1There are few opportunities for me to physically go out of my city for sightseeing, and even fewer to take part in a tourist group. Such an occasion came when
I was invited to a day trip to Wujiaqu, or Five Family Creek, a new farm-turned
city 32 km away from Urumqi to which I’d never been before. Without the least
hesitation I accepted the invitation.
It was an outing organized by the local disabled persons’ federation. A 30-strong party of “special citizens” and their caretakers, it was a “special group
” consisting of people with cerebral palsy, polio, and permanent spinal cord injuries. A few sat in wheelchairs, some leaned on crutches, and still some limped around with their heads and hands turning and wringing at odd angles. They could create an attraction unique in its own! But each and every one of them wore
a happy face and talked animatedly with one another as I joined the lot on April 30, 2009.
“Disabled” has always been a harsh word to me, however subconsciously admitted
I am to the fact that I belong to that “lot.” I was brought up in a world of
“normal people.” There is literally nothing I cannot do in my parents’ loving care. The use of the Internet and the grasp of the English language have pushed me even further away from the consciousness that I am disabled. Right this
moment when I, for the second time, stood in the cool morning air with the “lot
” waiting for the charted bus, I became more than ever conscious of my “nervous problems,” and an hour of waiting seemed like an eternity.
Finally the bus arrived. I went on board with my mother and chose a seat by the
window in the second row. The engine started when everyone was seated with all
the wheelchairs secured in the aisle. From an attractive midget young lady two
seats away on my right, I retrieved my glance and focused it on the window. Past corn fields, vineyards, and vegetable plantations, the bus came to a halt one
hour later in what looked like a small parking lot of a scenic spot called “The 4th Annual Exhibition of Tulips.”
Tulips! Tulips! Noble, graceful, attractive plants they are! Why is it that a plant looks to me almost like a gentle young lady? Ask Thumbelina from one of my picture books Mother used to read me when I was young – which depicted
a pretty girl climbing out of a tulip-like flower I have loved tulips ever since, but was never given a chance to get a real-life sight of them until now….
But it was not until the bus, with tremendous difficulty, maneuvered a few feet
closer to the entrance some 30 minutes later, did I get off to catch my first glimpse at my favorite flower.
Arranged in crescent beds are patches of red and yellow dazzling under the blazing sun. Despite the warning “Stay where you are and we will have a group photo
taken in a moment,” my legs take me to the nearest bed. Bending down, I fix my gaze at one particular tulip, which holds its six red petals on an upstanding
stem. Around the stem sprouted several half-folded triangular leaves like two little hands posed as if to support the stem and the flower. Inside the petals there is no little Thumbelina to be found but a tiny golden pistil standing up straight on purple and yellow star-patterned velvet, bracing itself up for the sun
’s and my glare.
“Attention. Time to take the photo!” Comes a shout from the crowd behind. Obediently I turn around and squeeze into a pool of standers for one unified “Cheese!” And then a real tour of tulips begins.
Along a tree-lined road there are red, yellow, pink, orange, magenta, crimson, cream, snowy white, pearly silver, dark purple, light gold, and rosy claret – the only colors I know by their names. They, together with a wide array of color
combinations – magenta-yellow, red-white, purple-silver, pink-gold, to name a few, creates a world of colors. Tottering on the brick-wide path laid amidst the
flowers, I am turned into a clumsy butterfly in a search for the perfect patch
of tulips. This lot is charming, I yell to my mom and the companions. No, wait
, I think this one is even better…, I decide hesitantly. In the end I, dazzled
by an overwhelming effort of tulips to show off their tints and hues, haul down
my wings and come to a conclusion that it’s real hard to find one group superior to any other, for every color, every pattern they exhibit is a creation of Nature – created long before preference and prejudice were ever known to mankind.
To share something good with your friends doubles your happiness. I find this saying quite weak when I see one of my wheelchair-bound friends shooting flowers
with a DV. He is a handsome man in his late thirties. Ten years ago he broke his neck in a terrible work accident and has been left paralyzed since.
“Wow, I wish I could have a camera like this.” I walk over and ask, “Is this
a disc-type?”
“Yep, 40GB.” He replies with a smile.
His smile makes my happiness grow by at least five times.
“You’d like to take a picture of yourself?” Mother good-naturedly asks one of the teammates with severe polio. To my surprise, he replies with an enthusiastic nod. His next move makes me gasp. In a struggle he stands up with one crooked leg and pushes his wheelchair away. One hand in the pocket and the other hand holding a bottle of water, he croaks, “I’m ready.”
It was nearly 3 o’clock that we finally reached the other end of the road, where all the members had a nice meal of fish. By 4:30, we hopped on the bus ready
to go back home.
Every one was tired and sleepy on the return trip – except me. In silence I stared at the running landscape through the window. Everything returned to the “
normal” color – unattractive green and gray. A strange thought flashed through my mind. Could all those tulips be seen as “strange”, “abnormal”, or “disabled?” They could, in fact, as long as they kept their natural differences.
Would they ever feel ashamed of their unique appearances had they been given a
thinking mind?
“This is all your fault! I should have been much taller and would not have had
all this misery!” Suddenly, this exchange of a parent-daughter conversation rang in my ears, as I looked over to the midget young lady, who had her MP3 player plugged into her ears and apparently enjoyed music she loved.
“No, Tulip,” I would say to any tulip who felt sad about being abnormal, “You
are just being attractively different, not disabled. For every Thumbelina, there is one special tulip to sleep in. It’s nothing wrong to be special, but it’
d be all wrong to be perfectly normal.”
2I love you not because of who you are,but because of who I am when I am with you.
我爱你，不是因为你是一个怎样的人，而是因为我喜欢与你在一起时的感觉。
No man or woman is worth your tears,and the one who is ,won't make you cry.
没有人值得你流泪，值得让你这么做的人不会让你哭泣。
The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can't have them.
失去某人，最糟糕的莫过于，他近在身旁，却犹如远在天边。
Never frown,even when you are sad,because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.
纵然伤心，也不要悉眉不展，因为你不知是谁会爱上你的笑容。
To the world you may be one person,but to one person you may be the world.
对于世界而言，你是一个人；但是对于某人，你是他的整个世界。
Don't waste your time on a man/woman,who isn't willing to waste their time on you.
不要为那些不愿在你身上花费时间的人而浪费你的时间。
Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to,doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
爱你的人如果没有按你所希望的方式爱你，那并不代表他们没有全心全意地爱你。
Don't try to hard,the best things come when you least expect them to.
不要着急，最好的总会在最不经意的时候出现。
Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one,so that when we finally meet the person,we will know how to be grateful.
在遇到梦中人之前，上天也许会安排我们先遇到别人；在我们终于遇见心仪的人时，便应当心存感激。
Don't cry because it is over,smile because it happened.
不要因为结束而哭泣，微笑吧，为你的曾经拥有。
Life is a pure flame,and we live by an invisible sun within us.
-------Sir Thomas Browne
“生命是束纯净的火焰，我们依靠自己内心看不见的太阳而存在。”
--------托马斯。布朗爵士
采纳哦
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