Wednesday, June 13, 2018
The end of a long journey in China. We all woke up this morning after a long night of bittersweet celebration and said our goodbyes. Many of us are traveling straight home and some to interesting destinations after the trip. Kush will be traveling across southeast Asia, Kevin to Singapore, and Julia down the coast to Hong Kong. I will be finishing the week in Shanghai then headed to Guilin, in Guangxi province, and then fly home from Hong Kong.
I am looking forward to pacing my own trip. I feel I have taken away a solid base of knowledge from this dialogue which will allow me to more critically analyze the experiences I will have on the rest of my trip. This ability wasn't easily earned. Days were spent listening to speakers, visiting sites, and writing papers all broken up by the moments of oddity (Dong Laoshi falling into a fish pond, meeting a millionaire in his home, frantically sprinting to board our flight to Chengdu).
If I could give advice to anyone coming on this dialogue in the future it would be; suck it up. You will face difficult moments from translation mishaps to squat toilets (Leah even got hit by a car). You could eat the same bowl of noodles and one day your completely fine and the next your studying notes from the toilet. I chose to return to China because I yearned to be stripped of expectations. Not only has this allowed me to become self-reliant using my mandarin but its incredibly exciting. Once we walked into a grocery store to find that it was a dance club that only played the parts of songs where the beat drops. Another time we went to see a band and bought some food for our table. After ordering in Mandarin our waitress remained by our table looking at us. After about 5 minutes, in a perfect Godfather-esq accent, she said "Give me all your money, now".
It is the same reason humans are fascinated with space and the depths of the ocean, this need to explore and understand. My host dad took me to a park and pointed at all the high-rises on the skyline and told me that 40 years ago none of these buildings were here. During our time at Sichuan University, two new restaurants were built on our school buildings street. You could leave Beijing on a weekend trip to come back and find that your entire neighborhood has changed. As we've seen with the hutongs and tea houses, things are more-so evolving rather than being destroyed so there are new experiences constantly being made for you. It can be quite terrifying the sheer expanse of China, so just take a deep breath and keep moving because there is a lot to see.
Thank you Dong Laoshi and Benny for the planning and translation effort it took to create and manage this dialogue.
- Jack H.
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