Facing Doubt

“When I was twelve I closed my eyes and pictured what it would be like when I am thirty, and this is exactly what I saw: still good friends with the guys I grew up with; a beautiful girlfriend I want to spend my life with; a stable job.” Zach Braff’s character said in the beginning of the movie The Last Kiss (he was JD in Scrubs). If you have to live as an adult, this is how it should to be, right? He paused and couldn’t answer that question, “I just have been thinking about life lately and everything seems pretty planned out…and no more surprises.” As he turns 30, everything begins to seem…so “final”.

As I was watching the movie with 2pac in my room, inside of my head went KABOOM! I freaked out. I don’t want to be like that! 20 years later wondering why didn’t I do something exciting with my life?!

Going into 2007, I know exactly what I have to do, but I have never been more uncertain about everything than at this juncture of my life. 2006 was full of exhilarating moments, some happier than others, but all breathtaking nonetheless. The scholarship, spring break in Miami, summer in Greece, the tormenting MCAT, turning 21, and then grand finale in China. Everything was a swirl and I was swept off of my feet! Coming back from abroad, I thought I was going to get ready for 2007 with so much enthusiasm as I do each year. I am usually really happy around New Year’s but this year I am stricken with anguish. It’s sad to think that Miami, Greece and China were THE adventures of my lifetime, THE risks I’ve taken, THE young and wild things I’ve done. Now they are over, I am back to working on a mapped out life, no more happy-go-lucky days. I know once I start med school, I’d be tied down to it like it owns me. I am feeling what Zach Braff’s character is feeling: everything seems so final. Why am I doing this? Why am I making such a huge commitment? Everybody else is still out there figuring things out, free as a bird, and falling in love with whatever road they are on at the moment. Is med school worth the while? I had a glimpse of what it feels like to live free-spiritedly, now I don’t want to go back to a life of mundane work. How depressing! I am not done with having fun yet!

WAIT A MINUTE! R-e-w-i-n-d! Let’s go through 2006 again. How hard have I worked for those things? Hah! I can’t even count the months. It’s just that all of my efforts paid off in 2006. It took double and triple the number of hours of work to earn those carefree ones. New Year’s resolution? I sure will bury my head in work five days a week but damn right I am going to have a grand time on the weekends! It’s time to do things that my older and wiser self in 5 years would probably say, “Hell, I don’t know if I can do that again!?” Like surviving nightlife of Miami under the influence of benadryl, going to Greece right before MCAT and going to Propaganda within 6 hours of landing in Beijing. I am still determined to go to med school, but who says I can’t work hard and play harder?

I continue have many doubts in my head, about myself, about my future and about the world. But taking it one step at a time, it isn't so bad. What’s the next stop? Wherever my imagination takes me. Happiness is a way of travel, not destination, right? A million travel ideas are already running through my head, starting with New Year’s Eve in the Big Apple! So all you wild ones out there, join me and have a blast in 2007!

p.s. The Last Kiss starring Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson was a good movie with such an awesome soundtrack! (Snow Patrol Chocolate, Coldplay Warning Sign, Cary Brothers Ride, Ray LaMontagne Hold You in My Arms, last but the best, Schuyler Fisk Paperweight :-). For some random reason I am hooked on soft rock music now.

Getting Home

I am finally home! It was definitely not an easy trip home. I had two oversized luggage, each of which were charged 250RMB. Canada is stupid enough that I had to go through both Canadian and U.S. customs and immigration in Toronto. So I had to pick up both luggage and drag them around in the airport. And I couldn’t pay someone to push them for 10RMB like I did in Beijing airport. I am not spoiled, they are just really heavy. I spent three sad hours hugging my computer and sitting on the floor of Toronto airport (I had to plug the computer into the wall). The only warm thing next to me was a cup of coffee. I looked through all my China pictures and talked to people online. I almost turned into a puddle of tears. Here is a little excerpt of what I wrote at the airport:

“I am stuck in the Toronto Airport for another two hours. It’s just stupidity beyond belief to have to go through U.S. customs in Canada. The lines were out of the lobby! They are dumb and just got dumber! I really want to go home, but I am stuck here. This is the pinnacle of the incredible feeling of torn I have welled up inside of me from the last three days. There are so many things waiting for me in the states. However, I am also unbelievably attached to many things in China. The tuck-a-war between the desire to leave and the urge to stay has generated so much heat that I wish I can explode and split into two pieces. I try to think about how I was in August when I was sitting in this exact same airport, waiting for a flight to Beijing. When I landed in Beijing I didn’t know what to expect apart from to look for a person holding an IES sign. I let my mind take flight, fly back to the past four months, fly back to Bei Wai, Urumqi, Kashgar, Dunhuang, Xiahe, Xi’an, Pingyao, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. What a gorgeous ride!”

