Re: A month in China
Read this one first if you haven't, or else you wouldn't understand what I'm talking about:
I must get this one out of my system despite being in the throe of my work and two (2) side projects because and simply because of this quote:
In these past month I've had to consider many things about the now and the future. For certain, this country is not a place where I would enjoy living at all. And I also discovered just how much I love Europe.
Man same. I was already missing Dublin to hell within the first month after returning to China, and I am Chinese Chinese with a Hukou and everything.
If you didn't know, I stayed in Dublin for about 2 years. Living in China has always felt a little bit iffy to me, but after this whole debacle it has gradually become borderline unbearable during this ten months after I returned; there's always something that I can feel within the deep corners of my mind that feels fundamentally wrong and inhumane. I tried to recall the days before I left China but alas, I completely forgot how it felt back then.
China absoltuely doesn't feel like home to me at all; neither Canton (where I grew up) nor Shenzhen (where I currently live) do, even if not taking the fact that my childhood home has been seized and demolished by the local government into account (they wanted to build new stuff… very common occurrences in China). Not even the separatist politics doesn't move me as much these days as in before; it's hard to convince yourself to love a place you don't really think you belong. Granted, Tianjin is neither of them, but I'd imagine most of it would be the same deal…
Dublin has been seriously good. I haven't been to a lot of places, but from my perspective, it's the closest place to heaven on this Earth and the only place I'd have a sense of pride and belonging when calling it "my hometown" (despite it technically isn't; but what really counts as a hometown when people can move freely anyway?…). I miss the weather, I miss the Tesco Meal Deal with the chicken tikka masala wrap and the Club Orange, I miss that one late night shop in Dublin 9, I miss its pointy d*ck and the GPO, and out of everything, I seriously, seriously miss the city center, the Temple Bar and the Quays, and the fact that you can always take a bus and go down there and see what it has for you for the day. Maybe if I try I could find ersatz replacements for a lot of things (obviously not for The Library Project because unlicensed publishing is illegal and could easily land you in jail in China…): a record shop here, a book store (which sells boring approved-for-publishing books) there… but it's just not the same.
Settling in a routine is a good thing, because it keeps me motivated to continue my studies. Before this though, I had thoughts about dropping everything and just going home, or staying but changing my degree. Especially after making the mistake of traveling during the National Holiday week, which is basically when everyone in China travels, to the same places, and also the only holiday I will be having in this semester.
It's partially bad timing because in China it's the last holiday of the year.
A good thing about Shenzhen is that a lot of the residents here are not really locals and during the vacation week they either went home or went somewhere else so the city would be kinda empty, but then the one singular best thing about Shenzhen is arguably being able to go across the river and enter Hong Kong, so I'd imagine that doesn't help much.
I never felt like I belong here. This year I walked out of my room and went to the "outside" and took a bus to one of the more famous local parks (in which I've had much more fun watching trees than watching people watching trees…) and saw all the red flags on street lamps and whatnot on the way and I'd ask myself "who the heck am I and why the heck am I here", and the more flags I saw the more intense the question felt.
While here, I find those values challenged by a way of living that is very different and in many ways opposite to what I tried to cultivate, and to the things I find important. If Lisbon made me want to change, Tianjin is telling me that I should keep those changes close to me and to not be changed by the way of others around me.
Last update: 2026.10.15