A lot time ago, I basically quit the internet and interacting with people over that medium. I was once on Twitter with other anime artists and I think I had fun chatting with other people about anime and artists from other countries. But I eventually quit after meeting some people and becoming disenchanted with forcing a persona over the internet. There was also not a lot that I was interested in discussing with people, that was fandom culture which was pervasive on Twitter. If I expanded my search for peers into discord and 4chan, maybe, just maybe I would have found some better friends. But I had enough and stopped about ten years ago, ultimately erasing myself from online and from friends I knew in high school. Instead, I became very close with my siblings and the few friend I had.
I can express myself however I want over words, but that isn't a guarantee that we will get a long in person. Chances are, my prescence and communication style will frustrate you as my attention fades in an out, I dissociate mid conversation, and continue the conversation with a forced question as I am too shy to ask you to repeat yourself. So maybe the internet is a more ideal medium to communicate?
So why have I returned? In the last two years I got my shit together and moved abroad, learned at least two new languages, and achieved career goals. But I have been struggling with a strong cloud of ennui. It took a summer back home, in my "hometown", Las Vegas, closely conversing with my sisteer and spending time doing errands for family (my dad has lymphoma) that I realized.. I was sick of exploring and wanted to start creating something of my own. I envied my friends who never really traveled but where well-read and strong writers, discussors, and musicians. I think I have to stop trying to be so outward and start focusing in on myself inwardly. This is not to say the outward efforts are for nothing. I enjoy going to concerts on my own, to restaurants on my own, walking the streets of Shanghai on my own. I think it is a necessary part of the "learning how to live alone" venture. But I think I had enough after a few months and two years of doing it. I want to retreat back into my apartment to dedicate myself to the skills that I probably.. possess... but do not cultivate.
I suffer from extreme lack of self-esteem but becoming a teacher kind of opened up my eyes, that people like me, pursuing language studiesm, learning humanities (philosophy), and STEM while also loving arts and music are rare... so I might as well make something out of it here. I think when I was younger, I was praised by teachers for writing. I never suffered from writer's block or whatever, and would instead blow out the word limits. I felt ashamed to neglect this skill, so maybe after two decades I will start writing and drawing again. I love learning, and continue to do so by watching The Great Courses for random classes but things kind of pass through my head, especially if I have no one to discuss them with. So I will try again to start writing again to coalesce these into essays and comparisons to allow me to deep dive.
Some projects that I am interested in:
1/ Get good at Chinese and write a post on how to learn Chinese from Visual Novels. I have two years to get sufficient.
2/ Get good a Physics and write some books and textbooks review.
3/ Cook some more! And draw a little cookbook with it
4/ Watch some movies and think about them or something
5/ Complete a zine. I have one in mind called "Toumei(na) Onna
Whenver I make a new friend I am always bumbling over this anime that inspired me to move abroad. Few people havve heard of it, but it is one of my favorite anime. I think in general, I like anime that feature travelors or nomads that pass from place to placce. Other series that pop up in my mind are Mushishi or Girl's Last Tour. As for video games that Igew up with, I think there is a similar theme., I grew up watching my brothers play games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ico and Nier Replicant, where the main protagonist could race through open fields, slashing shadowy monsters or rusty robots, without encountering much, if any, NPCs. Somehow I really envy these characters that travel from place to place without a root. In fiction, the characters are very calm and collected, and in my eyes it just seems like such a pure way of living, of just existing. The don't concern themselves too much with the things that normal people in real life are worried about, money, work, relationships. Though sometimes I do think work is the main purpose of Ginko in Mushishi and the characters in the video games have some end goal, Kino is uniquely just a travelor. In real life, I feel like travelers, whatever they are, are so sensationalized. They are content creators, at best backpackers and vanlifers, at worst they can be sexual deviants. They escape from working for corporations, but instead fall victim to capitalism as content creaters, whatever those are, or prey on others with their money. I find those "travelors" extremely obnoxious. So it feels like to me that characters like those in Kino's Journey mostly only exist in fiction. But maybe these proverbial, quiet, travelors and nomads exist. They just don't flaunt it online. They simply continue to exist and "be", they take in these experiences and do not feel a great need to share them. Maybe they do exist.
A lot of sources praise Kino no Tabi as being highly philosophical. As someone who came from a philosophy background, I don't really see it as the case. It doesn't make you think too hard, at least it doesn't make me think too hard. I remember showing it to a friend, and after the show he was a bit perplexed, and went.. ".. So is this irony?" I suppose that's it. The show is just a bit ironic. I think if it is philosophical, like anything can be, it is an exploration of moral relativism, which is kind of how it felt for me, naive, and leaving my country for the first time to travel..
I guess a personal struggly that I grapple with, is that there is no real person in real life that I really aspire to be like, and Kino from Kino's Journey is meant to fill in that gap. Sure, she is female, and some people debate over the fact that she is non-binary, I will not digress to that point because she was ultimately conceived of by an old, heterosexual Japanese man. In episode INSERT HERE her backstory was revealed, where she comes from the City of Adults. In such a city Kino was a nice girl who liked singing, but she observed how when her fellow peers reached a certain age, they would have to undergo a surgical procedure that turns them into adults. Then the travelor Kino enteres the city and disrupts the social order, getting killed in the process... Kino, the girl was next, but then she fled!
I like to imagine how there were parallels to my life. And these are rooted in notions of culture and coming-of-age ceremonies. I watched a Great Course about these adulthood ceremonies, how a lot of them are brutal, sometimes involving sex and genital mutilation, and how that renders the person as an "adult." In American society, the professor stated that we don't have the exact ceremony anymore. Sure, we have these milestones such as drinking age, driving age, and weddings, but nothing to actually signify that we are adults. In my household, we are Asian-American, we are kind of expected to stay forever until we get married. I was not going to put up with that. Due to modern society, the lines between child and adult are very much blurred. But I knew if I stayed home, I would never become an adult. There were an onslaught of other obligations, like caring for aging grandparents. There was an event where I was trying to call 911 to get help for my dying grandmother, and I was chased by my crazy aunt (she is against medical interventions and just wanted my grandmother to die!) in the streets. As the ambulance passed by me she socked me in the cheek and I re-entered the house bleeding. The ambulance people said I can file a police report, but I didn't. The whole scene felt very absurb, but I was filled with adrenaline:
"This is how Kino felt when she was about to be stabbed with a knife too!" I thought.
Did I become an adult by virtue of leaving and moving abroad? Hardly. I find that I am stuck in a position of liminality between child and adult. And this may persist throughout the rest of my life as I skip other major milestones in American society, these include marriage, buying a house, etc. In a way, it felt like Kino escaped from those obligations. At the end of every episode there is always a villager who yells at her "Hey why don't you stay here?" We can get married!" . This vaguely reminds me of when the driver of the bus we took in Vietnam last year invited my family over to be treated for dinner, during which their grandmother began bombarding me, trying to set me up with her son who supposedly also likes learning Japanese and living in Japan. Instead, my mom defended me and we just left. So am I like Kino, who takes no notice of that and just zooms off on her motorbike, Hermes. And Hermes makes some remark about the city.
In a way, it calms me down as Kino gives an example of a character, however fictional, living outside of the bounds of society. She is just a traveler! And somehow people in the show and novel respect that. Whenever she arrives at a city she receives a lot of accollades for just arriving. They give her a personal tour, show off the city's cultural artifects, and sometimes provide her dinner and a place to stay. Gifts. I soon discovered that those parts of the sotyr is fictional, and I was not prepared for the deep feeling of alienation that I experienced among moving abroad. "It's a blessing and a curse!" A friend of mine would say, commenting on my status as ethnically ambiguous-- I do not look like a foreigner, yet I am. I suppose I do not stand out as a traveler until I open my mouth and speak. That is something that is not depicted in anime with travelers, the vast amounts of language and accents that the traveler encounters, and stresses and frustrations associated with learning and communicating through foggy mediums. But it is what it is.
I go back home to the states, and sometimes I don't feel like I quite belong better. There are scenes that are predominantly white and in those cases, I stand out. So the status of liminality persists. I imagine the scene from Mushishi where Ginko from Mushishi is stuck behind his eyelids, watching the stream of light underneath his light flowing accross, it is a like a river. But within that river are members of society - Chinese, American, whatever -- and they proceed forward on in life-- hitting the usual milestones.. [like buying a house]?. I am removed from such a society, it feels. A bit. I do have a job. But at my workplace I hardly interact with my coworkers. Instead they just leave me alone, where I can eat lunch at my own little table, situated between the Chinese and Singaporeans works and the foreign expats. Today my coworker commented on how I look younger each year, more like a student. I am unsure if it supposed to be a compliment or crticism, maybe it is kind of racist.. I have no idea how to dress like an "adult" and I gues also Asian and immature like the students, in some ways.
Somehow, I am complacent with this. Even back in the states I feel like I have only experiences the outeshell of American life, not knowing or being allowed into areas that are iconically "American" in my mind. I don't know. There where things I never went to, like prom, raves or house parties. But at the same time I guess I will be American and always American. Unlike Kino, who has none of these heritages or ethnicities, she is just Kino and most of the time they don't even hassle about her gender.
Lately, I have been accused of being avoidant. This is probably due to my upbringing, how I desperately devised a plan to leave the states. But I always lacked and feared notions of "community." I cherish friends, but communities! I reject all- be it ethnic, religions, schools or online. There are a lot of ingrained fears to this. One is that I fear that others may hate me. Some people don't like me. The other fear is that I become bored, or fall out of touch with the other person. I struggle to connect with most people, so I think it is okay to just "be" and not force myself to belong somewhere that I ultimately will never belong. The second fear is that they are draining - all the voices, and opinions of people who ultimately do not give a damn about you. I need the energy for myself! And finally, I have the fear that communities will trap me and keep me from pursuing my dream, which is to move to many countries. That is, if the community is comfortable. Wait, I have one more fear. It is the assimilating force of communities. I am highly impressionable. But also too nice, someone can really force me to act a certain way and admit that I like certain things that I do not. So I think I am better off going solo, but sometimes I see things that my friends like and they remind me of them. That is the most I can limit "community" to.
Initially, like the standard weeb, my plan was to move to Japan. Instead I ended up in the land where people who want to go to Japan but cannot go, that is China. But as I learn more about myself I think I am open to any country. Maybe even Vietnam, to reconnect with my heritage.
Sometimes I think I will fail to become like Kino. I think I am more like Hermes, which is her motorbike. I am a bit silly and aireheaded, and Hermes did this thing where he would forget certain words, scrambling them up with other words. I misuse and forget words all the time. And Hermes is a yapper! Like me. Kino is more of a listerner, which I suck at. But she also doesn't offer advice or emotional support, so I suppose we are the same in that way.
There is a thing about travelors in anime though, and them just being perpetually young. Kino is 15. I am in my 30s. Or maybe that is just a thing in anime, in general. She does have a boss from which she learned how to use her revolver from. I think characters like Boss are cool and miss the spotlight too. I always have that though, it is okay if I do not amount to anything this year, as I can be old and cool too.
In a way, I imagine my life as a kind of Faustian bargain. I gave up a lot, probably the chance of having a consistent sense of community for.. money? There is a lot of things I do not have to worry about, such as paying for my housing or what not. But sometimes it feels like I did really sell my soul. I don't know what is is like to want normal things that normal people want. So in a way, I have sold my soul. Kino is different, she doesn't really get paid anything! She just is, and goes where she wants.
I am sitting in my room as I write this, reflecting on my time in Shanghai and the rising action and fall. There was the novelty, culture shock or living abroad. I had friends, and then we kind of drifted apart.. or they got new friends so it is mostly me having to reach out. Sometimes I can go a day or two without corresponding with anyone on WeChat. I think that is okay. I had periods where I felt pretty distraught, after breaking up with my boyfriend. But maybe I can reach the stage of peace, solitude and comfort. because I know if I move to a new country, be it Japan, Vietnam or somewhere crazy like Kazahkstan! Then there is a chance that I can end up utterly alone, more alone than I am in Shanghai, where I have supportive coworkers. my job is busy, but they kind of just leave me be and respect me. What if I was power harrassed like before.
The more I think about it, I cannot help but wonder why I am one of the only ones and not more women, who have the passport privilege and ability to move, do it. I suppose normal people have roots and commitments. I had a very special case that birthed the opportunity -- there is a sudden convergence of factors, the internet proliferating such news about such a life path, demographic transition allowing me to graduate with several degrees, and the sheer moral luck of me being born into a certain conuntry. I think there is also a desire to run, run, as far away from my mom as I can.
