A Serious Name

When I was teaching English in Beijing, I befriended one of the students at the school where I taught (I was 22 at the time and my senior students were about 20, so yes, I made many friends).

Wait, no, she befriended me. I had been in the country about a week when my phone rang. She said her name was Pam and she was friends with the English teacher who had the room before me. That teacher said to call the same number next year and we could be friends. Insta-friend. We decided on a place to meet, I asked her what time.
 
Her: "Twellefa."
Me: "Huh?"
Her: "Twellefa."
Me: "What time?"
Her: "Twellefa."
Me: "......."
Her: "TWELL - EH - FA."
Me: "Ohhhhh! Twelve?! 12:00?!"
Her: "Yes! Twellefa!"

Anyway, we really hit it off and I ended up spending 2 weeks for Chinese New Year and Spring Festival in her hometown in the very Northwestern province in China. I have about 700 other really hilarious/embarrassing/amazing stories about that, but now is not the time.

So Pam and I are still friends and we email back and forth all the time. She is married and has an adorable one year old girl. And, amazingly enough, she now lives about 30 minutes away from where we will be part of the time while we're in China, so we will get to see her!

So I'm just now getting to the point of this story. That was a pretty big set-up and believe me, I really had to hold back and not tell you all of those embarrassing/hilarious/amazing stories. So I emailed her recently and told her Luyana's Chinese name and asked her to tell me the meaning of it. Chinese names are NOT given because they sound pretty. Chinese people are not named after other people. They are given names because of their meaning.

I need to interject my own story here...I had previously explained how to pronounce Luyana's name, but apparently I didn't do a very good job. Lu is like "Loo". And then Ya like "yah" and then na which is, well, "Na". Loo-yah-na. And it doesn't sound like the name Anna...not Loo-anna or Loo-yanna. Loo-YAH-na. I hope that makes sense! I should post a video of myself saying it, but I haven't showered yet today so I'm pretty sure you don't want to see that.

So here is my friend Pam's assessment of her name. I decided I'm going to leave it exactly as she typed it to me.

"the name 路炎 Lu yan seems a quite serious name, Lu means the road. yan means serious, heavy or hard. it is a very nice name, contains responsibility, which we Chinese child most lacking of. good name!"

She said it was a good name, but it made me cry. The serious, heavy, or hard road. Yes, this is the road Luyana has already taken in her little life. And she will continue to take this road as others make decisions for her that she cannot make for herself. Decisions that should never have had to be made. I can only hope and pray that she finds peace, joy, and love along this hard road.