This won’t be of interest to everyone, and maybe not to anyone, and I guess I want to put it down more to save the memory than anything else. I take that back. It is a beautiful letter that will add depth and quality to the life of anyone who reads it.

My dearest friend from Beijing, Ben, wrote me the most beautiful email two days ago, and I asked him if I could post it to my site. It makes me so excited to see his enthusiasm for life, his need to always strive for something better, his youthful ambition that doesn’t know any boundaries.

Maybe I’m so touched because I remember how I was once the same way, and I wish I had known at that age exactly what I wanted my life to be, the way Ben does. He asked me to edit the grammar, but I think the way he writes it, just as it is, is part of what makes it so endearing. (He mentions some names and some institutions that I’ve either changed or deleted to avoid any problems.) He also talks about how he could have joined my favorite political party, the CCP, and why he didn’t. I never knew these things before.

As I said, it’s more for myself, but I’m hoping maybe someone somewhere will see the beauty of Ben’s innocence and total goodness which even now makes me long for China’s success. There must be so many people like Ben in China, and they deserve to have great lives. I’ll leave it at that. Here’s what he wrote:

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Richard, one of my old classmates (we shared same dormitory in university) who worked at Ji Nang(Shangdong province) came to Beijing today. We had a lunch together, then went to visit our previous tutor, Ms Li, a warm-hearted and kind person.

Ms Li gave me a lot of help during my college time, especially when I just came into Beijing. She learned my family financial status and made all her efforts to help me, she recommendated me to that charity agency to get aid of RMB1500 per year. It is very helpful at that time. Ms Li was very happy to met us, because both her husband and her had retired, and they always want to meet their students.

She mentioned one of her students, Mr. W whom she took pride in and often talked about during my college times. He was former president of [names of companies], he was promoted by former premier, Zhu Rongyi. Richard, you know how pride I felt because this excellent alumni, he also had promising political future at that time.

But unfortunately, he met “serious political issue” in 2001 and forced to resigned, at the same time, was expelled from CCP’s qualification. The problem was happened when he acted as president at [company name], and raised after he was president of [company name]. According relevant report, his problem laid in his corruptive life, someone muckraked he owned a luxury house in New York. Relatively, our other alummi who acted as vice president of [name of government agency] and had even been promoted by Mr. W., also had forced to resign.

This matter already passed for 2 years, and I was aware of the media report before. But Ms Li told us with a little pity, she said Mr. W was not so starring during his college life, but he studied and worked very hard. Mr. W was also kind and friendly, not so bureaucratic. Even when he acted as president of [company], he always answered every detail questions from my tutor with big patience. “How silly and venturous he was, why he would bought so luxury house in obvious New York”, Ms Li said with plaint.

Later, our topic went further and talked about dark side of politics in China. Richard, as an ambitious student majored in public administration, you know my dream had been to be president and great stateman. But I made drastic change when I was a junior college student, I found my character and thoughts could not fit in with China’s political condition, and I did not want to change myself from heart to fit it just in order to get my political objective. I love freedom and do not want to be controlled by dark human relationships. Actually, I had opportunity to become a CCP member when I was in my high school, but I did not take CCP’s lesson and gave up actively, even it also meaned I would lose lot’s benefits. The reason was simple, I felt boring about it.

As Roosevelt’s saying said, “To be president, otherwise advertising man”. I gave up my political future at so early age and decided to devote advertising and communications world. Maybe at this industry, I could find the thing which will make me feel excited for ever, otherwise, I will go on finding………..-:)