Lately I have been thinking about that book, called the Runaway Bunny wherein the rabbit runs and morphs into different objects, like clouds, trees, etc. It is a really trippy book, and occassionally my siblings would joke about it. But maybe it was extremely formative.. as I have become the runaway bunny, and evertime my mom finds me she never fails to treat me like a child, her child. And in my mind, I am forever her child, unable to escape her as she chases me from country to country.
Also, I think of Millenium Actress and the them of just chasing, and how chasing makes one fall in love with themself. There is also the theme of living and acting out different lives. I think I always liked the idea of that, sometimes I would fantasize how my life would be if I had different jobs or chose different paths in life. I think moving to different countries is a way to kind of manifest that, it is like a forced upon reincarnation cycle again and again..
When I went back home, I saw the traits of my family members and it gave me more insight on my problems. I think I just have very intensive avoidant issues. Sometimes when instead of s*icidal ideations, I think this feeling transformed it into wanting to move and flee to a new place again and again. Like if I become dissastisfied myself, I get very intensive feelings of wanting to destroy myself, thus self sabotaging, to start over again and again. This is kind of very Yukio Mishima and edgey, if I think of that, to will my death and to bring it about..
When I think about how quiet my phone and lack of messaging has gotten, I try to console myself by imagining Kino. She doesn't depend on devices or receive messages from anymore. Or any traveler in the past. It was truly lonely, but in that, there is a greater peace.
Lately I have been thinking about how I feared rules and communities that functioned around that. I thought back long ago, when I was young and in high school, the rules that were based around dieting and eating. I was running in track and field and a lot of the other girls were anorexic, only eating an apple a day. Of course, I developed an eating disorder as well. I regreat it entirely now, the time I spent obsessing over what I was eating could have been spent reading and doing better things. Since then I distanced myself from women, because I find it distressing if they do not eat certain things now. I cannot blame women because it certainly isn't just women that diet, I know that well from spending time with gay men with equally poor body image issues. But I think the largest component of why it is difficult for me to get along with people is just due to eating habits and a fear of "catching" an eating disorder again. I didn't choose my body, and I think I owe it to my sister, who is a living example of someone who is naturally skinny and can eat whatever she wants. I thinka bout how Haruki Murakami compared his thick legs to the slender ones of his wife, mine will never be slender. But from spending time with my sister, who never restricted myself, I learned that I can kind of eat whatever I want to eat.
That was quite a tangent, but what I meant to say was that I fear rule based societies, as I am easily impressionable. I think my whole life is going to revolve around escaping from one rule based society to another, to be immediately disenchanted and uncomfortable. And this will happen again and again. This is how I feel right now in Shanghai. Maybe Eastern Asia is not a good place for me long term. But I think most of it is derived from my workplace, which combines the two more rule based curriculums, Singaporean and British, to my utter despair. And having friends that are very much controled by routine and rules, I cannot help that I must perform in tandem to their rules as well. That stresses me out, and makes me want to flee again.
I think I am avoidant because of that.
Lately I have been having very intense fantasies about moving to Kazakhstan. I guess my goal has always been Japan, but I already learned Japanese to a decent level and traveled there, like twice. But I have never been to Kazakhstan. Actually, I hardly knew anything about it until my ex and his friends joked about it being "Soviet Japan."
The dreams were triggered by a conversation that I had with saddleblasters about wanting to climb a mountain. Maybe I want to do that. Before I moved to Shanghai, I would follow a bunch of WeChats where they took groups of people to hike or go swimming. Back in the states, hiking is a pretty big thing in Vegas. I went camping with my friends once and enjoyed it. Oh, maybe if I accepted the second date with the Bumble guy who liked backpacking, I would have been happy..
Now I just am kind of a recluse, hiding away in my apartment. But I looked up pictures of Asatana, and it looks pretty, like a scene out of Brokeback Mountain. But I was reading a bit more, and it is pretty dangerous to hike alone, because it can get below freezing at night. You can get lost. I recalled when I actually did get lost in Japan, climbing down Takao-san. The sun set and I panicked, it was completely dark, and I raced down the the mountain and almost tumbled and lost my phone! But that was Japan.. what if that happened to me in Kazakhstan. I would be frozen overnight!
I also read that in the winter, they burn coal. I think I have grown too comfortable with life in Shanghai and that would be intersting to experience..
These dreams are motivated by me wrapping up a Kierkegaard lecture, where the professor was talking about Hiroshima Mon Amour, about how the woman is a knight of resignation or something. She is committed to this memory of her first love who is like a German soldier who died. Sometimes Kierkegaard had a great impression on me, especially his use of Hegel's categories, like the lower immediacy, mediation, and higher immediacy, and aesthete and whatever. I really think I am an aesthete, but not like Don Juan or my polyamourous brother. I just cannot commit to one set hobby or place. I jsut scramble around to different interests, it can drive me and others a bit insane. But sometimes I want to make that "leap of faith" and have something weird and paradoxical to commit to. I guess I can do that to learning Chinese and Japanese but I am kind of bored by them.. another result of being an aesthete..
So Kazakhstan has this air of mystery, but it is also connected to my ex who loved Anki too and studying Russian. I used to study languages for so long, alone with Anki, and was excited to meet someone else who understood me. Maybe by learning Russian and Kazakh I can feel close to him, without actually being close to him. He is an awful person, but I long for that, having something to dedicate my life to and commit to. It also feels weird and paradoxical to shift my target away from Japan to Kazakhstan, almost thrilling.
Sometimes when I am sad, these ideations about Kazahkstan are kind of like the suicidal ideations I had when I was back in the States and depressed. I really have nobody here, other than a few friends, so I must go, kind of feeling. I feel like it is better to to be ina relatively remote country (again, another assumtpion) than one sardined with people and commie blocks but without community. I don't think I will every have community, but I think I can at least have a change in setting, and restart my reincarnation cycle. I would once again be too busy learning the languages, learning how to survive and live again, to worry about loneliness.
I think these dreams are also triggered from that girl named Crete in Wind Up Bird Chronicles. I have been reading this trilogy for MONTHS now in Jpaanese, and the progression is slow, but that one woman always talked about wanting to travel to Crete. I guess there are characters who are a bit like me, though they exist only in fiction.
Today I looked up pictures of Almaty and looked a a video for the alphabet of Kazakh. I might lock in... maybe living there is goals.
Upon further reserach, Kazakh learning resources are scarce, but the video made the language sound so charming. Today I looked up Russian resources, which there is an abundance of. Kazahk doesn't even have a basic alphabet Anki deck! I would have to download the video on youtube and strip the audio files apart to use it.
Today I browsed around and there seems to more Russian resources. It would be a pity to learn Russian, as I see it as the colonizer's language, but there are so much more resources than Kazakh. Learning Kazakh... the equivalence in Chinese would be trying to learn Shanghainese. Somehow I am a bit jaded by Japanese and Chinese, and I think my overall langauge profile would seem a bit more "cool" if I add Russian, though! I already study too many Asian languages, Russian seems like a nice one to add to the mix because it is a devil's language. The other European languages that I dabbled in, such as Spanish and German, are too simplistic and bore me somewhat.
Somehow there is a strong desire to learn a language *right*. I feel like I wasn't able to do that with Japanese nor Chinese as I waited too long to receive comprehensible input. But I feel like I can introduce it a lot earlier with Russian. And not put it off for too long. I want to lock in the next one and half years to get decent at Russian so when I arrive in Kazakhstan, I am brimming with the excitement of a child to interact with other people. I feel like my Chinese is finally at that point, where I can kind of understand surrounding conversations and communicate, but it feels so lame and too late. I lived here for two years, but have been learning the langauge for a decade (dropping and picking it up, an onslaught of leaving and forgetting). I wish I was this good when I arrived.
Maybe there is no "there is too late." Maybe it is all in my head. I should keep langauge learning as a solitary hobby and just continue to progress day by day like I am doing. Anki card by Anki card. Podcast by podcast. Book by book. And it will be okay. I don't have to compare myself to others, but it's hard not to do that when I am thrusted into a hypercompetitive world. Maybe that is why I want to get far away from Shanghai, where I feel like the "yali hen da" among the people and my workplace.
Growing up as a second generation Asian-American is strange. There is a lot of diversity involved in it. It feels if there is a big, close-knit community, you will generally preserve your mother language. Examples of these include Korean-Americans, when I was in college I regularly tutored at a Korean Lutheran Church. I feel like Chinese communities may sometimes preserve their tongue, but my closest friends are Chinese-American and none of them speak Mandarin, instead using Cantonese, Tchechow, etc. I feel like because we are so disapora'd, I grew up with very little to no Vietnamese friends so there is little motivation for me to preserve and learn Vietnamese. This would have been different if I grew up in Westminster's Little Saigon where the rest of my other cousins were raised, along the warm coasts of California.
This summer I went back home to visit my family. My dad had lymphoma, and a lot of my friends were egging me on to converse about him and his life, which I knew little of. In spite of that, I was rather reluctant to be too direct with him, as I did not want to make it seem like his life on earth was limited. It seemed like he could win the battle against cancer, so I just spoke orgnicallly with relating topics.
story to buddhism
story about my envy towards functional white families, where the reserves of knowledge is more "useful"
relevations about the value of learning how to cook and speak the language
story of my dad and the vietnamese james bond that he likes
story of how I am learning other asian languages, and not my own
story of how my parents came to america
is culture a social construct and not real?
Now I am darting through the possibilities of different anki decks. There are decks for Vietnamese. One has all of the Glossika sentenes, and another a set of 7000 words from memrise. It is northern accent, but perhaps meaningful to investigate. I am in a very strange stage where my Chinese and Japanese higher level vocabulary is larger, so I can understand complex conversation topics about economics, stocks, etc if I follow a transcript, whereas my Vietnamese remains colloquial. If I open up a Vietnamese podcast, I cannot understand it! Chinese I can! How humiliating..
But also next year I am excited for a Korean deck as well.
I know Japanese. It is a bit like knowing Latin, I practically never use it other than to read a few pages a day and when overhearing it in the wild. My main reason and motivation was that I consumed a lot of Japanese media, anime music manga, and thought that I can make these more productive if I learned that language. It took so long and most of my life! But now no one is impressed. "What is Saku" I proceed to blabber about how it means that blooming of a flower. My friend says he is not interested in that, he just wanted to know what they sold at the restaurant.
Learning languages, or learning things in themselves is a testament to getting really good at something but not having anything to show for it or any praise of interest given about it... I think that is nice. Sometimes I occassionally get praise, but a lot of it is derived instrinsically, because I know learning languages... if I didn't do it everyday with my daily Anki, would be impossible, so the final product, be it just some listening comprehension and reading ability, is enough to be a testament to my dedication and hard work.
Learning Japanese was tricky but was pretty linear as most of the media I consumed was in Japanese. In the end, I progressed to an intermediate-advanced level and can generally read and listen to Japanese and understand it. Chinese though... was a different story. I picked up Chinese from taking some classes in college. I initially transfered my knowledge of Kanji over. Back then writing Kanji was still easy because I used some production cards. I also transfered my Vietnamese tones. I was using an Anki deck called Spoonfed Chinese, which, though monotonous, taught me how to construct basic sentences (It is like Vietnamese anyways).
Regardless, it has been almost a decade and my Chinese has stagnated. I dropped off progress in the Anki deck and deleted it (I do not remember why, perhaps I started work and got too busy). Or I was disatisfied with my progress, or it was too much to balance with Japanese immersion. I really struggled. But two years ago I moved to Shanghai. And my language skills sucked, I forgot even the simplest of phrases. Coworkers would rely on me when I knew jack shit! I'm a laowai too! I felt burnt out from learning Japanese to a high level and from moving and possessed little motivation to pick up on Chinese again. But then i dated my ex who loved Anki, and somehow I began using it again, determined to do the old reviews for Cinese from a MegaMandarin deck. It just had a bunch of vocab cards, and I did not even order it i+1 as I should have. It was just random words in random difficulties, but I persisted...
And now I reached the point, after two years in Shanghai, my Chinese is still shit but I can force myself to parse together sentences if I wanted to. I can read pretty well if I had nothing else to depend on, just very slowly. But I still see I have a dislike towards reading WeChat articles and mometns for fun, but notice that when I am doomscrolling I am able to pick up more and more. I think what makes things really hard for me to learn and practice my listening comprehension is taht I am so used to tuning out the world around me. Be it at my work place, with so many students screaming, or out in public. but if I try at this point, I think I can get the general gist or "feel" of a conversation as some words present themselves. I think my low listening ability makes it frustrating for people I try to converse with in Chinese. Still, I will continue to force myself to use my Chinese..
