother H., my mother, and I meet for lunch during our stay in Hong Kong in December 2013. We meet again in December 2014.

In Cantonese there is a word for long winded, literally marry the words ‘long’ and ‘wind/air’ together. Now what are the words for ‘detailed’ and ‘it runs in the family?’ I’m sure the latter requires no more than two characters.