More Settling and Exploring

An interesting weekend. I spent nearly all of Saturday in a jetlag-induced coma and, to my surprise, woke up at 3:00 this morning unable to get back to sleep. Realizing it was going to be a long day, I got to work finishing the unpacking I never really started when I arrived.

By 6:00 am, it was light enough to go for a run. I found a nice path that runs alongside a river near my apartment and followed it for a few miles until it intersects with Chaoyang Park. It only costs five yuan to get in (less than a dollar US), but I didn't have any cash on me so I turned around and came back. Early hours in quiet settings like the river path here are truly magical, when the smog can be mistaken for morning mist and the only people awake are retirees gossiping, fishing, or practicing tai chi. Something about scenes like these feels out of place in time, and I often find myself wondering what these people -- who've lived through so much change -- think of my presence here. Am I a welcome stranger? An interruption of their morning routine? Or am I just another ripple in the tumultuous tide of the city's constant reinvention?

Speaking of which, I've been pretty disappointed by the lack of extreme change I was promised I'd notice upon my return. Usually, when I tell people I study Chinese / have been to China / am planning on going back, I get one of two responses. Either the person I'm talking to has never been to China and wants to tell me about how many jobs I'm going to get or what a great skill it is to know Chinese nowadays, the economy, blah blah blah, or they've been before and want to tell me about how "unrecognizable" it's been each time they go back, "Even from one year to the next!" Okay, so some things have changed. This big fancy club we used to go to outside the Worker's Stadium called Vicks is now either closed or under renovation. Construction on a "time-keeping museum" in the Gulou hutong area, which hadn't started when I left two years ago, is now almost complete. The shopping mall at Sanlitun Village has a few more stores than it used to. But nothing revolutionary.

The latter was actually quite a welcome change in that it gave me something to do today. I spent the morning in a Starbucks reading Catching Fire, then perused the shops, taking stock of what I have nearby. The mall hosts a number of American stores -- McDonald's, Puma, Levi's, Adidas, Starbucks, Cold Stone -- alongside some creatively-named Chinese ones. My favorites are Hi Panda, Cake Bus, and Bla Bla Bra, which I think is funny because it's not very easy to say even if English is your native tongue. I'm happy to know I have all this right around the corner from where I live, and that the local movie theatre plays movies in both English and Chinese.

Anyway, I'm already not feeling well, and I can't tell if it's the exhaustion or the surprisingly tasteless blackberry-looking fruit I bought from a street vendor earlier, so I'm going to try to sleep it off because tomorrow is my first day on the job. These few days of rest have been crucial, but I'm really excited to finally be doing something.

再见
share on:facebook