But recently I am ready to move onto stage 2 of my language learning process: Visual Novels!
Originally this should have been my place
Stage 1: Anki cram 10k words (immerse with comprehensible podcats) and maybe some website to learn grammar
Stage 2: Massive Input, visual novels, harder podcasts while maintining Anki
Stage 3: Delete Anki and just read and consume with a dictionary
Stage 4: Presumably keep on going but practice output and use langauge-language dictionaries
Today is a great day, I was just letting my Spotify roll, but it began playing a podcast. I glanced over and there were words, being highlighted character by character, time stamps, and I can skip forward or backward 15 minutes. This is a 30 minute advanced podcast, the main guy was just interviewing people about stuff. But the seller were the transcripts.
I always say that if people had subtitles below them when they speak, life would be much easier. I guess it would help with English as I am hard of hearing. But with Chinese, I would want them in Chinese, as I know the hanzi. In the past there were websites like viki that had a "Learning mode" and you can watch shows with dual subtitles. I tried using the Netflex dull subtitle thing too. It was just too fast. And I cannot concentrate simulataneously on the plot and subtitles.
So when I saw the subtitles, I was shocked. ANd they "seemed" pretty accurate. I have a pretty superficial understanding of the language but as I skimmed the transcript it seemed to make sense, this particular episode was about a CHinese woman who was led on by a man from a host club. Many podcasts interviewed people with disabilities, such as blindness. Some had their voice distorted, people who cheated or who were intersexed. It can be a about a Japanese woman who strangled her own childrren but then sought asylum in China and was the midwife for many Chinese women. I find the stories interesting, and was a bit moved to tears when I first began listening to them. I lived in Shanghai for two years, but this was probably a turning point where I felt like I can first understanding Chinese people in their own language.
My progress is definitely not linear, and sometimes I feel largely disappointed in my progress. The biggest shame is that I do not have any close native Chinese friends. I do have friends of a friends though. I frequent a rollar skating bar every other week, to visit my friend. He is gay, and it is funny to me because it seems like there are just a lot of gay friends and men orbiting them. But alas, they are acquaintances and not my friends. But I should not be too hard on myself, it is extremely difficult for me to make friends. When I see my friends "maintain" friendships through the customs of exchanging text messages, in both English and Chinese, I feel utterly exhausted. I am pretty bad about doing that in English. I did try exchanging some messages in Chinese before, but that felt extremely ridiculous to me. I think it is because I am Asian, trying to learn Chinese, I end up feeling that I am mentally handicapped and have some severe learning disability, so I don't make a lot of effort to continue using Chinese. [Maybe if I learn Russian, then the Kazakhs will find me cool, and I can finally get my "Nihongo Jouzu!"] Is a thought I have from time to time. I wouldn't say that I don't get compliments for my progress, I certainly do, and I accept them. I think the people that compliment me the most though are other huaiyi, because I think they understand how frustrating it is to learn how to read and write Chinese. They have the opposite of my issue, though, which is I can read characters and NOT understand.
But with podcasts listening is coming along.. well not really.. on the phone and in real time real life I still blank out. Some podcasts I can kind of understand the gist, but I listened to one today that I felt completely lost. Sure, it was about him being a crime scene investigator and there were new vocabulary, but I didn't think it was anything outside of my level of vocabulary... yet I could not understand more than one-third of it, it felt. Or one-fourth. That felt very frustrating. And resultingly, I feel disappointed in my progress.
I will check in later to make any updates. It is really hard to quantify and qualify my level of Chinese..
I started my career teaching at a Title I school in North Las Vegas. Yes, that meant most of my students were Hispanic or black or Native American. The culture is so different than where I work now, which is internationally. I had students seeking me out during lunch to "hang out with me." They would talk about everything, ranging from Spinoza, YMO, video games and anime, how jailmates hide shivs in their asses, how they have a crush on their cousin, it was all utterly insane.
Today we had a training during our contact time on how to use an AED. But I was having flashbacks about a training I had in the states that was called 'Stop the Bleeding!" We were about to bitch and complain, thinking it was fancy language about stopping the turnover of teachers, but instead it was a training about school shootings. They had dummies and we working in groups to simulate what we would do if someone... maybe a student or a teacher... was taken out by a gun, shot in the leg, and we would have to stuff it with gauze. If we didn't have gauze? We would have to stuff the hole with absolutely anything! To stop the bleed.
I think something that I honestly gave up with is any expectation of having a lifelong partner or relationship, ever since I decided to move abroad. It isn't something that I have denied that would happen, I think that I am decently symmetrical looking and a woman, but is it something that I practically want or would exert enormous effort to will into existence? Not really.
I hate to say it, but a lot of it is the economic argument. I would say that if I do decide to enter into a relationship, it would require a career suicide or compromise. And also a compromise of my time and space. So far, I have adjusted enormously to having a tight routine that consists of Anki, reading, cooking, drawing, crocheting, watching a movie and playing my visual novel. I guess I can imagine a man who would seamlessly blend into my schedule, but he isn't going to just manifest himself into my place. So it is what it is.
In a world that has become increasinly atomized, is this necessarily a bad thing? Not really, I feel like unlike most women I have my assortments of male friends and pretty solid friendships that can span space and time. I do very well prefer the solitude. Not having a lot of incoming text messages keeps me in touch with the old times, I often wonder how it was like before the need for instantaneous communication, and love the freedom of just existing without it meaning anything to anyone else.
Recently I have been watching some media to reinforce that this way of life isn't necessarily a bad thing! I think an anime that comes to mind is Wakakozake, the character is pretty much just a foodie. I am not much of a foodie but I have recently been loving how to cook. The thing about getting food is it would require me to go out. And most places that I want to go to are downtown, so if I go out, I am not coming back home until the evening, which can be a bit disruptive of my schedule. I much prefer to get food at night. It think this is uniquely Las Vegas thing, it being a 24/7 city, you can get iHop or Blueberry Hills or ramen deep into the night, as late as 2 am, but that is simply not true in most cities. Instead, after going out to a concert, I end up in restaurant that I would read in my head half CHinese and Half Japanese a "Gege no Shinya Shokudou" (I think originally it is just Gege de Shenye Shitang). It is supposed to be like a cheap Japanese izakaya, I guess, so I always sit there and get my unagidon or fried udon. This place is open generally until 2 am. I suppose other places are open too, but what place would have workers saying "Arigatou gozaimasu!" in a Chinese accent as you enter and leave?
When I went back to the states in 2025, I was persistent on acctually enjoying it. This was motivated by conversations I heard and the current political climate. Everyone hates America! And when i went back last-last year I made that evident. I was a bit of an asshole, complaining about how Shanghai has this, Shanghai has that, and Vegas doesn't. This of course, made my family sad and upset. I think people may hold similar sentiments when they leave Shanghai and visit their hometonw during Chinese New Year -- I hear there is nothing to do, and the parents always nag you. For example, my mom nags me about Buddhism and about my short hair, it is always too short!
Frankly, the things that I loved the most about the states seem to be the Japanese shit. I was talking with saddleblasters about things that are uniquely only found in the States, but not in Shanghai, I suppose, as suboptimalist's blog mentioned, Vegas has arcardes with indie video games. Well, did he know that they also had a Japanese restaurant with Japanese maids! That was one of my favorite parts. I expected American teenagers to be the maids, but they were Japanese and casted the moe moe kyun magic spell on my pink ramen. After my dad got emitted from the hospital, I did not hesitate to take my family to "experience Japanese culture" as well.
Vegas has these weird enclaves that are hypperalistic, I suppose I discoved a block that was like the little Italian enclave with my sister. It is almost desserted, but you can sit in the cafe while she regains her eyesight after an eye dilation to check up on her optical migraines, listening to Italians around you. But I think Shanghai has this too, in the expat packed areas, like Funkadeli.
Americans love matcha, cybertrucks and Labubus, it seems.
I think this to myself I see women buying eight matchas to go, and girls in cafes with a protected Labubu itai-bag.
Story about the aware coffee
Sotry about the meaning of aware, and the Tale of Genji
Story about Sen no rikyuu
story of how matcha went from being ceremonial, wabisabi thing to like an instagram trend
Recently, I began cooking. I guess my motivation was to kind of reclaim something as a part of doing something just for myself. When I was in my shortlived relationship, I felt a brimming bit of excitement, and wanted to cook for my ex. Instead he kind of shrugged it off. I don't need a boyfriend to cook for! I need to learn how to cook for just myself, or my friends and family.
I first started my cooking adventures last summer. I was inspired by my friend (I feel like I already wrote this)
In ym kitchen in my apartment, I am seeking to spend more time indoors and at home this year, instead of traversing the huge city. I have discovered that I really like my kitchen. I have been in other apartments where the kitchen is basically the walkway into the apartment, and that's it. My kitchen is pretty nice and clean. I have a good routine of listening to a podcast in Chinese or a Great Course while cooking.
I guess I initally never liked cooking, and when I lived with my parents and family I was usually the one that was delegated to wash dishes. I love washing dishes, but I guess there is a carthatic component of it similar to standing in the shower. I always imagined Utada's music video in Hikari where she is just singing in front of a running sink.
Our mom always, always cooked for us. In away, she dominated the kitchen. A part of why I really value having my own kitchen is I really do not have to fight for a place and time to cook like I did when I visisted back home. My mom is notorious for hoarding food, and we had two refridgerators and freezers, which were packed to the brim with food that may be years of age. In my kitchen, it is small and I know everything that is in it. I can eat everything and cook just for myself. I know where all the ingredients are.
It is embarrassing to say that my mom cooked for me way into adulthood. I would pack lunches which were her food. When my naturally curious coworkers asked about it, I had to fess up and said I did not know anything about the food, alas my mom made it for me! When I first moved into my apartment in Shanghai, I barely knew how to cook, just chopping vegetables, stir-frying them, or boiling them and adding mushroom boullion to them. I sufficed on Lawson sushi, it is like a weird sushi catered to the local tastes, with corn and pork floss sometimes. I found it yummy. It took me awhile to learn that I shouldn't be walking to the wet market, but instead ordering groceries here.
(Segment about groceries comparison)
I had a coworker in the states who would also cook vegan chocolate chip cookies for us. It was delicious. But I always wondered how he had enough energy to do this. It seems to me that Americans, occassionally, can be stricken by this manic energy to do something, almost obsessively, to perfection. My coworker was one of those people, and for him, it was his work... teaching science to underserved students and providing them with freshly baked cookies.
How can someone havee the time and energy for this? As I heal in Shanghai, the fog of depression that always clouded my perception is starting to fade. It feels like a Maslow's Hierchey of Needs thing. If my lower pleasures are satisfied, then I want to try to cook now. I also want to bake, and I guess, if I have extras I can always give it away to my coworkers just like my coworker did for us in the States.
I also love sharing cooking tips and trying out recipes from my friends. It seems like recipes and making foods are the only thing that I am remotely receptive too. Movie and TV show suggestions, or book suggestions.. not as much. But recipes? Hell yes!
I love being exposed to the challenge of a new recipe. Today is a Tuesday but I was very excited to try 罗汉斋, but I kind of failed. The tofu blew up in the pan (I didn't know how to fry it and ate all of the fried tofu). I always have a habit of wanting to add too many vegetables, as I love them, so the wok was filled to the brim. There is always something new that I slightly screw up on, be it adding the napa cabbage a bit too early, and having to painstakingly pick it out. Or be it failing at frying (I did not add enough oil and it stuck to the pan). Every day I spend cooking is a learning experience, much like learning a new song in guitar, it is extremely jarring going through the steps, prepping the ingredients and sauces, and putting it together. But it feels so fun and tactile cutting the ingredients, or being exposed to new ingredients. The one too were dried shiitake mushrooms, apparently I soaked them and they do have a unique texture after. The mushroom water is used for the broth. There is also cornstarch taht is used to thicken the sauce a bit. What else.. I found napa cabbage (or the baby ones) very easy to cut. And it was also interesting soaking the vermicilli noodles, these ones that I got are made of sweet potatoes!
It is highly stimulating and I just feel like I completely missed out on a dimension of life. When I lay in bed hungry, I now imagine and romanticize cooking the other dishes that I love, such as falafels or brownies after being recommended reels of them on instagram. Can I do it? We will see!
