No Pain No Gain?

In the previous two entries I have written about loss, but what have I gained from all this?

Actually, with hindsight I'm not so sure that I have gained anything. I know that I'm hurting emotionally, physically, mentally and financially, but I'm struggling to identify anything positive that has come from this situation. However that's what we keep telling ourselves, isn't it? If we've been through the mill there's got to be something to show for it.

No pain, no gain.



I'm writing this entry partly to get it straight in my own head, but also to serve as a note of caution for anyone who is thinking about making a similar move. True: my situation was entirely my own and many people would be unaffected by similar circumstances. But the way in which the whole thing unravelled still took me by surprise. I had taken every possible consideration into account—or so I thought. I signed a 6-months contract (not a year!). I have travelled extensively since I was nineteen, have lived in foreign countries, have been separated from friends and family for prolonged periods since early childhood and—quite frankly—I thought the workload would be a great deal heavier than it actually was. I should have been prepared for it. There is no reason why I should not have succeeded, aside from my own shortcomings and assumptions. And it's the latter that turned out to be the killer.

Three words summarise the reasons for my failure. These three little words reinforce each other and lead a merry dance, but there is a clear hierarchy among them. Conversely, tackling either of these three issues may have helped to alleviate my circumstances, but as it turned out each spin and twirl left me more dizzy than before, sucking me in further, until I was looking down a spiral stairway to hell. I had no choice but to leave.

The three words in question are: Isolation, Anxiety and Alienation.

Infinite Sadness—Part II

The plane was going the wrong way. But I felt a huge sense of relief when I looked out of the window and saw the Union Jack on the wing tips.



They must have held the flight for me. Yesterday I'd done what I have never done before and jumped off the bus without my suitcase, eager to get to the hotel to have a rest and shut everything out. I didn't notice that the thing was missing until the taxi had left. There wasn't going to be any relaxation that night, let alone anything to eat.

The receptionists didn't know what to do. Waiting for something to happen, I dozed off in one of the chairs in the lobby until some time after three to find them both asleep as well. I had to wake them up to ask what my room number was because I had lost it somewhere along with the wallet and the ticket stub and my mind. At least the key card was still in my pocket. They eventually showed it to me and—to my surprise—at that precise moment John called. I felt like Amy Pond getting the Doctor on the phone from somewhere beyond the Horseshoe Nebula. It was the first time that I had heard his voice in over a month. Maybe I had managed to tunnel through another dimension and was, in fact, already back home.

Infinite Sadness—Part I

Some forms of sadness go around in circles. They have no beginning and no end. And so it is with my time in China. There hasn't been a day when I wasn't hurting. It's the old curse* at work again.

I was often giddy with the strangeness of it all, frequently frustrated and nearly always sad. But, oh, for all that I have gained! I have gained and I have lost. Is this better than not to have tried at all?

No, I think I'm with the old bard on this.

A Morning of Fans and Swords

I didn't sleep well yesterday. The heat is still getting to me. I abhor aircon, but I keep waking up and having to run it periodically just to cool down. This is annoying since I could probably operate the remote control in my sleep but I need to get up and close the window first. Whatever happened to ceiling fans?

Anyway, I woke up just after dawn, with salt-encrusted sweat stains on my pyjamas. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep so I decided to go to the local park for a cigarette. People were already out in the streets, loading up bicycles and scooters, sitting outside reading the papers or embarking on early-morning cleaning rounds.

The approach to the park was busy. I'm used to seeing people exercising outside, while there were no card players or musicians out yet, a gathering was taking place on a little cobbled square ahead of me. Sunlight gleamed on a sword. Blood-red fans flashed open in unison. Bodies contorted in slow motion, crouching impossibly low to the ground.

The kung fu masters were back!

What they were doing was not tai chi. It was something more ancient, and possibly peculiar to this neighbourhood.

