When I was ten, I moved to a quiet, small city by the sea in China, called Yantai. It was just a five-minutes-walk from my house to the beach. And when you open the windows in the mornings, your room will be filled with air freshly blown-off from the sea surface. I’ve grown so accustomed to it, it was until I left the city eight years later to come to New York that I realized how much the sea meant to me and how I took it for granted.

It carries my most precious memories. It carries the most precious memories of everyone who lives in the city. It watches people come and go, leaving laughter and footprints behind, then gently, it reaches out its arms, carefully wipes them off from the sand, then keeps them safe and untouched under the sea.

Since Yantai is a small city, there are no tall buildings covering the sky and the air is perfectly clean and fresh. Therefore at night, you can see stars randomly scattered across the ink-color sky. Especially when you are standing on the beach, because its so dark there you can see nothing else but the stars. I used to go to the beach before I go to sleep, when the warmth of the day was still lingering in the sand, just to lie down on the beach and stare at the stars.

“Where are we all going to be?” asked Sarah, “do you guys think we are all going to stay in touch with each other?”

Yes of course, we thought. Of course we are all going to stay in touch. Five years later, ten years later, fifty years later, we are still going to be best friends. No matter what. Nobody saw ourselves only seven years later, being so caught up with our own lives the last time we ever contacted each other was at most six years ago.

We are all in different places now doing different things. We’ve all changed in ways we didn’t expect. But I know we all remember the night. The night we as a class stepped up another staircase of life, the night Sarah’s questions brought the bliss into stern silence.

It was the night of my elementary school graduation. Our class had a barbeque party at the beach right after school. We lighted up a bonfire, sat and ate around it. When everyone else was enjoying the moment, I saw Sarah sitting quietly staring at the cracking woods burning in the fire. Suddenly she spoke.

“Where are we all going to be?” she asked, “do you guys think we are all going to stay in touch with each other?”

There was a pause. A pause of everything. Even the waves paused. Even the wind. Everything.

Then the pause was broken by a jumble of ‘yeahs’ and ‘of-courses’.

“Guys, what about…” Simon suddenly stood up and said, “let’s all say something to the class, as um… as a blessing for everyone! I’ll start!” he cleared his throat, trying to act like a cool adult, the class giggled, “I’ll go back to Korea after this summer. I just want to tell you guys that I’m glad all of you stopped by in my life… this class is the best!”

Simon never says something like that. He was not a “serious guy”. He was always the one who makes the class burst into laughter and then spends the next three days in the principal’s office. Hearing something so sensational from him, some of the girls started sobbing and laughing at the same time uncontrollably.

Later the whole class shared something about how they feel about the class. There were tears and laughter, and the sea was there all along listening to every word we were saying.

I wonder if any of us still remembers what we said.

I don’t. But I know the sea does.

Right before I came to New York, I met with two of my friends from elementary school at the beach – they were the only two people who stayed in the school with me. We took off our shoes and stepped into the refreshingly cool water, facing the sun sinking inch by inch into the horizon. As the wave again and again washed between our knees, we recollected tons of tiny pieces of our memories that have gone obscure a long time ago. As if it was the sea that made us remembered everything, or was it?

We three talked about our elementary-school life, our middle-school life, our high-school life, and our unknown university-lives.

Just like seven years ago, there were laughter and tears… and the sea was there all along listening to every word we were saying.