I guess the weird thing is that I cook mostly only vegetarian dishes. I have no idea how to prepare and cook meat. This can be compounded by the fact that I mostly follow vegan and vegetarian instagram accounts. I think it is fine, as vegetarian dishes are generally more healthy. If I want meat, I can always get it when eating out.
I was also really wanting to try baking and making cookies. I think of Americans who really loved cooking, there would be discussions during lunch about making sourdough. During lunch I was interrogated by a coworker on why I wasn't really interested in traveling. Nowadays, instead of traveling, I am just thinking about cooking and the feeling of success [chengjiugan] that I would feel after it. I looked up the statistic and only 20% of people in the world have rode in a plane before, so in a way, I am already traveling. I am thinking of memories of sleeping over at my Mormon's friends house when I was little, and she would make bagels.. how nice would that be.. to make bagels..
As it the day moves onto another day, other memories are flooding back. I spent the evening browsing WWOOFing again. I completely forgot about this possible life path, but yeah, before I moved abroad I used to fantasize about working on these little farms. I was reading reviews of them and some do seem sketchy, but maybe if I hae all of these breaks this may be something that is worth trying out for some risky fun and to fulfill one of my dreams. I investigated the difference between bread flour (which I bough 5 kg of..) and all purpose flour. It seems like bread flour has more protein! As I scrolled through instagram some of the vegan and vegetarian content creaters were casually commenting on the modern day obsession with protein. I guess that is strange. I suppose I was always so used to just eating carbs - rice, noodles, and potatotes. During lunch I ordered some more supplies to bake with and briefly compartmentatized making pretzels, bagels, and flatbread with the bread flour in my mind. I looked through the taobao page and saw some people making the bread shaped, I will have to look into how to do that...
My diet is a mix of Vietnamese taste. For most of my life, my mom cooked for me and I always preferred having rice and Vietnamese dishes to school lunch rather than sandwhiches. That swas something that I commentated on when visiting last summer. My mom would pack peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches for us... I HATED them. I hated how the jelly would mush through the bread. Since it was just in a paper bag, the sanwhich would be utterly obliterated. Without a doubt, I would throw them away. But I was somewhat evil back then, and caught my sister for throwing away her luncha dn snitched on her to my mom, for which was was duly punished for. Why did my mom pack sandwhiches for us? I never really noticed it, but did she not want us to be singled out and bullied for having weird foods in our lunch? But wait, I did have Vietnamese food at times, especially the deep fried egg rolls (cha gio). Those stunk. And I loved them. So maybe my memory shouldn't be clouded by that "Asian-American growing up in the States ashamed of their heritage" dialogue. My mom did make a Vietnamese dish for a school potluck or project once, that was with the (starts with a k) root. I guess that didn't really have an appeal to AMericans due to their carbs limit.
My family's obsession with carbs has led them to all have diabetes. Both of my parents and my grandmother, and many of my aunts. But they cannot stop eating white rice, they love it! In spite of them being vegetarian, they still ate pretty badly, by Western standards. A lot of the food were sweet and glutinous, or very salty. But there were a lot of greens. But I suppose the greens do not override the carbs and sugar. I still am obsessed with vegetables. I cannot imagine how some people ahte them, let alone go their whole lives without eating them. I always try to have my daily intake of vegetables. Maybe that is why I love cooking or just eating vegetarian. When I go out, it seems like you pay a lot for food, but not for a lot of vegetables. At home I can just boil a whole head of pak choi or something and that will just be so yummy. My school's canteen is fortunate enough to have vegetarian options, since we havve a lot of students and teachers who are of Muslim or Hindu background and just a lot of Western vegetarians. And also a decent salad bar. I suppose something I never got into until I moved to Shanghai were salads. I hated them in the States, because I felt like, without rice, they were just lacking and would not be filling. But I suppose I have been brainwashed to understand that I don't need rice to have sustaination, but rather, I just needed a "protein" or "healthy fat" so for the past two years in Shanghai I would order these overpriced salads but they had something that was filling, like salmon or avocado in it. I now go ham at my school canteen, they always provided cherry tomatoes, and various greens like red cabbage, arugala, and carrots.
I suppose something that makes my taste distinctly American is my routine of eating oatmeal in the morning. From an Asian-American perspective, it tastes like cardboard. But it was something that I picked up on eating in high school, kind of like daily jogging. Recently I switched to steel cut oats. I was about to eat this sweet matcha and read bean granola I recently got as a treat, but then my mind raced at the thought of waking up without my steel cut oats, so I prepared them. I find that if I do not eat them on a weekend morning, then I may be voracious in appetite and that may be distracting when I go through all my daily tasks and hobbies. There are some other gross American things I haven't tried. My sister commented on being taking to Cracker Barrel and trying "grits" before. I never tried grits, I guess. But maybe they are like oatmeal but savory. I also never grew up with cornbread, but loved the sweet ones. (I guess a thing is I absolutely love donuts and cookies, but those are scarce in Shanghai! Japan and Korea has so many donuts but they are nonexistent in Shanghai..) One time, my sister for a school potluck or project (the theme was "American foods" so I always think back on it when my friends and coworkers comment on the lack of culture in American food. When I did it I just brough buttered corn). and she was assigned cornbread. SHe made it from a box bought from Smith's and went by the proportions. But I remembered my mom and me trying it an just commentating on how it waw so bland. You failed." ANd she thought she did... but when she brought it to school her classmate, who is like a cornbread conneursseur (her mom makes cornbread from scratch), tried it, and said that this is the best cornbread she ever had, even bettter than her mom's. She went on to say how the texture was perfect, and then begged my sister for her recipe, from which she just commented that it was from a box. The rest of her classmates eventually tried it and they loved it! They were asking her for the recipe and everything. And they were saying it paired so well with the chilli that someone else brought. This is a clear and distinct memory that we would always lose it over, between me and my sister. It was just a great defining moment between what separated our tastes as Asian Americans and American culture. We had no inkling of how it would ahve been like growing up with this bland,m disgusting cornbread, let alone eating it with chilli... but they did. Why didn't it have sugar?
I feel like if that is something taht characterized my American education and made it somewhat fun, it was just the excess in these potlucks at the end of the year where the teacher would just ask us to bring in food and put up a movie. But it was exciting trying foods from different cultures, that is how I grew to love tamales.. so yummy. At the last school I worked at they also had "chilli cooking competitions" amoung the teachers. It was so strange. They had all the staff and students come to the cafeteria and taste it and vote for their favorite. It all tasted the same for me. But it was fascinating how everyone got really into it, I remember there being at least a dozen options to try. When I reminensce back to my time teaching in the states, I guess it was just as alien working in a school there as it is in an international school in Shanghai.
I think food is something that is universally shared. I have a difficult time fathoming growing up with American cuisines, such as chilli.. but in away I did. I don't have that difficult of a time fathoming growing up with Chinese food. I suppose a common question I got about moving to Shanghai was whether I experience culture shock with the food. No, not really. I grew up eating some pretty strange stuff. Pho had tripe in it, the lining of a cow's stomach. I remmeber loving eating water snails. We would stick a toothpick in them and penetrate their flesh. I remember they had a little shield to separte them from the outside world. And there is hot vit lon. (Funny enough, this is one of the only Vietnamese loan words that I know exit in Japanese, as I remember a character in Shirobako despising hobiron). Hot vit lon is like an unhatched duck or chicken. I remmeber being so scared of looking at the bird that I... smashed it up into bits with my spoon before eating it... as if putting a body through a meat grinder makes it more palatable. My favorite part underneath was the egg sac, which become rubbery and hard and mostly tasteless. But I enjoyed eating rubbery and hard things like that. I think that is why my front tooth is a bit chipped. I loved gnawing on bones, and I meant eating everything off of it, including the cartilage. I have a habit, from my parents, of eating the entire shrimp. I mean the entire shrimp, shell, head and all. My coworkers would look at me in shock as I do it. No, it is not a common Chinese thing. It is a "me" thing.
Why do I get a sense of achievement out of cooking? I guess aside from being a part of a cultural tradition it has enabled me access into a world of new experiences. My friend says that the things that are worth doing are those that take a long time and effort to make, and I gues sthat is why I am coming to enjoy crochetting and very slow actions. Cooking takes a long time, but at least during then I am actively trying to learn something new and I am listening to an audiobook at the same time. I am practicing a skill. I am building up an experience - how to cut and prepare certain foods and vegetables, etc. And the other day I remarked on how I don't easily pick up on music or movie recommendations, but I readily do it for recipes. My friend commented that it is probably because it is a more stimulating activity. And there is a creative product in the end. Maybe that is why I like making dishes that other people made, it makes me susceptible to sharing an experience, sharing advice and understanding. A movie and music is mostly a hit or miss based on subjective taste, but no experience nor end product tobe made.
The other week, I made brownies and wanted to bring in the leftovers for my coworkers. I did have one coworker excited to try them. But when I went back to the classroom where I left the tray, I heard that the other teachers had just given it away to the students. I had mixed feelings. When I was thinking that morning, there were certain people that I wanted to offer the browniers too, such as the lab technicians and the ayi. But they just gave it away to students that I sometimes had no feeling of gratitude towards. I guess I like cooking and baking as a communal act of sharing. I want to see other's reactions and feedbacks and want to gift it to people I care most about. But it made me think about how I eat food from the canteen, but do not get to see the chef and thank him. But I do see the chef! Our school actually does a good job of recognizing their efforst, as they asked support staff members to be awarded for 10 years of service with awards at a certain assembly. I begain thinking about wanting to do things like farming, so I know where my food comes from. I think I like that how cooking and feeding someone is tangible, local thing. But just giving it away to randoms or selling it, that felt so commodifying.
Culture does not exist. This is an argument from one of my friends, and I kind of understood it as a social construct argument. Is it good or bad that it exists? I guess now that I am in a foreign country, culture is inexticably something that I will fail to escape. "If I wasn't Buddhist I would have divorced your dad long ago," said my mom to me, while driving me around. She liked having me in the shotgun so she can lecture me about Buddhism.
"Why? Are you not allowed to divorce in Buddhism?" I asked.
"No, but I accepted that this is my karma and I did not go against it."
I wonder what my karma is. I was probably depressed and mentally ill for most of my life. When I finally moved abroad, I struggled to do basic tasks, like taking public transporation, etc, I didn't know how to ride a bike. In many ways, I am lucky. I don't know why, but I chose to study the two subjects I loved the most, physics and philosophy, though I am not good at them.
When I went back to the states, I briefly visited my aged aunts and uncles back in Little Saigon, Westminster city. They were watching a youtube video of the woman building a house, obviously staged. As I left, one of my aunts gave me a crocheted bunny, insisting that I give it to my little sister. Later, I would pick up crochet from my sister and now I do it every night as a part of my daily routine before I sleep. At this point in Shanghai, I feel like I have grown distant from my friends - at the beginning we were excited to meet each other, but now all of my group chats are silent. If I am lucky, I can go a whole day or two without texting or corresponding with anyone on WeChat. Somehow I feel like my aunts and uncles, back in Westminster.
"They're all retired. We're the last ones to retire," said my mom, in response to me asking her who retired as I help box away files in my dad's dental office.
"But it's sad. They just spend there time building things and doing small hobbies. Some people do not have a spiritual life."
She concluded.
I don't know why, but ever since she said that, it struck me that a lot of the things I did were meaningless. I suppose I always had that perspective, from say, reading Camus and how absurd it was. But my mode of living, as well as my aunts and uncles, was something different, completely void of spirituality.
I do sense that I get a lot of disapproval for moving abroad. One time was when my older sister called on me to check in on my dad, who was undergoing chemotherapy. I was yawning during the call, and she seemed to sneer on the other end, asking if I was tired from partying? Partying? I never partied. Well. My friend was about to invite me to a house party, but I got uninvited becuase they wanted to keep it exclusive to their friends. No, I woke up early to take dad to the hospital!
Am I like my aged, retired aunts and uncles? Just picking up on random hobbies -- crochetting, projects, etc -- to pass by time.
It certainly feels like that. It feels like I reached the end of my life expectancy in Shanghai, but I still have two more years. So I will wither away my time, learning guitar, learning Chinese, crochetting, reading...
And once those two years are over, I will disappear, soon to be reborn in another city..