Thoughts of happier times kept me sane. When I finally landed in Boston, I was surprised to see stars in the sky. I forgot they existed. I sat down in front of Dunkin Donuts and waited for my parents. Two tall blonde girls walked by with popped-collar double-layered Abercrombie polos. They turned around to stand in line at Dunkin. Their asses were huge. BAM! Reality hits. I am BACK in America! You rarely see people that tall AND that bootylicious in China.

Another hit of reality---reverse culture shock. Most people don’t understand why some of their friends and family might get tired hearing their stories abroad. I am the opposite. I find it exhausting to explain everything. The first full day I’ve been back home, there is already friction with my father. We are not talking as of now. He kept asking me “What have you learned in Beijing? If you haven’t learned anything, it’s a waste of time and money!” I just got really annoyed and defensive. The amount I have learned is more than a simple conversation. I am tired and sad and I am not ready to talk about it. I need time to sit down with myself and digest it. I know what he wants to hear: China is a fast developing country, it has so much potential, we should care about the poor people in China, pollution is a problem, you need guanxi in China…blah blah blah. I already gave him those answers when he came to visit in October. He sure was very pleased to find that I have concerns larger than myself and partying. I can’t bring myself to tell him that what I have experienced is more important than those vague concepts. The happiness in finding people who share common interests; the surprise in traveling with strangers who will become my friends; the frustrations in trying to understand others who might not understand me; the difficulties in accepting the fact that I might not see some of those faces ever again. So what, if this experience won’t turn me into a Sun Yat-san or Che Guevara, I know it has been my own rite of passage. Oh well, you walk this life alone.

Last Flower on the Branch

It’s like the last flower on the branch, a sign that a season is coming to an end, good times have passed.

The smell of chuanr lingers on me now. I still have the taste of Tsingdao at the tip of my tongue. I will be on my flight back to Boston soon. I run my fingers through the silk dress, and grip tight my Beijing travel book. I am going to miss you, miss Beijing and miss these, like a child misses the summer time at the beach. The wildness of bars and clubs in Sanlitun, the sweet time near the Houhai lake, the richness of history on the streets, and the abundance of art everywhere, they outweigh the air pollution and the jammed traffic. The trees have, suddenly lost all the leaves. Tell me it’s real, these four months that flew by. Pictures of us are put up around the building, but we won’t walk down this hallway shoulder to shoulder ever again. The badminton rackets rest alone in the corner, waiting for the next group of kids just like us to pick them up. You have packed all the things you bought on multiple shopping sprees in the Silk Market. I have thrown away the maps that used to hang in my room. Remember how we used to run down to get grapefruit late at night! Remember the 16-yr-old boy that sold us bubble tea! Remember the Tube Station Cafe in the back alley where we studied for every exam! Remember how we’d go on our weekend explorations of Beijing still hung over from the night before!

I wish I could stay here a little bit longer. But it’s time to leave now. I have found my cozy niche here. I am reluctant to leave you, leave Beijing and leave these, like I can’t get out of my warm blanket on a frosty winter morning. It’s hard to pick it up and go, especially if you can’t pack all the wonderful things and people into your suitcases. Taking Susan to the airport was the hardest thing. I didn’t cry at the luncheon on Thursday. I didn’t cry when we had our last dinner together on Friday. But when Susan was about to step through customs, she turned around to wave at me. Her glasses were all misty and her face was all wet. Tears just flooded down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop it all through the hour-long bus ride back to the dorm. I don’t even think I cried this much for high school graduation. People were leaving one by one back in the dorm. Hugs and kisses and more tears. We came from afar and met here, now we are going our separate ways. I am not the same person as when I came. Now I have you and some more amazing memories. When will our lives ever intersect again? Even if we do meet, it’s never going to be a casual “hi” and a get-together over chuanr and Tsingdao.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope it's worth all the wait
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And I'll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And for y’all who’s staying for a full year and more, here’s a few lines from Black Eyed Peas’ Fly Away:

You take, me from me
With you, forever but darling I see
The world, is who you belong to not me
So I set you free

Switch it up, Switch it up,
Go hop on that bus
Don't need to blow the horn I'll be tough, Hey!

Drunk Messages

Drunk dialing is scary, drunk IMing is even scarier, especially the ones that asks you, “Where’s my mother $#%& hot wings?” I hate it when I get weird questions and being called all kinds of names by the drunken waste of humanity whose brain was short-circuited by alcohol. You can hang up a drunk call, but you can’t stop drunk IM messages, they just keep popping up like horrible porn ads. The disadvantage of being abroad, especially 12 time zones away in China, is that when it’s bar time over in Btown, it’s work and study time here. Just when I desperately needed to finish a fifteen-page anthropology paper in four hours, I got interrupted by inquiries about spicy wings!! And did I say I hate being called names? One more item added to the things I look forward to doing when I get back to Btown: smack that person’s head. I am waiting for the apology. If I were drunk dialing, I would call 2pac, because her squeaky voice will make my facial laughing muscles go spastic.