I happened to read a QQ journal tonight, by one of my students in Huidong, written in so plain and plaintive a language that I assume one must have a heart of steel not to be touched. This short essay of grievance, which I subsequently posted on my Q-zone, goes to the effect that she, this student of mine---let’s say Ann as an alias---feels troubled because with her birthday approaching, she is afraid that she might have to spend her birthday in absolute solitude this year, as she has done all these years from cradle, without the company of friends, and worst still, without any of them knowing it, let alone compliments or gifts. She proceeds to relate two of her most disheartening birthday experiences: one is about her going to a birthday party, held not for her, but for a friend of hers who happens to share her birthdate, and how having had to witness all the hullabaloo unfolding before her, she was forced to feel jealous because she was so near yet so removed from the joy and happiness that she was supposed to partake in. The other is about her once presuming to ask her friends for birthday best wishes, which as you may guess, never came; afterwards, when at the height of her disappointment she asked her friends why, she got another blow: they had sent all the best wishes to the guy who shares her birthdate, and none to her, because they thought it was only his birthday…She ends her complaint with a pathetic touch that suggests that maybe her birthday has been given away, is not there, and is nowhere to be found, or at least nobody gives a darn about it.

    At the risk of being accused of making a mountain out of a molehill, I will argue that this latest evidence of how our society, our social network, and our so-called friendships with others are tilted unfairly towards the particularly chosen few ,in neglect of the equally deserving many, is something that should not only provoke my long pent-up indignation about social injustice and unfairness, but  more importantly, stir the conscience of each and every one of us, because you can feel with your own heart that there is something fundamentally wrong and unacceptable in the indifference of Ann’s friends, something so inexcusable that the fact that they were just kids then doesn’t make it any less so. I suppose Ann is a sensible, considerate and soulful girl who cares more about others than she does herself ,and that she will remember the birthdays of those whom she considers friends,won"t she?  But what the heck can be the reason for those of her friends not to remember hers?? This is so vexingly unfair and intolerable that I would challenge anyone to make a counterargument. Apparently, we can say hypothetically ,but not without some degree of certainty, that Ann, being dewy-eyed and simplistic, is apt to be taken in and taken advantage of, as all simple-minded folks are, by anyone in whom she may confide, and what we can hardly dispute is that those who are most likely to hurt her feelings are those of her so-called “friends”, who consciously or not, will sometimes degrade themselves with gross apathy, excessive selfishness,and outright oblivion, if not with greed and imposition, which are the common traits of a petty self-serving ingrate and a double-faced double-tongued hypocrite. Her simple desire for a share of the happiness and merriment that friendship supposedly engenders is legitimate and well-grounded, for she has proven worthy of it, but sadly,this wish is not always viable in the cruelty and remoteness of our society and the majority of those who constitute it…In short, she simply falls a victim to what some people call the crime of credulity---in this case, friendship is culpable---not knowing that as is true of all things under the sun,  friendship can sometimes be false, if not most of the time.  

    I fear I’m going a little too far, and hence I shall stop here.