Since I am now in Shanghai, I keep the sutra book next to my pillow. Sometimes I don't read it, and just fall asleep next to it, but occassionally I reread it. These sutras I chanted innumerable times, but they were complete nonsensical. But now for the first time, below them are the Chinese text and the English translation. They are illuminated with meaning. I suppose if I am the last one in my family, then I would also be the last one to recite the heart sutra as we go
I took the first international flight of my life, alone, to Shanghai. I was about to miss the connecting flight because my first flight to LAX was delayed by 30 minutes and then it was parked at the gate for an additional 30 minutes. Afterwards, I booked it and darted through LAX, and arrived just in time, 10 minutes before the departure of might flight, drenched in sweat. They didn't expect me to make it. My luggage didn't.
Often on planes, I sit next to very old Chinese or Taiwanese women who are probably some of the most supportive people who are overjoywed to learn about me moving to China. Sometimes they talk about their daughters, who are also itnernational teachers, but now married to some French person. Or they will talk about adventures they had when they were younger, traveling on their own in China without the internet or phone service. Somehow, for the first time, I felt pretty cool. But I am not really that type of person.
When I landed, I hand no luggage but thankfully my work provided housing and that place came with it completely pre-furnished with a bed, couch, TV, and kitchen. But for a long time, I just did not know how to live on my own, and felt very lonely, calling my family back home every weekend. But by my third year, I finally came the realization this is the life that I have always fought for, I just didn't know what to make of this freedom. For the first time, I am kind of functioning as an adult, on the weekends I explore recipes, learn how to cook and soon, bake. For the first time, I am turning on the TV to watch movies by myself.
It is strange to me how a lot of women don't really rock the short pixie hair cut style that I have here. Instead, I think mostly old, middle-aged women, the ayi, have it. I didn't know how to order groceries to get them delivered back then, so I would make a 30 minute trek to a local wet market every weekend to get groceries. No other person did, other than the old ayi and grannies and grandpa, and walking among them, with my short hair, I felt like I blending in completely with them. I find it a lot different from Vietnamese women, who can sometimes have long hair, at my local temple growing up with leave their hair long. But then I realized that is probably due to the volume of hair of Vietnamese women in general.. we are so hairy. So they have the luxury of leaving it long. By the time of my last two years in Shanghai, I realized that I never really would desire to communicate with people and am already getting a lot of satisfaction from just listening to podcasts and playing my Chinese visual novels. One day I will be able to read poetry or books.. one day. But I rarely get a lot of validation or encouragement towards using Chinese with locals it's always a bit discouraging. But I think there is a lot of merit in using Chinese, maybe later on when I work in another country where there isn't a Chinese majority and a single Chinese student, I can help them feel a bit less alone. It is funny here because I find myself using my basic Korean with a random Korean student at might school. Her face seemed to light up. Damn, was I studying the wrong language the whole time?
Sometime, along the way, by the second year, I felt like the taxi service, didi, implemented something into their interface to inform drivers that they have a foreign passenger. Before, I used to get all types of drivers attempting questions with me. Now, none of them try to communicate. None of them at all. If I enjoy Shanghai, or any other country that I live it, it is probably a blessing to be left completely alone. Sometimes I forget that this experience is entirely exceptional to me, I just happen to be of a certain face and appearance for it to be possible. The quietness of taxi rides contrast enourmously to the rides in the states, where the taxi drivers would talk about their day, and recommend movies with the actress Jane Fonda in it. I wonder, if I was Chinese, can I have conversations about favorite movies with taxi drivers here? Somehow it feels a bit more atomizing. There are a lot of ayis locked in their own stalls, people just ignore them most of the time, unlike the clearners in the states that I loudly thank and greet. And the atomization pervades even more with the QR codes, where I always fumble and make mistakes in my order by clumsily clicking on the wrong button. Whenever I return to the states my friends always chide me for not cleaning after myself at the restaurant. So I think if I stay here too long, I may become more solitary and cold towards others..
I feel like by the end of my secocond year, I would start to finally understand the language. I don't have a lot of childhood memories, but among them was flipping through a book, thinking that it was utterly insane that adults can read, and thinking when it came to that point, and I was older... I would just feign it. I can just "pretend" to read. Well, it has felt like that up until then, I can nod and feign like I comprehend what the other person is saying, but I really don't know. I think I always found that extremely frustrating, how my listening comprehension was nonexistent. It made me lower than people who can speak English and understand it, albeit with a slight accent.
I feel like I can finally overcome that. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts - gushi FM has transcriptions of interviews by people. For the first time, it felt like I can kind of fianlly understand Chinese people, as I follow along with the transcript. Among these stories is a woman who visits Japan and attends a host club and gets pulled into a situationship, an intersexed person who was raised as a woman, people who try to spread the tuberculosis initiative in China, a Japanese woman who supposedly strangled her own children, but was taken into China to be a midwife for hundreds of Chinese kids-- the podcast narrative discussed how they wanted to look for her. For the first time, the gentle voices had comprehension.
But I am approaching the end of my life... Yet I know Chinese will always come in use. No matter where I work I would probably work with Chinese students. I find that if my ability is oversaturated, it really isn't a surprise if I can speak a bit. But the lonely Korean or Russian student does appreciate it if I know a word or two in their language.
I am just thinking of the anime Mushishi and the episode where they sniff the flower, and it turns them wrinkly, but they are pretty happy. I had a hard time grasping the episode as a child. Why are they so happy? It is as if they reach the end of their life, and only have a day to live. I remember looking at comments on Youtube and everyone was commenting it was like a drug flower. But somehow I think of one of my coping mechanisms, is avoidance, perhaps taht is why I cannot imagine staying too long in one country... and another one is fantasizing about finally, just finally, overcoming my depression, setbacks, and becoming a good person.. but at that point I would probably be very old and wrinkly.
It is like I am simultaneously young and old. It is kind of like when I was a child, thinking I would never learn how to read, but suddenly, I do. It is such a simple task that took a Heruculean amount of effort. Sometimes it is a bit disappointing. but maybe I am trying to avoid my inevitable end by making that endless pursuit to learn new languages.
As I said, when I first arrived in Shanghai I had to learn how to shop on my own and cook. The first two years were probably haphazard endeavers. I was walking tot the wetmarket or ordering from an overpriced grocery service. Nowadays, I order groceries weekly from an RT market. I find it strange how I order from this supermarket every week, yet I have never set foot in the store.
When I arrived back home in Vegas, I was eager to practice cooking. It was part of my "reclaiming" of my life narrative. And doing things more for myself. The first time I wanted to cook was when visiting my ex-boyfriend. But I think he just wanted to eat korean bbq. I was thinking that it also was related to Maslow's Hierchey of Needs, I was always confused about how people have the time to cook abnd bake. But I suppose for the vast majority of my life my mom cooked for me, and I was not ready to battle over for space in the kitchen and refridgerator., I never really felt a need to learn how to cook, but after eating out at various overpriced places and restaurants, I felt a kind of emptiness that I would like to engage less and less in. My friend said things that are of meaning require time and effort, and I suppose that is like any other skill, such as cooking or crochetting! What I learned to enjoy the most about. I also learned that I knew nothing about vegetables, words like scallion, shallots, garlic cloves, green onions were extremely foreign to me. Concepts such as aromatics with green onions first and the cold water over noodles were completely foreign to me. There is also the transfering of skillset from mother to child. My mom was overjoyed that I was finally learning how to cook, how I was finally "Just like her." And Vietnamese dishes are very yummy I guess. This was galvanized by how my sister purchased a cookbook in Seattle called "Vietnamese Vegetarian dishes."
I think I was inspired by part by my friend who hosted dinner parties for us. I guess this is unforeseen, I never had friends do this and my mom would not do this for anyone beyond their Buddhist temple community or family. But it is nice seeing him set up a little menu, put up a sign naming referencing the restaraunt in American psycho, and then cooking up all the dishes. A lot of people would claim that people who attended his college institutions as elitist, but I was suprrised he really is on a whole another level of Maslow's Hierchey's of needs, where he can devote and give something back to the community. I think this fits into the narrative of just taking care fo friends and abolishing the family -- We don't have to cook for just the family anymore (somethign that I may never have) but also just our friends and ourselves.
I find doing the math stressful, making the right portions. Even witht he support of ChatGPT, I still make too much. And then I end up eyeballing things. I think I have always been bad at interacting wtih units, even with a physics background, and I believe cooking and baking can help bridge the gap between my lack of real world application and knowledge. Baking I have not attempted yet, but I heard it is a lot of chemistry.
Back to the detachment from RT market, I would like to talk about how in Vegas, I really enjoyed going into supermarkets. I guess I can enjoy it in China too. But there was a recipe that I was attempting, called banh khoc, but it required vegetarian shrimp. I had to stop by many different supermarkets in Vegas to look for it. I searched in the new H mart (according to my friend, Vegas is now officially a "real city" because we opened on), one of the Vietnamese Markets, one of the Chinese 88 Ranch markets, but none of them had it! My mom took me on one last trip to a Vietnamese market, and there it was, in its overpriced glory. I found that experience a bit peculiar, because obtaining vegan shrimp is a nonissue in China, but it was so hard to find it, we had to physically drive from store to store and search down the ailes.
There is a huge contrast between the glamore,. diversity in foods at H mart, but it still did not have the vegan shrimp. The Vietnamese markets were obviously a lot less fresh. I learned that some plants like basil and mint where sold in pots still, ready to be snipped at H mart, whereas the Vietnamese market they were kind of there just rotting. My brother always accused my mother of feeding us rotten food, but I thought, if she was sourching it from the cheaper market then the issue is not her, but rather the market.
The city itself is not bad. It can be quite utopian in a sense. But I am so far away from the city center and am now preferring to just stay within the confines of my apratment door.
Lately my friend group has been in shambles, but something inside of me clicked and realize that I had limited time to spend with them. Instead of bemoaning how my friend group has fallen apart, I can do some last few hangouts with them, but I have to make them meaningful.
So. I want to cook for my friends and family
I am trying to unpack the dark thoughts that are taking control of me. Recently, I began cooking and baking as a hobby. I shared this with some of my coworkers. I think the conversations were mostly nice, one coworker remembered that I was studying things like languages and learning guitar and I got to talk about that. But I guess it disturbed me how one coworker, but I guess many of them do, comment on how I lost a lot of weight, and how it is strange that I am cooking. The weight loss thing is not really intentional, I never really weigh myself on the scale anymore. It is probably because I cut out coffee and rice from my diet almost completely. And I switched to a mostly vegetarian diet. When I arrived home, I was pondering on whether I should resume jogging to maintain this weight, as I made a lot of taiyaki last night. But another intrusive thought began arising from how the first coworker was commenting on how if I want to learn Chinese, I need a Chinese boyfriend. I think I get this comment every now and then, I guess there is some truth in it. But it made me utterly depressed, as if my self worth is contingent on having a boyfriend, but that boyfriend, if I were to have one, has to be useful!
I think this is the best time and age for someone to live a solitary and lonely life in peace, because otherwise I think I would have received a lot more pressure to date and marry. If I do receive pressure it is usually in very playful forms like this, but I somehow still find it distressing. When It hink about the pressure to find someone nice, nice-looking, with a good career, similar interests, I just feel utterly overwhelmed, and fantasize instead of settling down with someone extremely boring and simplistic when I am old instead.
Somehow this made me feel very difficult and unloved, and I slogged through the rest of my anki cards for the next hour or so in a horrible mood. Then I decided to argue with my friend over the value of neocities, how the like and follow system makes any only system inherently bad. I think what fouled my taste was his itnernet friend that visited, who was horrible, but I think I was bitter that he still kind of admired him for "having a good website." All in spite of him being an utterly despicable human being. I felt also that my other friend was critically judged for poor use of the internet. I was feeling frustrated from the arbitrary rules of usage that entailed using the internet and wanted to argue that it was utterly "all the same" to me. Even though neocities did not have a working algorithm like instagram or wechat for influencers, people who are seeking a dedicated following will find a way with the like and following system. They will still find a way to be obnoxious and performative to gather and manipulate a following, it felt to me. I was being a bit gloomy, talkinga bout how I was motivated to write and work on hobbies again, but felt disgusted towards sharing anything online with anyone. I said I just wanted to write without having the pressure of posting. maybe I can just make a local website and download it onto a usb. Maybe we can exchange letters. Maybe I can move to a faraway land. These are all pressures that came from neocities, on these website, everyone is making tremendous effort to portray themselves as unique and special. This somehow causes great distress towards me, as I feel a pressure to be erudite, unique and special as well. I wonder if there is a way to escape from that yet still try to create. I can work on writing still. I can curate my interests into a cute website still. It can be completely mine and on a desktop just for me to look at. It can just be mine.
