Did not really have an idea what was going on in the 1970’s in the United States of America, so it was not very easy for me to catch everything in the movie. I spent my high school years in another totally different century, a totally different country. Everything seemed to be different, but if you ask me if I can understand how the young people were feeling in this movie, I would tell you that I definitely do. I went to high school in China, and they were the last few years I was there. For all reasons, it was still the best couple of years so far, all hardness and pain with joy and love. Students in China lead another significantly dissimilar kind of lives, which young people here in the Stated would never understand. But no matter when and where you are from, there are things that every teenager has. Just as in the movie when Mr. Mason was asking Preacher what he really wanted to do in the future, the young man said he wanted to live forever. At that time, life was so easy and nice, we sure believed that all of us would live forever and nothing was impossible. Though when time goes by, we grow older and see more and more how the world is really about, we will change our mind, the way we think, what we believe. The passion, love, purity even the mistakes we made then are not going to change after time, it will always be the most precious memories we have in lives.
Trying to bring beck some memories form high school time is never easy. But it is even harder to say goodbye to them. Some has been gone; never would the other. At that time, nobody was totally confident that he or she was going to make it through safe, because it was so competitive in high school that every single one of us had to work the hardest to survive, from day one to the very end. We never had school buses; never had enough time and space for sports, never had plenty of time hanging out with friends, but would never feel bored. We did we do? We study, study a lot, too much. It might seem like a living hell to most of the Americans; it definitely was, but we were bunch of tough young people. We hated it, but most of the time we chose to be silent and to work harder until one day to break the foolish system from the inside out. We loved it, because that was what we had been doing for years since we were even younger. We were learning a lot of knowledge, even though some of it would be a waste of time. It either made you a life long habit of learning for life, or made you sick. Parties? Sex? Those things were just not quite that world. And we could never wait till your friend to come to wake us up; no, we had to call the sun to tell it we were ready for a new day.
The most precious memories are the love and friendship between us and the teachers. Traditionally, Chinese people give a lot of respect to teachers, because they always think education is a most important part in a nation. And the teachers have a lot of responsibilities for the nation’s future. We do not have a Presidents’ Day, but we do have a Teachers’ day. Nowadays the situation is a little bit disappointing, but still, in people’s eyes, teacher is not just a job. Most of my friends from that time are in touch with each other and exchange information very frequently either online or by phone, though some of us are very far from the rest. We are all trying to go beck to school every year to have a reunion with our respected teachers. Though sometimes our teachers may not be able to remember all of our names, because they have taught so many students, we just want to go beck to give our thanks and greetings to them to express our love to them. We treasure those memories; we would like to carry it on.
Busy, stressful, tired, even sometimes nonsense, we could still find the love we needed there. It may sound weird, but since we did not have a lot of time together after school, I and my girlfriend kept writing to each other almost everyday, for more than a year. I did not have the chance to see her everyday even we were in the same school, but the most beautiful time of my day was when I got her mail from the class mailbox. That was the reason I did not give up that easily and finally made it through.
I never thought I would like to live forever like Preacher did; we lived in those hard days, laugh for the bitterness and cry for the joy. We did not live for today, because we were looking at the bright tomorrow; we did not live for tomorrow, because we tried to make it a better day every morning. Time goes by, we are now getting farther away from that time, memories are not as clear as before, and we are even starting to forget how we were feeling, what we were thinking in those days. It will be a time to say goodbye to yesterday, wish it comes not that soon.
