One weekend last term, my friend, Amy, and I went to a fancy complex in town called Huayue for a meal. The place we decided on was a self-service restaurant in the grand edifice, where the customers can help themselves to whatever dishes they like.

At the doorstep, we were greeted by an elderly waitress, who could be about the same age as my grandma. She ushered us in, leading us to the table we had reserved. Both Amy and I were dressed in the YYHS uniform at the time. Realising we were from the renowned institute, the grandma waitress started to talk in English with us. “Oh, good girls. Let me serve you. What would you like to order?” she chirped enthusiastically in the foreign tongue.

Hearing English spoken off campus, both Amy and I felt a bit odd. We exchanged looks and smiled. Ours not a cosmopolitan city in China, no one would expect to hear English spoken on the street. Although the grandma waitress’s English accent was a bit awkward, we were really impressed.

Since it was a buffet-style restaurant, we went to pick the dishes before we sat down. While we were dining, the grandma came over once in a while and conversed a bit with us. She said that she was not allowed to chat with the customers for long. There are a lot of surveillance cams installed about the premises monitoring the staff.

In one chat, she revealed that she already had a 3-year-old grandson. As a school student decades before, she had dreamed of learning English well, but her parents were indifferent to it. At that time, there were very few foreigners in Shiyan, where the foreign language seemed to be of no use at all. The dream was thus left thwarted. It was one of her biggest regrets.

Towards the end of the meal, the grandma waitress attended us again. She proposed a guessing game with us. “Game time, girls. Please guess my age. If you get it right, I will pay you 6.28 yuan on WeChat. If you don’t, you’ll have to give me 0.628 yuan. I have a job. You are still students.” The digits, 6, 2, and 8, have something to do with her birthday, we were told. Thinking we had nothing much to lose, we started guessing at her age. It was not long, however, before she was asked to go and serve another table in the restaurant.

The meal was over. Amy and I left the buffet without saying goodbye to the grandma waitress, who was engaged at the time.

Back at school, I shared the dining experience with my classmate, Mary. She suspected that, very probably, the waitress was a con artist. She must have intended to take us for a ride.

Amy and I went back to the eatery in Huayue a couple more times after that extraordinary encounter, hoping to meet the grandma waitress once again. She never ever appeared.

In retrospect, the entire dining experience was so surreal. It was like a dream, but the grandma waitress was absolutely a real person we met.

Probably life is like a train journey where you travel on your own. On the way you find people embarking and disembarking. When you reach your destination, you get off and find yourself standing there all alone. By the time, all the fellow passengers you met on the train are gone.