china 2018
my second home.
14 stops by bus, 6 by subway, then ~2,000 steps to get to work. that was the only element of consistency; every day was different. perfume and body odor blending together to create varying obscure scents on the bus, a different man or lady knocking my earbuds out as they yelled at the driver to hold the door open to get off, fleeting smiles exchanged with school children on their way to school—all to never be seen again. or did i see them again? i was never sure.
why does social exchange on public transportation have to be so awkward? i attempted to make small talk with a young guy similar in age to me, only to be glanced at sideways from his phone before delivering some cold, dismissive responses. i found that i always had better luck with the traveling elderly.
all of my family is in china, some i haven’t even met before. blood-related relatives seemed quite foreign to me: here were people that i’m able to call family, even though i see them once every four years and barely know any by full name. i refered to most of them by their familial relationship (i.e. “bill’s father” or “daniel’s son”) from a young age so that has stuck into the present. on a separate note, i love being able to witness and experience the chemistry my family has; it brings me such a rich sense of pleasure and deep-rooted happiness. conversely, i’ve always felt a little left out given the language and cultural barriers—i never fully understood the jokes being flung across dinner tables or the cultural references made by uncles and aunts as they described their work environment or their philosophical justification for buying two of the same car.
china’s development is something i have witnessed first-hand on a personal degree. when i visited during primary school, i remember being distinctly being scarred by seeing a decapitated chicken carcass on the sidewalk, corpse still twitching. another time i witnessed an older man defecating near a bustling playground under a tree. the innate distinction and illustration of the discourse between the west and the rest was indistinguishable, even though i hardly knew what that meant at the time; all i thought was that the united states was eons ahead of such “barbaric” and “primitive” behavior. in the present, china is on-track to become the top economic and cultural force within a few decades; cultural, technological, and infrastructure development has put the ball of demonstrated cultural prowess in china’s court. subway systems built in five-year timelines, entire bustling city centers erected in a matter of a decade, COVID tracing and control measures that had society back to normal while the united states is losing three thousand lives a day.
as a child, i always looked forward to coming back home to the united states, distancing from the more “primitive” land of china. china—far from perfect in any sense—is a realm that i hold dear to my heart; i look forward to witnessing its progression forward. after all, it is my second home.