Just some thoughts
I think one of the weirdest things about China is that it’s the first place I’ve ever been that I will be in a fundamental way unable to share with my family. I mean, that’s basically the purpose of this blog – to be able to let folks back home what I’ve been up to, to show pictures and insights and funny little things I’ve noticed about the life in Beijing, without actually being here – but at the same time it’s just odd to think that this place right here, this little space mapped out in my mind, these frequently-trodden paths and frequently-seen sights will never be more than stories or details lovingly recounted but imperfectly imagined. It’s not something I’ve ever had before, and it’s oddly unsettling. Living away from home for any extended period of time away from my family always involved their presence for at least part of the experience: Providence, RI; Central Square, Cambridge, MA; Wigglesworth, Cabot, and now Adams House at Harvard – these are all places I’ve lived and made my own, all locations whose little details are, for better or for worse, inextricably bound up in the story of my past.
I find myself often wanting to show my family things I see and do here… Watching as a beautiful long-tailed bird hops from curb to street and wanting to show it to my dad, to ask him about the soft blue plumage and black-tipped wings, to hear from him its name and seasonal migratory patterns … and even when it strikes me that he might not know the bird’s name (do Chinese birds even have English names? I suppose…) or habits, the desire to show him something new that we both enjoy is instantly quashed when I realize, suddenly, that I will never be able to show him this bird, that he will probably never see one, at least not here, with me, in China. Or, trying a delicious new flavor of ice cream that my mom would just love, and realizing with a jolt that, unless some Asian grocery store seven thousand miles away on the other side of the globe happens to sell this same kind, I will actually never be able to give it to her.
Subconsciously, I find myself making little lists of things to do with my sister when she comes to visit, something I do all the time in Cambridge because there, obviously, she actually does come to visit me rather frequently, but which remains a simple impossibility here. I can’t drive away the persistent underlying assumption – perfectly valid at school – that it’s been a while since I saw them so it must be true that my family is due for a visit, no matter how many times I realize that obviously isn’t true. I guess that’s part of why I started this blog anyway: because while I have a whole group of great friends here, and (in a sense) a kind of big family of Chinese teachers here, (including about fourteen new “moms,” three “dads,” and two “big sisters,” [which is new because I’ve never had that before, I’ll admit I kind of like it, although obviously nothing could ever compare to my actual sister]), there’s never been a truer case of “never the two shall meet” than this one.
In two weeks, I’ll go back to America. Aside from a handful of students and three teachers who will also be teaching at Harvard in the fall, none of these people will be part of my life back home again, and absolutely none of them will ever have anything to do with my home home on Long Island. Most of my friends will go back to their respective universities (Yale mostly, three to UChicago, and one to Kansas State), and all our teachers will stay here in Beijing. Here in China they’ll stay, living the only life they’ve ever known, which we foreign students have shared with them for nine brief weeks before moving on, guests returning home, this summer course a shared blip in a series of lives whose courses are otherwise about as far removed from each other as it is possible to be.
<< Home