And then I can be safe in my special place..
There was. I was spending a lot more time on my own, and little memories like this would crop up. Now that I am in China, why do I dream of leaving and going elsewhere? This has been my dream for so long.
There is always an assumption that people come here to just make money. I guess I did have a curiousity in China, but it wasn't like a vested interest. I have a lot of Chinese-American friends, who can speak no Chinese, but our culture and background as Asian American is pretty similar. We have similar cuisines and foods and traditions. I learned Japanese, which uses Kanji, and my mother tongue is Vietnamese, which has tones, so learning Chinese was just another natural progression in my curiousity of things.
Over a decade ago, I took two introduction to Chinese classes in college. This was becauswe I was a part of the Honor's College and we were required to take four classes of language. I took two Japanese and two Chinese. I would say, they are helpful in terms of getting tones down. But since then, I always struggled with being consistent with my Chinese studies. Hence why I always grapple with feeling of deep failure, similar to with physics and philosophy, as I did with Chinese. It seemed to be in a infinite pattern of forgetting and remembering.
But I did listen to Chinese music. My older brother like some Chinese bands, like Chinese Football and anotehr one was Forgotten Autumn. When I went to Shanghai, he told me I can see Forgotten Autumn, which I did! I suppose that was something special we shared. We may have been otaku, but we definitely liked music from other Asian music scenes, so I was excited to set out and see more of the music. Now I am a bit jaded, but I remmebr I used to lsiten to this random band I found on Youtube, called Carrchy, 卡奇社, and I would spend a lot of time learning how to read the lyrics of that song. This was so long ago, and I think it comes to show how my Chinese has stagnated. My favorite song of all was 世界末日的某个角落 , for which I spent a lot of time learning the lyrics. When I went to a karaoke place I was upset that I couldn't do it justice when singing it:
世界末日的某個角落
陽光穿透 空氣稀薄
世界末日我觸手可得
鷹的翅膀飛得太高也會疲憊
世界末日它只屬於我
即使絕望 也很快樂
世界末日的某個角落
在雲海沉沒犧牲也無所謂
快將我毀滅
我願意墜落入這人世間
在天空盤旋 乘著風
我要的一切 全幻滅
When listening to song, my favorite Hong Kong artist, Little Thunder's art would manifest in my head. I also liked little indie Cantonese music, and funny enough, a band called Lil'Ashes used Little Thunder's art for their album covers. This song was 小塵埃 Lil' Ashes - 卜卜卜.
Because 卡奇社 collaborated with this Taiwanese indie musician called waa waa I loved this album by her... that was very nappy.
I am trying to understand more, but there were Chinese donghua that I was interested in. I used to be a fujoshi, so China also had there output of BL and GL. I would follow a tumblr called yaoi-blcd that translated this popular webcomic called 19 days and a GL called Their Story into english. The GL was so cute, and I did get some copies of it. I also followed several Chinese artists on Twitter, and bought some comics, among those was Zao Dao.
There was also a book that I was really enamoured in, and that was of course, the Three Body Problem. It does come up several times among my students, and I am glad I read the first book. But I want to read the whole triology in Chinese one day, that has always been my dream.
Moving to China was like a logical progression of my interest. But I feel horrible about how I kind of always portrayed it as a stepping stone. Or I guess, teaching in the States was also a stepping stone. Everything is a stepping stone, to others, I guess. When I mention that I want to leave and go to Japan, I think I see people's eyes automatically darken. I think it is hard to take me seriously, since I am so uncommitted to this country. But it is weird, but I am, I sunk so many hours into learning Chinese. But I think it kind of like having the fligns I did with my exes, it was short lived, and never intended for anything long, and probably on it own means little, but I think I want to be able to leave and carry something from the experience with me for the rest of my life. And for me, I guess that would be knowing Chinese and being able to read Chinese books. That is the dream, being able to read my Japanese books in Japanese, and Chinese books in Chinese. But it is embarrassing, I didn't have to live in Japan to achieve a certain level of competence in Japanese, but Chinese was such a zig zag progress. When I first arrived, I had little motivation to continue, but it took ym friends and ex to convince me to resume Anki, try to interact with other people, and learn how to read. It took a lot of feedback from the environment. I wish it was something that manifested on my own.
When my friend's visiting friend was talking about language learning and how you "have to really want it!" I have to think about that claim. My sister really wanted to pass her classes and college, but undiagnosed generalized anxiety and ADHD kept her behind. For me, I never really felt that I really wanted to something. I guess I really wanted to move to China, though. It is weird, but it was just another pasttime that I picked up to be more productive in my free time--Anki. And eventually learning a language falls together. There is initial curiousity and interest. But do I REALLY want it? I kind of want it. But if you took it away from me and made me monolingual again, I think I would be okay. I guess that think for me is that I have very low or little expectations. I am always afraid of failing or disappointing myself. So as I slowly learn Chinese on my own, I wonder how far I can go..
Now that I am here, I wonder what became of me, why did I become so disenchanted. The first reason would have to be that I am working and it was a shock adjusting to living on my own.
I wonder how it would be like, to have a boyfriend?
It is a funny thing to fantasize about, and I think I am able to do it without feeling that sad about it. When I broke up with my last ex, I was in tears, but I think I had a clear understanding of what was going on. "My friend said to hook up with friends, and it is fun. But I cannot do with without falling in love! Is it all chemicals?" To which, he humourously replied referencing a Mickey Mouse meme that goes "DO you trust the chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals."
Desire is a trap, because if I had a boyfriend, it would set back my career. I am proud of being a complete self-made women, I went through the whole philosophy and physics program without a man to do my homework with. I moved abroad on my own. But what if that wasn't the case?
Would I have to adjust my diet to refrain even more from cheese when I am alone in apartment, because it causes huge flatuence and shits. My sister used to call me the Stinky Cheese Man, and remarked that although she was lonely after I left, she was glad that it didn't stink as much. I noticed I was lactose intolerant when moving to China, and try to refrain from Cheese, but still love it, so if I have it I try to hold it in until i get home... but what if there was a man there.
Dear future boyfriend, would you help me out with all the things I am incompetent and anxious about. I am always bad at managing money. I started a brokerage account, but hardly use it because I hate figuring out how to transfer money. I guess it feels risky to me. Also can you help me use the gift cards that I have just lying around? How about my helping me use my health insurance to cover some visitations to the doctor and stuff..
If I get sick in the hospital, will you be there for me, just as my mom did with my father, when he had cancer? But lately, as I accompanied my dad when he had lymphoma, I was thinking, I can try to do it on my own, I think a lot of people do. I can just read a book and I wouldn't have to bother or be a burden to anyone.
Would you be okay with how abnormally hirsute I am? I guess that is my distinguishing feature, that separates me from East Asians, I am just so hairy, my head is thick in hair, but my leg, arm pit, and pubic hairs will always be there.. would you always want me to shave them off? I have small breasts, but one is obviously out and the other one is inverted. I had an ex who probably had a body count of a thousand, but he said he was unique! Would you think they are cool too?
Would you want me to grow out my hair? My trademark is my short hair, that blends me in with the ayi aunties in the streets. Would I grow out my hair for you if you wanted me to? Would you call me cute and think that I look cute with my glasses on? Would you be into fashion? Would you be bisexual or well groomed? Better than me? Would you want me to dress better? Or would I become so relaxed around you that I start gaining weight and becoming out of shape, maybe we can both dissolve away in body fats together.
Would you like backpacking and hiking? I honestly love those things. I am too shy to go out, but would go jogging if you go with me. I recently learned how to ride a bike, but am too scared to go on my own. Would you go with me and help me out? How would it work out with traveling? If you are an expat, you would certainly be more well traveled than me. What kind of traveling are you? Would you be the backpacker who loves cycling across different countries? Would you count miles and kilometers and steps meticulously, keen on meeting some daily goal? Do you like traveling to Japan? Or is your favorite country Thailand? Would you be okay with me accompanying you to these travel destinations? How about my special interests, I want to go to cute cafes and then go to weird noise and experimental shows? Would you come along? Would you feel scared and out of place? Would we have to come up with a compromise and separate during then?
I get stressed from work, sometimes I stay up late grading. I wonder if you can help me out.. Would we study together at cafes? Would we read together? Would you be a workaholic who is constantly making calls and glued to his laptop. Would you vent to me a lot about your work? Would you become frustrated when I cannot comfort you, and fail to "understand" you and your struggles.
I also love Anki, but can spend forever with it. Would you ridicule me for doing it? How about my 50 other hobbies? Would I have to sacrifice them to spend more time with you? Would we be able to establish some routine for parallel play? Do you like playing video games? Would you want me to play them with you, or is it okay if I lay next to your side and finish my Anki reps or work on crocheting.
Would you be okay with my yapping? Are YOU a yapper? Can I talk to you about the Great Courses I am listening to? Are you a yapper too? How would you handle disagreements? Would we argue?
Would you be smarter than me? Are you a crypto bro? Are you an engineer or programmer, would you supplement my deficient knowledge in STEM? Or are in more versed in the humanities, preferring to not interfere in field, as if they are nonoverlapping magisteria? Would you be intimidated by my level of education and work experience, or would you be much more achieved than me, making AI or robots?
Would you be monolingual or multilingual? If you are Chinese, would you help me learn Chinese or would you get ticked off when I cannot understand, and you have to teach me again and again. Would you write down a list of all the different words I learn and hand them to me to study? Or would you insist on only using English with me, because my lack of ability is too frustrating.
What would your interests be? I hope you are a quiet nerd.. but what music and books would you like? If we don't have similar interests, would you support mine? Would you care about my music taste or just never ask about it?
What is your relationship with food? Are you picky? DO you love meat? Are you vegetarian? Do you like to eat out a lot? Will I go out with you to a new, fancy restaurant every weekend? Do you like to drink? Do you like to mix up new drinks and teach me about all the different brews and spirits? Are you picky? Will you be grossed out by my lack of manners? Will you be horrified by how I eat a shrimp whole, head, brains, poop, shell and all? Will you educate me on how to peel the shrimp and rremove its head with efficiency? Will you teach me how to cut neatly with a knife and fork, and how to stabilize my chopsticks so they can finally, click! How about cooking. Would we have little dates where we cook together? Would you like cooking? In any case, it would not matter... because IF you make something I would eat it with joy.
Would you be avoidant? How is your emotional intelligence? If things become rough can we talk it out or will we avoid the topics. Will I just stay quiet, afraid of not saying something that would trigger you, to cause you to be upset, or to feel weak or inferior in a certain sitation? Would you be mysterious? How can we catch up on stories about our lives, if we are this late in adulthood, I missed out on so much... how were you like when you were younger? What were your happiest and saddest memories? Can I listen throughout your stories as you share them, or will I blank out, forming gaps in between, that I get too embarrassed to ask about for you to fill in, widening the gulf in between us?
Would you be okay with me, not having any large social network. I am pretty lonely, and only have one female friend. Do you care? The other friends are male, but most are mostly gay? Would you have a thousand followers on instagram, a bunch of connections with you college alumni and friends, whereas I just cut contact with everyone upon getting out of high school, and now college. Nobody knows that I am China, and they do not care. Would you be okay with that? And then there is my family... how would it be life for you to meet my family? I have have five siblings, and we all have some disorder of emotional disturbance, generalized anxiety, OCD, or ADHD to some sense. Would you get along with them, especially my beloved sister who I always worry about, as I hope she may one day pass her classes and overcome her trauma. I essentially cut off contact with most of my maternal family. If you visit them, you may be disappointed in how bad my Vietnamese is. You may gently tease me, but then I would become a bit sad and disappointed from that. Would you learn Vietnamese or care about the culture? Would you love Vietnamese food or know nothing about it? How about my parents? My mom is super religious, what would you think of these Buddhist temples that I grew up within, that I cycled through?
Would you get a long with my friends? My beloved friends back in Vegas are all shy and otaku. Hopefully you can get along with them. There are my friends in Shanghai, they are all extremely bright, but they also have very strong personalities that come into inevitable conflict with each other. Would you fight with them too? Would you upset them? Would my friends be horrified and shocked that I am dating someone like you-- maybe you are rude and I find it funny or twisted in some other way. Would my friends all beg me to break up with you? Or would they put up a face and say things to make me happy, as I "seemed so happy."
