I found this blog etnry I wrote on facebook about my feelings on Beijing on December 27, 2007, and editted a little before reposting here.
I remember writing that line at the end asking if we sell our soul if we could get a refund... because at that time in Beijing last year, I really felt like I had lost a large part of myself and what I held dear to me, mixed up in that whirlwind, that constant internal conflict of the love-hate over the city that only we who have lived there could ever understand.
I'm glad to say that since then, now that I'm living in Mexico, I believe that I've found my soul again, so maybe you can get the refund, or maybe it's because I left before I had signed it away in concrete.
Maybe soul is always there following us and waiting for us to respond to its beckoning, and we just have to listen. I'm still not 100% sure. But, read ahead, and let me know what you think.
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As my first semester in Beijing comes to an end, I find myself (as I often do) sandwiched between two completely polar emotions.
What is it about this city that is so alluring, yet at the same time so apalling?
When I was in Xi'an a few weeks ago I went to a club with a friend and while we were sipping our Qingdao beer, without any formal introduction three paid dancers dressed in flashy sequin-covered bikini tops with high slit mini skirts (red, blue, and gold) with their sparkling stilettos, climbed onto the dance stage and started...shaking their butts and jiggling their breasts.
I'm all about women embracing their sexuality and celebrating their bodies. However, the women on stage in the club disgusted me. It wasn't the women themselves, but what they represented in my mind. These women were definitely not celebrating liberation from Confucian culture, they might as well have been whoring for the Communist party. Ah, but I shouldn't be so harsh on them, like the rest of China they probably had no idea that their bodies were tools for exploiting the people.
You see, there's this polarity in China that fascinates me. Why is it that in the most populated country in the world, so few people here rise to challenge the status quo?
The answer to that is that there is a dichotomy of the dusty dirt-brown roads and the old grey buildings (even the reds are slate reds) that remind us to stay muted. And then there is also the bright city lights that distract us that have all too succsssfully created a diversion to what's really going on in this country.
China: the land that impoverishes its own people so much that they don't have time to think of rebellion, only time to think of survival. The land that takes care of foreigners better than it takes care of its own people, so that others coming in find themselves living in a world full of magic and fantasy, under an illusion that sweeps us under our feet so that we forget that we once campaigned for religious rights for Tibetans, and we forgive the censorship in exchange for cheap cab rides.
Did no one care that in the sequined mirrors of these women's costumes their reflection came out soul-less?
It is not just China, it's the world. "Where is the soul in the world?" I can certainly tell you where it ISN'T... but more importanly... where IS it? (Aside from the obvious, a flower, a tree, a beautiful painting...Where is it in humanity???) And what do you think it means to "sell your soul"? And who are you selling it to? And can you get a refund?
If energy and souls are recycled (as I believe they are), there must be some lingering soul out there dangling like a key on a kite, but perhaps we people are just afraid to get of facing the shock.
