再见北京！你好东京！Goodbye Beijing, Hello Tokyo!

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 in: News

My last few days were spent mostly lounging about, catching up on all the photos and stories I had accumulated during my recent travels. The people at UIR were gracious enough to let me hang out in their student lounge, or at least not try to kick me out. The student pool was dwindling, and the general boredom that accompanies loneliness began to set in. The time between old students leaving and new students arriving is quiet. Time for reflection. I thought about the nature of meeting new people, how every fresh face is like a clean slate; you immediately begin building a picture of them from the moment you first interact, which means you have a chance to reinvent yourself every time you meet someone, if you were so inclined. This isn’t exactly a practical way to socialize, if you’re constantly changing your personality for different people, when those social circles collide your personae will do the same, but it’s an interesting thought. Kind of reminded me of the frame theory of social interaction; I have my frames, you have yours, we see each other from our respective perspectives, and likewise, our words and actions build a frame around us through which we prefer to be perceived; the construction of identity versus the expression of it. UIR was an interesting social environment; every month new students would arrive for varying lengths of time. A couple weeks, a few months, even years. Anyone who had been there longer than a month was already an old hat, having experienced the changing of the guard. New students would arrive, fresh faces to get to know and become friends with, or to ignore and let them continue the course of their lives without your interference. An endless cycle of meeting, familiarizing, establishing connections, then having those connections stretched across the globe. When no one else is around, you gotta entertain yourself somehow.

I also went slacklining a bit, to test how my foot had been healing. I hadn’t seen some of the must-see sights of Beijing, like the Wangfujing market or the silk market or even the Forbidden City, but my recent travels had left me burnt out from being a tourist, and I was a bit burnt out from China, ready to get back to some of the familiarity of Japan. I immensely enjoyed my time in China, but it still felt like a bit of a suspension of reality, like it was all so unreal, a stolen season. Maybe it’s just that China is a kooky place. I’m not sure I could survive there long term; there’s just too much missing from my life in China, like youtube, facebook, freedom of expression, and shower doors. I was beginning to catch on to some of what was being said around me, but it was still like being in a haze; nothing is perfectly clear, I couldn’t really trust that I understood anything. China holds a lot of surprises, I think that holds true even for the expats who have been there a while.

My last morning I broke “camp” in Madalitso’s room and took my last Chinese shower. Fortunately, the maintenance guys finished replacing the missing tiles that left the interior of the wall exposed; Madalitso had to keep his bathroom door shut the past week because of the rats who came out of the wall looking for food. It sounds like a scene from a horror film.  I had accumulated way too many things here, I thought to myself. I also brought too much. Although I was mostly stationary, I learned a lot of important lessons for when I’m actually on the road. Can’t afford to take bad habits with me, I’ll break my back under all that baggage.

I said my goodbyes to my remaining friends and hauled my luggage out the door. Alan walked me to the bus stop and saw me off; I had opted for the cheapest ride to the airport: public bus to the subway, then transferring onto the airport express. My schedule was relaxed, giving me plenty of time to lug my heavy bags around Beijing. I noted two things on that bus that have strangely stuck with me; neither is especially noteworthy, but combined it was a sort of one-two punch to remind me that Beijing a city that keeps you on your toes. The first was not unusual at all; a mother was walking with her child down the street, and the child stopped at one of the trees planted in the sidewalk, dropped trough and relieved himself in full view of a hundred people. It’s a little more common to see toddlers do this, as they wear pants with no crotch for this exact purpose, but yeah, public urination or defecation isn’t embarrassing at all. I think it was actually my lack of shock at this that struck me more than anything; life in China had conditioned me to shrug this off like it happens everywhere. I wonder what sort of embarrassing behaviors I might have unconsciously picked up during my time here.

My stop wasn’t too far beyond the boy and his tree, and I began to gather my bags together. I stooped down to grab my backpack, and next to my bag, a pair of patent leather high heels lead up to the shapeliest legs I had seen in China. Dan had often complained about the shape of legs here; the lack of definition, the cankles, and there was just something weird about their knees, what the hell were they doing to make their knees look so weird! These knees weren’t weird at all. If anything, these legs were TOO nice. My gaze lifted past the mini skirt and lime green tank top to matching eyeshadow and heavy makeup… and the largest adam’s apple in China. Oh, well I guess that explains the legs at least. The transvestite got off at my stop with two of their friends and literally pranced ahead of me past the subway station. Oh China, I won’t soon forget you.

Beijing airport has ubiquitous cloud-like soaring roof that loses its charm after the fifth time you see it in different cities. Find a new metaphor, architects! If I ever build an airport, it’s going to be a giant cube. As I had anticipated, my luggage was way overweight, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I weren’t limited to one check-in bag up to 20 kilos. For the first time since the weather warmed up, I was glad to have packed my Scott-E-Vest. Although it doesn’t compress much, I was able to stuff an impressive amount of crap into it (close to 10 kilos). In the confusion I was able to avoid having my ridiculously overweight carry-on luggage weighed, and slipped onto the plane without paying any extra fees (phew).

The view from the plane was absolutely breathtaking. I was in the middle seat, but once we broke over the clouds I could see the most amazing cloud formations below us, like nebulae set ablaze by the setting sun. I leaned over the girl in the window seat to get a better view, and noticed she had two different phones running Android. I asked her about them, and as it turned out she worked for Motorola, spoke great English, and was going to visit a friend in Tokyo. We chatted until the plane landed, and she even waited for me at customs and let me use her phone to get ahold of Sosha. Even more surprising, she dug an old RAZR out of her bag and handed it to me “all you need is a SIM card,” she said with a smile.

Sosha and Shinobu were waiting for me at Ikebukuro. Despite their busy schedules, they’ve offered me a place to stay in Tokyo, and even let me house-sit for them during their a trip to the Philippines they had planned. We stayed up chatting about everything, until I realized that I was past the point of exhaustion and succumbed to the darkness.

---