The SnippEthel

My friend Xiao called yesterday to say she was going back home to China for a month, on holiday.
I met Xiao five years ago in Paris, August 2001. I was moving from a hostel to another one and ended up in her bedroom. There were three beds in that crappy room. The third girl was an unemployed,confused and a bit slow eighteen-year-old who let junk food rotten on her desk and had the habit of sleeping in her clothes (we learnt later she got herself pregnant and went back to stay with her mother...), the good thing was, she was hardly ever there. Xiao and I were a bit defiant at first. Xiao had been in France for just a year and had a terrible Chinese accent, I could barely understand what she was telling me... Day after day, we tamed each other and started talking about all kind of stuff, talking for hours.
Then there was 9/11 and our conversations suddenly changed from books and exhibitions to imperialism and communism... It was really great to get things into perspective from a Chinese point of view. Who cared to wonder what the Chinese thought of 9/11 ?
Xiao and I became inseparable, exploring Paris with people turning their interrogative eyes on her strange outfits. For Xiao is an artist. She is a painter. She is a poet. She is a film maker. She is a designer. She is a photographer. and so much more. Whatever you give Xiao, a word, a pen, a toy, even a condom, she will turn it into art, into something meaningful.
Xiao has been in France for six years now and she has managed to get into one of the most wanted design schools in Europe, which means she will remain in France for at least four more years, to my greatest pleasure.
I preciously keep all the things I have ever received from her... The letters she sent throughout the years, the drawings she made on pieces of paper, a photoshoot I made of her for fun, one day we were bored and this gorgeous glass she engraved for one of my birthdays...

I know sometime soon, Xiao will be big. I have known it from the start. And I know all those things will be invaluable... not that I would sell any of them, of course, for noone could cherish all those memories as much as I can.
I look forward to seeing her again.