《On The Same Days》橄榄树

41、11th April Friday 2003 Wolfsburg

　　Landen verzanden, zanden verlanden
　　(Lands become deserts, deserts become lands)

　　Came out from the Volkswagen assembly workshop, Tina followed the group of Chinese to their travel bus led by the vise Mayor and some PR managers of VW. VW was the last stop in Germany for the group; they’d head to Holland in the afternoon. Probably had to stay over night somewhere under way, anyway, at latest, tomorrow she would be back home in Amsterdam. Yes, she did feel Amsterdam was also home to her, apart from her village.

　　A week, felt like a millennium. She had no idea how she spent a whole month with another group with similar kind of people two years ago to Africa and Europe.

　　She remembered she did have enjoyed that trip and took loads photos everywhere they went. But this time, it was different. Nothing felt the same, the group felt different, even her own manager Mr. Chen changed. He talked a lot, along the way in the bus, about XY Corp, about some new graduates in the head office, about his son in Canada, about how many countries had he been in the past…

　　In Tina’s memory, Mr. Chen was the busy General Manger who rarely had a minute to talk to her or any other staff in office, meeting groups of different people in his huge office; she was the one who served tea all the time. Whenever he talked to her, it was always about her job performance, how to write more political oriented articles about the company, how to properly dress up for the foreign client meetings.

　　Now he suddenly turned into a chatty old hen, telling stories of how had he been wrongly treated in the Cultural Revolution, how had he survived those dark days after he lost his position as a factory chief because of other’s tricks in the election, he had been too honest, he said. He drew a lesion at the end of the story for Tina, trying to eat up the huge plate of too expensive fried noodles around 4