Dahuang has been a friend since high school. Disclaimer: Though DaHuang arouses confusion in Chinese due to sharing the same name with rhubarb, under the context of this blog Dahuang has no reference to the famous Chinese medicine “Chinese Rhubarb”, ( See Picture 1 in appendices), or the popular “Rhubarb pie” that people sometimes bake ( See Picture 2). DaHuang simply refers to the guy in a yellow T-shirt that I met on the first day of high school. ( See Picture 3) as Huang means yellow in Chinese.

Before we became friends, DaHuang and I first of all built up a heart-wrenching nemesis relationship, for the reason that I suspected him for breaking my newly bought Tubberware water bottle. The first day I brought my water bottle to school, it was already knocked off on the ground the moment I left, and Dahuang who sat in the front row next to me immediately became the culprit for his giant backpack. And his refusal to admit his crime made me doubt his character ever since. As a result, he was just an acquaintance for the first half year who I secretly despised in my heart.

The turning point in the relationship was when Dahuang and I joined the same study group. It turned out that he was actually a good person with strong uprightness and trustworthiness, as he reported that it was indeed someone else who broke my water bottle. Refusing to provide the name due to honesty, he vaguely pointed out that it could instead be Long, his deskmate. Moved by his sincerity, we established a very sincere friendship. We always ate out together after school, sat in the classroom chatting, graffiti on the back blackboard with nonsense art of course, and got invited to the teachers’ office to take part in serious class meeting planning meetings – none of us cared about wasting our time. During the three years of high school, Dahuang exhibited interesting choices of my birthday gifts – first year, a big white piggy bank that nobody could figure out how to open, a leg of Kumamn (note: because the other body parts were sponsored by other guys in the class), and a giant notebook with hard cover and complicated patterns.

We always quarrelled, but now it felt like all those quarrelled were for absolutely nothing. Maybe I was always adding salt to his wounds, is there even a good way in English to express that? Maybe he felt that my monitor role was too tyrannical, ruthless, and pretential. I’ve never been used to saying this, but Dahuang turned out to be my best friend in high school.

All in all, things in high school are not that much worth talking about, and we graduated quickly. When we were texting or at a small gathering dinner party, we said to each other, don’t you think there would never be better days than those that we’ve gone through? And then, we regretted not recording them in time, and then, we decided to start keeping a five-year diary together.

The concept for a five-year diary is a notebook with about 366 pages (note: considering the leap years). Each page is divided into five parts. If taking the upcoming 2024 as an example, open a page and there will be space for from 2024 to 2028 to be recorded on the same date. We all like it for its compacity. If you turn the last few pages thirty years from now, all the holiday season dramas from 2024 to 2028 will be presented to you directly, completely, and five years in a row. It’s for those of us who are always immersed in memories.

Don’t remember if it was on Dahuang’s birthday in 2018 or 2019, but I bought him a five-year diary. In 2022, I also bought myself a five-year diary. Dahuang brought the diary book to Ohio, and my diary is sitting on my bookshelf in Stockholm. If we really kept our promises and wrote those diaries up, they could have carried on our undergrad graduations, the graduation trips that we agreed to go together but never made, those long-distance migrations to Europe or the States, and the laboratory nuances that he didn’t have time to share, love relationships, midnight tears, and my King of Glory records (note: a MOBA 5 v.s. 5 Tencent mobile game, see note 1 for further information).

But as we just chatted again, it turns out that neither of us continued writing. The five-year diary was hidden at the end of the list of plans. There is an ideal life that we talked so much about during high school, but we are now so busy realising it that there is no room left for writing a diary.

In high school, I wanted so much a free life. Recently I started to think, have I realised it well now? It will soon be ten years since I took high school, and it will be ten years since I have known Dahuang. He said after reading my last blog, that there is a kind of balance and consistency between the high school version of me and the current life I am living in. He said it felt natural to see me develop into this stage and circle, and so forth. Like magic, I felt relieved right away, and I felt like being confirmed by not only an old buddy but the high school version of Hui, who is not very easy to please. And isn’t it just so nice that there are old friends in the world who can enable you to feel this way: no matter what happens, the girl sitting on this sofa tonight is still the mushroom-headed girl at the beginning of high school. Dahuang always understands me very well.

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// Picture 1, Chinese Rhubarb as a medicine illustration

// Picture 2, Rhubarb pie

// Picture 3, guy in a yellow T-shirt

Note 1,wikipedia page for Honor of Kings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_of_Kings