An afternoon’s entertainment for fado / 听了一下午的fado（10月2010年，里斯本）
A Portuguese lady named Luisa bought a piece of my painting work this spring. Since that work was at my home in Holland, so I transported it to her through a courier company. And we agreed to meet each other in autumn during my visit to Lisbon.
After I had reached a relatively satisfactory solution for my troubles in Lisbon, I gave her a call, making an appointment for that afternoon in a coffee bar titled as café do imperio nearby the alemanda square. I got there 10 minutes earlier. Since we had never met each other before, so I stood outside the coffee bar looking around. At exactly 3:00, I saw two ladies walking out of the coffee bar, straight up me and greeted me. So I went up and shook hand with Ms. Lusia in the front. But when I reached out my hand ready to shake hands with the other lady, I was surprised to find that the lady was actually my teacher Ms.Helena /Maria Helena neto in my Portuguese school one year before. So surprised as I was that I could not help going up to her for a warm hug. She was really a responsible teacher and good at teaching too. Even after I had finished my studies there, she still encouraged me by e-mail to continue my self-studies.
Invited by Helena and her husband, I went to Helena’s home together with the two ladies. There I found that piece of my work was hanging up in the sitting room. Only until then did I get to know that Lusia was actually Helena’s sister in-law, her husband’s sister. Helena asked Luisa to contact me for the purchasing of my work just because she was afraid that I would probably reduce the price for my work because of the relationship between us… I really did not know how to express my feelings then when I got to know all about this, but could only appreciate the way in dealing with things of the Europeans.
In our free chat later on, we talked about fado. And I leaned that her husband was in fact a fan for folk music. He then took out some CDs of fado singer’s from his music collection, and the following 2 hours were spent in fado melodies together with good Porto wine of Portugal… That afternoon was one of my most happy and pleasant afternoon I’d had during my recent visit to Lisbon.