Phone cards / 宁愿只啃面包，也要买电话卡 2001
Not far from my residence, there was a telephone booth. Inserting a special phone card for Asian area，and you could talk with your family or friends there. The phone booth was perfect, just like a small pavilion with a glass door. Standing inside of it you would feel no coldness, no rain and no wind.
In the beginning days of my life in Europe, the most difficult things I faced were loneliness and isolation. I was a stranger here and had difficulties in communicating with the local people in their langue. So buying a phone card and then chatting with my former colleagues or friends in china for minutes had become a big pleasure for me. In that way I felt I could release some loneliness in heart. Since there exists a difference in time, I could only go to the phone booth in midnight time when I was sleepless, accompanied by starlight and sometimes in rain. At that time that phone booth was really a spiritual sustenance to me.
Depression and loneliness were released while new troubles came. 20 guilders to buy a phone card meant about 40 minutes’ talking by phone. I don't know why it was so expensive at that time for a call to Asia. Probably at that time the phone communications between China and Europe relied on leasing the satellite of other country’s. Later it had become much cheaper when using its own satellites, even cheaper than local calls.
Each time to buy a new phone card, I needed to count carefully the money in my wallet before hand. In fact it was an easy job for I did not have much money in it. I did the counting for I was not sure if the left coins were enough for food and a pack of cigarette for the coming days. I remember once I failed to do so, and I had only two loaves of bread and jam for the next two days. To buy a piece of meat thus became impossible.