"Well now you know how it's like to have a boyfriend," my friend said after I went through my exes. Somehow, it is mixed, as if they do not wish a boyfriend upon me, while also simultaneously wanting me to meet someone to assuage my loneliness.
It was said that my maternal grandmother was repeatedly repeatedly raped by my grandfather. It was an arranged marriage. She tried to run away several, maybe many times, but was always caught and taken back home. With him, she had 11, or 12 children? When I asy I do not fantasize about things like marriage, my mom remarked that she never did either, but still married my father. She said that he was okay for the first two children, but things began becoming more difficult later on. Now there are six of us. Now, there is my older sister who has one child, so I have a niece. But I will likely not have a child. Because during my lifetime opened up a wealth of opportunity to escape, to travel, and live abroad. Now it is too late to even consider that.
When I think about my grandmother, I wonder, how about all of the other generations the last twenty thousand years? All of the women, were they arranged in marriages, raped, and forced to have more children then they liked? Were they beaten and yelled at, screamed at even? But most importantly, I wonder, were any of them happy? Did any of them marry out of love, and love their children, in spite of how rough it was?
I wonder about generational trauma like this, and think about how it has affected me. I never dated throughout high school or college. I never really wanted to, and mostly felt and identified as asexual. Now, I am in my 30s and feel little desire to get on dating apps, because rationally, I know it might not be that good and I would not want to put in the effort to finding *him*. Of course he's out there, there are many people I can be happy with. But I also have my options. If my little sister is just as unfortunate as me when we are old, we can just move in together! Or maybe I will finally be serious and date when I am much, much older, retired and wanting to FINALLY settle in a country and not country hop anymore! I would finally mature and not get as addicted to traveling and moving, and resetting my life. This is why I don't do it know, because I get sad thinking about how stressful it would be on my significant other to deal with this part of me, that wants to constantly move. Maybe some of them like that and are out there though. But I think something will finally click in my brain, and I hope I will just want to be with someone nice, with a cute smile, and maybe very boring. He doesn't have to be super smart or special. I would just want to be comfortable with someone. I think it will click when I'm older. By then, I will be super old and kind of wrinkly. But I think I will be okay no matter what, as the family is abolished. I cook alone, I read alone, I play guitar alone. but if something goes wrong in the apartment, society is there to help me. The family adjacent to my room hears me practicing guitar. The mom asks me what I am doing over the holiday and I say I cook! If the oven breaks, I can call the maintenance staff and shifu to take a look. I had trouble opening a jar, so I messaged the receptionist and she came over the open it for me. The lock was broken and I would have to leave my apartment door unlocked when I went to work. It was safe, but mostly because I was in China. It is now fixed.
Sometimes I want to go days without having contact with anyone. I can manage a day or two without any messages, but occassionally there would be a message or two in the group chat. I wonder if I choke or fall, and die, who would disccover me first? Likely my school. I wonder how fast it would take for my friends to find out? One friend is just tracking the location, and he will see it just stuck in my Minhang apartment. Would they be surprised if I do not reply or just give it time, as I usually take time to reply?
A strange, thought, that I have been having recently. My friend updated me that my ex is now getting along with my friends. I am a bit confused, but then I wonder... what if I can be like those women in the Haruki Murakami stories that I read. They pop in and out of existence it seems, engage in sexual intercourse with the main character, talk about their life or some lofty philosophy on their life, and then slip back away into the darkness. I broke up with my ex due to societal pressure, and I feel partially ashamed for that. It's like I have no choice but to sit by quielty as my friends talk shit abut him, when I saw his good side before, but I suppose that did not excuse all of his bad qualities. I have to remind myself again and again that the reason why I broke up with him was, not because he was an asshole, but because he loved his cat and friend more than me. He doesn't love me, or at least, was not good at portraying it. But I am strange, in the sense, I do not want to have sex with a thousand different men, but would rather come back to the same one a thousand times. But maybe that is a normal thought to have, as a woman, but then it runs into the contradiction of me being abroad, and not wanting to settle, so my circumstances are not really good for someone with my intentions, I suppose.
When we meet again, I hope it can just be an interaction between the two of us. Nobody else. I will not talk about my friends. I will not talk about my family. I will just talk about myself and my dreams and listen to you and yours.
I don't know why, but all of my friends seem to hate each other. And sometimes, I am like a ticking bomb that triggers certain people, like my brother. But I am okay with it, I am used to being screamed at, doing unreasonable tasks, and managing emotionally disturbed students, so I am naturally patient and understanding. I am used to being an emotional punching bag to some degree, I am used to hearing my sister endlessly go on and on about her trauma, her fears, like a broken record.
Maybe that is why I always dreamed of living and being alone. Finally, I can have complete silence around me. Finally, I can listen to the songs that I want to and do whatever I want, without worrying someone else or being nagged. Finally, I can rest.
I really wonder what people think when they see me, and what makes them think I would be a good friend or complete demon. I think I show it on my face, if I am bored or uninterested I look very visibly uncomfortable or disgusted. Those people steer away or they will start arguing with my like my brother. Other times, I feel pretty comfortable and calm around most people. I think they like venting to me, and I can generate some agreeable remarks to make them feel better. I think I picked up on how to do this from other women. Maybe I should thank those Mormon friends I had in high school, they were very kind to me, and listened to me as I vented about Buddhism and my frustrations with it, without judgement, and even without trying to actively convert me.
But beyond that, what else is there? You can rotate around all your friends, your significant others, your legions of online fans and followers, your coworkers, but why, why are you talking to me? I have nothing to offer other than talking about myself, as I try to process my feelings I dump them out, and you may listen, and you may try to understand, but I do not see how it is anything of value or you or anyone else.
You say that you are so lonely, but that makes me what to compete with you, eating your sadness so I can become even more sad and lonely than you. But maybe we are fundamentally different, as I think I have always dreamt of a lone life of solitude. I think it is finally all coming back to me, these days staying in my apartment, I am finally remembering a lot of lost dreams. My dream of volunteering on a farm. My dream of moving to China. And my dream of living a relatively lonely life. It might torture you forever, but I look over, I see you frantically corresponding between your girlfriend, your online friends, your various WeChat groups, whereas I have no one. You say that nobody understands you, yet you yearn to be understood. But I will be a step ahead, I have already accepted this loneliness, this void, and I am okay with it, and I refuse to let it torment me as it is tormenting you. It makes me miserable, like sympathetic vomitting, but I need to take a step back and protect this peace, leaving you in your misery.
I should have asked to call, I should have asked to call, yesterday, yesterday, but that is too late.
So here we are, after the aftermath of all that, there is me, strangly hurt, confused, finally experiencing the full aftermath of her inability to overshare. There you, tortured, and in pain, from that aftermath. You know, you know, what my friends think of you. And then, there are my friends, who are confused, and also hurt from my actions, one of which, always wondering why his words online are not communicated well.
There is nothing that can be done. In moments like this, I assuage myself, thinking to myself, it is like a Murakami novel. We are all hurt in the end, the friendship may completely dissolve, but it is extremely painful and lonely, but it is okay. Or will the friendships continue, but dressed in a lot of pain now? I suppose that is something that I will have to experience anew, friendships were always safe to me, but for the first time I am running into these disagreements, conflicts, where we are at terms with each other. Normally, I will not put up with that, and recede and retreat, but now I have to make decisions, to stay or to leave?
I wonder how it is like to be you, and I was a bit at lost for words. As I am the complete opposite of you-- I completely lack a role model, but it seems like you took after someone, that blogger, to an incredible degree. I wonder how it is like to become closely invested in someone's life, other than yours or your significant other's. Other than your family or friend. An entity on the internet becoming your impetus. But it is a bit like that for me, but I take parts of people, not their whole. Now you are at the crossroads, but I think it is the same for me. We are now adults and we have to find out what really belongs to us, beyond our influences, and "who we are." I think people like us, we are not normal, so we should know "who we are" by now. But unfortunately, it is still hard to partition out the pieces that are uniquely me, as I too, am a product of my environment, a product of being and time.
I told you that I only follow your blog because you are my friend, and that is true. If I happened upon it as a stranger, as two people who did not follow each other, nor interact, then I would probably not have cared about your website. So here you are, as a person with a website. Yet me? I refuse! I refuse to have a place for myself on the internet. But as I am typing right now the words are filling into a space online. But nobody except for myself is reading it. I hope it stays that way. I hope it stays that way. You are not reading this right?
A week ago I said that the internet was just a place for people to be performative. The like and follow button taints it. And I got to see that happen in real time to you. Except it wasn't the like and follow button, but instead the contents of a person's blog, written, and responding to what you wrote. You writhed in pain at it, and it tormented you, reviving anger and sadness. I stood there, distanced from all this, perplexed, as you cried out in pain. I don't want to become like this I selfishly thought. But I cannot fathom, how it must feel like to be you... your whole life is a blueprint of this blogger. I read his article, and I myself was shocked, this is where you got everything, down to your vegetarianism, from. But there are parts that are uniquely you. When I am talking to you, the you that grew up in Baltimore, the you that has an older brother that has the same name as my ex. The you that likes to sing Zazen Boys on our way back home in the Shanghai subway. The you that is always drowning in melancholy, reading Chinese poetry, that is uniquely you. And the blogger may be evil. The blogger that you looked up to. But he could have changed. And even though you were moulded by him, perhaps shaped by his evilness at a young age. I too forgive that. Because you grew and changed and I know, as your friend, that you belong to yourself and are far from evil!
I was pleasantly surprised that my other friend, Enrique arrived, and then a member of the philosophy book club. The book club was largely conducted at Fortunate at the end of each month on Sundays, but due to Kris being busy and some drama stemming from me, the reading club has largely halted. I was sad that my last friend, saddleblasters, couldn't join us. I have been conflicted on asking him out, because he absolutely despises all of my friends, and has been in an extremely depressive mood. He didn't respond to my last texts, which were trying to cheer him up, so I selfishly assumed he would not be interested in joining us, but thena fter he messaged me taht he was sad that he didn't. I thought for a bit, and realized, maybe he couldn't after all because the cafe closes at 8 pm, stops taking orders at 7 pm, but saddle gets out of his office job at 7 and wouldn't be able to join us until 7:30 pm anyways.
I think it was nice hanging out with two of my friends. It's extremely hard getting them together. At the end of the night, Enrique asked where would we convene next? But I thought, we never really convened. Next would be my Thanksgiving dinner, I suppose. I wonde rhow that would go.
In the cafe, there are these TVs that blare propaganda for veganism. The videos are kind of AI generated and Kris absolutely hates them. They were playing Amazing Grace and I thought of the opening by Eureka 7 that featured that song. The song is sakura by Nirgilis. And I thought that it was funny that this song triggered memories of a mecha anime and mecha anime only as I had no context for the religious aspect of it, whatsoever. I talked about how I have recently been obsessed with cooking, and love being in the kitchen. My friends tease me, calling me a tradwife now.
I thought about how all of the places where I met my first friends in Shanghai are now closed:
Fortunate was the domain of Kris, but I actually met him at Moka Bros, another cafe. That place is now closed. Fortunate was where we met ENrique, he was one of the first members of philosophy book club, which he found from Kris advertising it on reddit. After, I met saddle at System, a cool underground club, where The Bunch of Noise festival was held. That place closed down last year. And the year before, the place where I met my first ever ex, Yuyintang, closed down. It was my favorite music venue, ever.. When I was reminiscing on this, my friend was like "It's because of you!"
Maybe. On a larger scale recently it feels like I wreak havoc every country I land in and make my home. So maybe that is why recently I like to retreat, into the enclaves of my apartment. It feels like I cannot hurt anyone if I stay inside.
I think I have been learning guitar for a bit over a year now. I think at this point I am pretty happy with my progress. It's funny how hobbies like this can mean little to other people, like my coworkers. When I speak to them, I feel like I am from another world. What they care about is completing various post-graduate degrees and certifications. Traveling to faraway lands. But lately I have been absorbed in random hobbies, such as cooking and for awhile now, guitar. When I bring up this hobbies, sometimes my coworkers refer to their son and his progress with guitar.
