The Collection

One evening in the summer of 2015, somebody at Shenzhen Toastmasters put a slide up on the projector with a list of names on it.

Twenty members gave. Five guests gave. Between them, RMB 5,700.

Who gave

The slide names them all, in alphabetical order, exactly as written:

Carol, Celia, Cherry, Danielle, Edward, Elly, Eric, Hellen, Jasmin, Joanna, Julia, Kathy, Lilian, Lunine, Michael, Ricki, Seaborn, Share, Strong, Yoki

And then, separately, the five who were not members:

Joanna’s friend, Lilian’s friend, Lyanne (Cherry’s colleague), Frank Lee, Share’s mother

That second list is the part worth pausing on. Somebody brought a friend. Somebody brought their mother. Somebody mentioned it to a colleague and the colleague gave too.

The certificates

Afterwards the president handed out certificates. They read:

Shenzhen Toastmasters Most warm hearted member Presented to Carol Ban / Edward Zeng / Seaborn Lee / Danielle Ouyang

What it was for

We do not know.

The certificate names the occasion on its last line, but the photograph is not sharp enough to read it. The club’s mailing list, which carries almost every other announcement from 2012 to 2015, never mentions a collection. The Douban page never mentions it either.

So what survives is the list of names, the number, and the word the club chose for the photograph: Together.

If you were there, or you know what the money went to, we would like to record it properly. Every name on that slide still reads like a roll call of the club in 2015: most of them turn up again and again in the mailing list, running meetings, evaluating speeches, mentoring the new members.