Music: 郭德纲 刘刚 - 刚刚好 Well, even if Wikipedia (and Amnesty) fully functions now, Tumblr is officially occasionally blocked here in Tianjin since…yesterday. I’m logging in from Proxy. This usually happens when I latch onto some new hip blog server not based in the mainland. Last year was some Taiwanese host. The Great Firewall is clearly a sophisticated beast. My theory is it’s able to pick up on any foreign blog server, and then able to debilitate it in two days, allowing occasional access as to frustrate the user enough. To be honest, this is sad, this kind of depresses me.
The past couple of days have been a bit draining. Aside from still not beating the jet lag, being too much of a media junkie is doing some crazy work on my state of sanity. On clearer days, I’m more or less inclined to go “up yours” to foreign journalists and remind them that China’s blue skies are stomped by their Nike sneakers MADE IN CHINA. The great workshop of the world, what do you guess there are no consequences? On sadder, smoggier days, well, let’s just say I’m a bit more contemplative than I’d like. Let’s just say, sometimes this country beats you down in truly ironic, spirit-crushing ways because you simply simply love it too much.
Something has changed this time around. Not on surface. The fanfare and food fare goes on. Buildings are still going up, although construction have been halted, literally, cranes are stuck like bats in the sky. Streets are cleaner and traffic is neater. Change is such a commodity in present day China that it has become mundanity, and that is what makes this country stunning. What this place has accomplished-just socially and culturally in the space of ten years, five years, is just that, staggering. But no other place takes progress in such relative terms. Sometimes I just don’t know.
But we live we roll, not everything lives in the shadow of being governed, only if you strive for something higher. But we live we roll, my hairdresser still works at the same place, still putting in 13 hours a day. He takes a look at my hair and gets mad that I cut it. “What did you do with the long hair I grew out for you?” He says it like it really was him growing out the hair. He remembers exactly what I did with it a year ago.
A total of 7 pairs of hands went into my hair-straightening process, but my hairdresser is total artist, even the way he blows dry my hair is a piece of work. Nobody does it better. When I said: some things have changed about China, but nothing’s really changed. He laughed and said: what do you mean, so much has changed in a year. Look at you, gotta a boy now. That was one of the first thing he said to me when I stepped in the salon: “Beautiful girl, long time no see. You gotta a boyfriend now don’t you” like I have it written on my face that I’m crazy in love. My hairdresser is also the first person in China who said I’d gotten “too skinny.” A miracle.
A lot of things have happened to China in a year, he said, a lot of tragedies. I study my hairdresser’s expressions in the mirror. He looks the same as before, no black-rimmed glasses, but same face. It’s his expressions that have changed, more contemplative, like he’s perpetually scrutinizing something unfathomable in his head. I wanted to tell him almost, gege, the only reason I ‘m getting my hair done is because I wanted to see how you’re doing. If you’d left and gone on to Beijing like you said, I would have found out where your new salon was, and cut my hair there.
In a way, I wish he had gone to Beijing. I almost wished something has changed. I wished his smile wasn’t so sincere when I left, because gege, I really don’t know when the next time I’ll see you will be.
I love this country, you understand. In the plainest, sometimes loudest nationalistic way possible. I love it because my DVD vendor lady sees me after a year and simply says, “you haven’t been here for a while lady!” I love that the vegetable lady knows I’m back from the States. I love this web of community, the sincerity, simplicity of its people.
Yet I leave. Eventually, over and over, I know I leave. You understand, I leave, because I love it too much. We leave, because we love it too much.