Yuan Fen
A number of phone exchanges between our house and those of my family in China have spawned a massive review in Chinese language and literature that I haven’t experienced since college.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about this pair of characters - yuan fen - (I’ll post the characters as images later).
In a loose sort of translation, yuan fen, stands for meant-to-be-ness or fateful (without the negative connotation). Like a historian assigning meaning to a piece of pottery that she knows must mean something but struggles with the right words to express it - I searched the web for a number of different explanations for it, duly noting the sources.
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“The Chinese language has a concept called Yuan Fen for which no direct translation exists in English. It is a combination of destiny, effort, and luck.” (http://www.wle.com/resources/art048.html)
“… fateful coincidences (yuan fen), those unplanned occurrences that decisively influenced the eventual shape of their lives.” (http://www.americamagazine.org/gettext.cfm?textID=
3130&articleTypeID=1&issueID=448)
And what websearch is complete these days without consultation of wikipedia.com, which I think perhaps has the most educational definition. I especially like how it explains what yuanfen is not, and where it is correctly used and what the opposite meaning would be. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan-fen)
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Educational purposes aside, I think I like the “fateful coincidences” interpretation the best, even though it might not academically be the most accurate. And though I’m not a huge fan of Fate with a capital F, I think I do believe in yuanfen.
The About the Bride and Groom section briefly explains we were introduced by Jessie King, my then-new classmate at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Though Jessie at some point, probably tried to be Ms. Matchmaker, when I think back , there were a lot of “fateful coincidences” that brought Chris and myself together, and kept us together. I will just list a few for fun.
MD-PhD programs (back in my day… 
were not known for having a large number of women students, probably because of their length. Jessie and I were among the five women who were in our entering class. A number of similarities and needs brought Jessie and I together as friends when otherwise you might not expect: both from Boston, both not currently dating Manhattan boys, and both liked to talk a lot. She needed help assembling IKEA furniture (one piece of which is still unassembled today!); I accidentally left all my utensils in Boston and borrowed hers.
As it happens, Columbia Univ. housing did not have space for Chris when he arrived in New York for graduate school
that same year. Desperate, he turned to his cousin Jessie for a floor to sleep on (none of us had much furniture then) until he could have his own little shoebox apartment in Manhattan. Guess which one of Jessie’s friends had an inflatable mattress to lend him?
Our first meeting - We met because Jessie was in the middle of an experiment and I was relatively free (I happen to have chosen a more computational lab rotation that first summer). So I was dispatched to meet up with Chris and then shepherd him to his cousin’s lab.
We were thrown together a lot during the labor day weekend we spent at Jessie’s parents place in the Berkshires, since Jessie’s college friends showed up, and we happen to be the relative strangers. Apparently he was impressed that I read and subscribed to the New York Times, and I was impressed by how he was so helpful to his aunt and uncle - chopping firewood, doing dishes and generally really helping out. I know, quite mundane attributes. But even today, reading the Times together and doing/arguing over the dishes still keep us together.
My neighborly offer to show him the Strand bookstore in NY, turned into a search for one book for his Japanese class which turned into a long but fun trek through half a dozen book stores in Manhattan, which introduced us to some of our favourite bookstores today.
I can’t say it was love at first sight. In retrospect though, I should have known better because he looks just like Gilbert Blythe (or more precisely, the actor who played Gilbert Blythe in the movie version of Anne of Green Gables, my childhood favourite book). I have yet to find a better double, though he denies the resemblance.
And finally, in retrospect I think it fitting that our first date was to see Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” where mistaken identity of twin brothers in strange ways reunites a family that I guess, were meant to be together.
So here’s to yuanfen. May you have lots of yuanfen too.
~ Fei Li