Anyways. I have been pretty happy with my progress, as I have said. The muscle memory is developing so I can shift along the fretboard. 3 - 5- 7 - 9 - 12. The first song I ever learned is by a band I really loved growing up, called supercar. It's a Japanese rock band. And it disbanded, but I love almost all of their albums. I still have more to delve in in terms of their discography. It's hard to desribe, but I think their song encompasses the standard 1990s Jrock tune that I love. When I think about it, since I talked about the anime eureka 7 and how Amazing Grace reminded me of that, supercar did have some songs play in anime - such as eureka 7. Their song Storywriter was featured, but that is far from my favorite song. I remeber there was a day on Twitter in the past when a bunch of people were excited for a Perfume concert in California. Instead, I chatted about supercar with my friend, tweeting the lyrics to Strobolights to each other.
2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛
Equals sunset
+ 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛
+ 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛
Equals sunset
+ 4愛 + 2愛 + 4愛 + 2愛
Is true heart(真実!)
True heart true heart true heart true heart
The song I learned on guitar was planet by them. It was funny, I had a guitar teacher, but he didn't really do much other than kind of play the bar and I would copy him after. But he said I had good music taste. He looked up a video of them performing, and asked me what the lyrics were about. Probably a love song, I replied. I guess I never really listened to the lyrics. I did after, and it was a love song.
Lately, I went a visited the Shanghai Zoo, we took our students there. We had ample time to see all the exhibits, but it was shocking. Seeing some of the animals in extremely small enclosures, we saw a leopard that was stress pacing, back and forth. When I saw that leopard it reminded me of a student that does pretty much the same thing in my classroom, especially when there is an impending exam. Or of me, as I did used to pace around in the past as well, within my house. It was baffling to me why some highly intelligent large mammals were allowed to be outside in large enclosures, but others were shut into a small shed, kept in the darkness. What was depressing was an orangatan that was obviously in a fetal position, covering his or her face against the wall. The enclosure just had walls that were painted with trees, and maybe a fake log that spanned it.
It was an overall bad situation, but when I wanted to describe it to my friends they kind of dismissed it as, oh, we do that to actual people! They weren't really shocked by the situation. I feel like this is one of the things that people read again and again on reddit, so when they actually hear an anecdote from someone, they are not really impressed enough to care.
It waws an overall bad situation, but it had me thinking about how Shanghai reminded me of a PC game I grew up on, called zoo tycoon. It is basically a zoo simulator, and you can buy and put random animals in exhibits. The exhibits can be as small as a 1 x 1 square cage if you wanted (or so it is big enough for the dimensions of the animal. The animal would be plopped in with a red unhappy face, and if you put another animal that it doesn't get along with there is a red unhappy face that also appears. I felt like the zoo was just a real life version of that, these are pixels that should have been made in a game, but somehow there are these unhappy animals with not enough rocks! Or foliage! In their enclosure to make them happy and pleased. Or the size of the enclosure was too small.
This comparison of the city to Zoo Tycoon spans elsewhere. I feel like the presence of ayis and cleaners is ery evident. There are a lot of them. It reminded me of the task of satisfying the customers to my zoo. Sometimes if I make a restaurant and drink, food, area, they would litter if there are not enough trashcans. I could also placce custodians to clean up after them. Or people to fix the wiring of the zoo. When I see the cleaners, I think of placing them in the game. And, I also think about the cheat code I used, Mr, Blue, where you named a visitor that and it turns everyone blue! I don't know why I thought of that, it is not really related to this city, but I guess I just like the color blue and that was one of my favorite aspects about the game.
Last night I went out to get a haircut, and the mall called the "Hub" had an entrance which was just a space of concrete, but I saw a bunch of workers working hard to install this miniature fountains on a corner of it. Across from my school, they are building a Mega Mall. Like a serious mall that would have Uniqlo and everything, meaning I would not have to go on a taxi for 15 minutes to the Hub to buy new pants at Uniqlo anymore, but instead just walk across the street from my apartment. When I described this to my mom, she was impressed, as she was sad about how the malls are getting shuttered in Vegas. Similarly, our amusement parks are also being closed down.
I have been getting into conflict with a friend recently. There is conflict in being understood and understanding. The crux of the issue is how we are unreliably narrators throughout our life, so he thinks I hate his friends and I think he hates my friends. I think about what the definition of friendship is. I don't have a lot of people who are willing to become a a part of my life, so I gues sis is simple, I enjoy spending time with them, them with me, we like each other and that mutual like feels safe and effortless.
I think I hung out with his friend, who was originally an internet friend, and it was obvious that I didn't like in or get along. But I thought that he came to that conclusion too! Yet he still defends him as a good friend, or someone that he aspires to intellectually. Which is fine. I think there are a lot of little details that are being missed. I think it is difficult for me to get a lot with most people, and it shows. I was talking to my sister about it with her over the phone, and she remarks that I show it on my face right away if I disagree with someone or am disgusted by the situation, with pursed lips. This makes it especially hard for me to make other women or girl friends. If they like something as simple as Percy Jackson, I think I will slightly purse my lips or seem automatically disinterested, so they sense that and break if off quickly. It is the same for my coworkers. They can tell that I am disinterested in their conversations about, say, traveling or football, and will for the most part, leave me alone. And I like that, that solitude. But it is all about finding a balance, I see.
It's kind of sad how the definition of friendship or interactions have been altered and dissolved by the internet. I feel like with these friends, since society does the heavy lifting, friends have to be receptive to interests, ideas, be good listeners. But back in the states, when I was supposedly friends with my coworkers, the word friendship was thrown around willy-nilly, and they promised me to always call them if I needed to vent. If my tire blew, they can be there to help me. Etcetera etc, it felt like something deeply personal, you spend time with them, you grow with them, you understand them, and they support you. I had the situation of working at a tough school with though studnets. My friends were there for me to vent. I was also going through family issues. My friends are also there to vent.
It is different in Shanghai, maybe because I am so far away from family but very much under their psychological control. I think I come from a very unique situation, how family is still a big part of my life, which is unlike how it is for a lot of people. But I guess since I see friends as those who are a part of this continuum, oh, they know me and my lore and family drama, will devote time out of their day to spend time with me and let me vent, I am very close to my old friends in Vegas and my family. It is very hard, to introduce people to that side of myself and have them truly understand.
So I don't hate your friend! It is just who I am, I think it is a very hard part of me to change. How can I become more agreeable, more supportive, a better listener? I don't know. I wasn't taught how to have these interactions, and honestly, I had moments where I was quite terrible to my sister, especially when she wanted emotional support. But alas, I am not a therapist but a flawed human being. I think when I get vented to, I get automatically stressed out. My brother called it emotional labor fatigue or something like that. So when someone is venting about their own problem, I kind of make it my own things since it pulls me down..
Today I met up with my friend to practice guitar together for the first time. I was prepared to disappoint him, but I was even more shocked when he just asked to change the song because it sounded bad when we played together. Upon further examining my playing, he learned that I cannot just keep to one, two strings, or whatever chords are required for the string, and remarked Oh, that was why it felt bad.
I cried a bit later after going home, but I was shocked and disappointed in myself. I guess in my head, I was ready to disappoint him as I was already horrible at language learning. I felt like he was already so disappointed in my Chinese for so long, but he did see a potential, but at the same time it is kind of like a neglected potential. Like I can pronounce Chinese but am too shy to speak, or have no Chinese friends. I discussed my struggles with learning with him, such as how I tend towards repetive tasks. I remember what Justin Guitar said, and it was "Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent." I drilled in all of these mistakes, like playing on incorrect strings, and not counting, and whatever. I was putting in effort to practice guitar everyday for a year now, but I wasn't focusing on the right combination of things, like scales, understanding chords, or counting and using a metronome. So I am still horrible at parsing together songs. I tried to describe it to him as like fighting a hydra with a hundred heads, and I didn't know where to start. I guess my priority for the song was just learning the notes and figuring out how to finger it, and maybe play with the song at 75% speed. But when he arrived, he was counting, compartmentalizing everything into a formula. The whole thing turned into a lesson where he was teaching me, which was fine, I felt, as I am still a beginner and he has been playing since high school, which is maybe ten or so years. And he said he practiced like two or three hours a day during high school. But I was trying to do that too...
Well, after that meetup he decided against learning the Number Girl song, and then suggested a Beatles song to learn. I guess that is for the better, as the Number Girl is not a band that we are too fond of, at least currently, and maybe never again, due to other circumstances. I guess what I got from that was learning scales, the half and whole tones, and the importance of learning theory again. I guess I should use this as a motivation to persist on and correct my mistakes. It has only been a year, I think, so I still have time to fix myself and get better.
I think about all of this, but there is really a similarity in my inability to learn languages, guitar, and maybe too, sex. The last one is t=due to inexperience, but it all conjures an extreme feeling of shame, like I missed out on some formative years of experience. When I was holding the guitar, it felt like kind of holding my own body, that I didn't really know what to do with it, like I did after a few times with sex. I just remembered trying to kiss my ex, and he said "You lived under a rock your whole life?" Afterwards, I bursted into tears, but I was panicking, mostly at the inability there after to proceed on to actual sex due to myself crying. But I think that is where it hurts, it feels like I really lived under a rock my whole life, and it shows, when I cannot learn things, like languages, and guitar, and still struggle with navigating through Shanghai with a GPS. I attribute it to my inability with transfering information and seeing patterns. I think I just resort to memorization due to Anki, and the way I was taught scales I was just told to "memorize the shape." There was a random show that I watched on Netflix of a girl who got away from her Orthodox Jewish commune and then had a fun time in France or whatever. I don't think it neccessarily captures to shame and embarrassment I feel with being myself, as I have been living on my own for two years, but simply cannot do things well on my own, such as finding my way, due to my parents being overbearing and doing everything for me. There is quite a psychological barrier that I struggle with overcoming that I feel is not widely depicted on media, I guess.
As I was walking with my friend after, he was recounting his regrets and talking about how he didn't want to go back to graduate school due to how he was treated as a child. But I guess the weird thing about me is that I was literally treated like a child my whole life, until my late 20s, until I moved to Shanghai. I was especially deferent for my first job, doing things like shyly knocking on my coworkers' doors and they were go "STEPHANIE YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOCK!" When I began teaching in a private school and had students "argue" with me over marks, it was a bit of a culture shock- what do you mean you didn't just accept the grade that you teacher bestowed on you, politely, without question?
I believe I get my inability to transfer information from my parents. They lived rather insular lives too, but at the same time, no, because they went through war, and then came to the States. But when we visited Vietnam last year they were unable to different the male from the female restrooms even though they know Vietnamese and the signs for female and male. I feel like I have a similar issue, like the pathways just don't easily click for me.
But I guess I have to be kind to myself. When I went back home to the States, I am back in the land of emotional disturbance and anxiety, and the way I function, kind of becomes normal. I remember having to take my sister to an eye appointment and parking the car in an empty parking lot. I still navigating through the complex, even though it was not discretely shown where the place was, because I was like, Oh this is all in English and I had new experience about marching forward and eventually finding the place. We just have to go ahead, I told my sister, and we somehow found it, I guess my instinct is to keep on walking, and walking, and you will eventually find it. Whereas in the past I would be dumbfounded. And when I went back there were some streets that I drove on thousands of times, yet did not know whether they were North/South or East/West. Now I kind of do... so I can kind of learn, but slowly.
In spite of the initial shock, I tried to verbally assuage myself. It's okay. My goal is to become good at guitar when I am old. My friend quietly nodded, respecting my wishes.
And I will take my time with Chinese, a podcast everyday, a book soon. And I will see where that goes.
I will always have childlike tendencies, I guess. I guess the twisted thing about me is I like the feeling of being paternalized. I guess this is why the city has been so good for me. If I need help, I can usually be safe and get it. But I have to be open to change and mature a little bit more.
Well, tasked myself with the task of hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for my friends. I never really had an authentic thanksgiving before. I was just thinking of my interactions with the pastor's daughter, and how she asked me what my family was having for Thanksgiving. That is a common question to be asked by students. To which, I showed her a picture of this vegetarian chicken that my family ate. It is just a fried chunk of tofu and the drumstick was this twig of lemmongrass penetrating it. She found it hilarious! And kept on bringing that up.
Thanksgiving in my head is a holiday where my family eats a lot of boxed foods: mashed potatoes from a box, and rice-a-roni from a box. And frozen vegetables. When my students asked me what I was having for Thanksgivign I replied that I was having fried rice. Maybe there was pho, but I also doubt so. My students would reply taht that sounds nice. But it was kind of the only time in the year where I got to eat boxed mashed potatoes, so that was nice to me.
As I plan this Thanksgiving, I search up vegetarian Thanksgiving spreads and try to imagine it in my head. I ordered butternut squashed, but I guess in Chinese it is "huasheng"