I stood and stared for a while, my cigarette quite forgotten. It wasn't long before the man in the white silk uniform, whom I had seen on Sunday, paused and waved me over. He smiled and and bowed slightly to a plain elderly woman in a striped T-shirt who stepped up next to him. Before I knew what was going on, she had positioned me in a painfull stance and applied gentle pressure on my shoulders.

Lower. The message was quite clear. Lower!

The next morning I got up later and they were gone. The square was packed with people dressed in tracksuit bottoms and short-sleeved T-shirts practicing tai chi to gentle music, but the spirit was no longer there. I lingered for a while, but it didn't feel right to join in. I slunk off home, my thigh muscles still complaining and reminding me that it had not all been a dream.

A Walk in the Park

A fresh breeze rustled the trees when I reached the park but the sky was an even egg-shell blue and the only noise came from the whine of the cicadas, people chattering and the clatter of children's skateboards on the cobbled pavement.

I was planning to hide in the shade of one of the pavilions for a smoke or two when something caught my eye. A man with a sword was performing a slow-motion kata.

So far I have seen people dancing and playing badminton or musical instruments in the open air, but no sign of martial arts. The man was surrounded by people going about their business: children skateboarding or skipping, mothers leading their toddlers along, people sitting or standing in small groups. Nobody took any notice.

The Master completed his kata and stood in silence for a while. Then he took out his cell phone and walked away. Soon another took his place, a nimble man in a white silk kung ku uniform, instructing a couple of bystanders in a sequence of careful motions. Behind him a muscular man in a vest performed a similar sequence for an octogenarian woman with fluffy white hair.

More than ever—more than being able to read the menu, or even the odd street sign—I wished at that moment that I could speak Chinese. I wanted to know whether bystanders could indeed walk up and join in this impromptu martial arts practice. I was haunted by an age-old vision of people performing the careful motions of tai chi in a park at dawn that had always made me want to come to China. And here they were: on a Sunday morning, in ones or twos, quietly practicing while children and bystanders looked on, without the slightest hint of embarrassment or self-conciousness about them.

I stuck my nose in my notebook and started to scribble. It wouldn't do to stare.

Not that I ever stood a chance of passing unnoticed. The kung fu masters sat down on one of the benches so I lit a cigarette, conscious of everybody's health awareness around me. The man in the vest looked over and blew out a crafty cloud of blue smoke. He politely looked away again before I could grin at him.

The air suddely grew fresher and the clouds started to move in. Mindful of yesterday's weather forecast I gathered my things and left with the strings of the er a man was playing in one of the pavilions still sounding in my ears.

I realised that I'd been sitting in the park for over half an hour without any sign of stomach cramps.

Am I finally finding my peace?

An Army of Worker Ants

[EDIT: the timezone for this blog is out. It thinks I'm in America. Today is Sunday, August 7th. Shame on Google!]



They call this a typhoon? When Fitow hit Tokyo in 2007 I could feel it in Hiroshima for about three days. All we got here was a shower and a bit of drizzle yesterday. Today dawned bright and sunny and I was woken by birdsong from the nearby park. I put on the washing and headed outside. By now I knew the way to the park's back entrance.

I carried a bag of plastic bottles down with me. Not sure about the local recycling scheme, I'd at first put them next to the bins and they disappeared soon enough. Today I was stopped by one of the women sitting outside. Apparently they get a few kuai for gathering plastic bottles and cardboard. Trolleys piled high with recyclables pass through the traffic at any time of the day. A somewhat sadder picture is that of elderly people rifling through rubbish bins, carefully extracting discarded drinks bottles. Hangzhou is combed over by an army of micro-recyclers and street cleaners. It's possibly the cleanest city I've ever been to, but it is maintained by a vast and poor underclass.

Storm Clouds Gathering

The sky has turned to lead and gusts of wind are whipping leaves and twigs around the pavements. People in fluorescent jackets gingerly pick up debris and sweep away the leaves, but it's an exercise in futility because a typhoon is coming.

There are no classes this afternoon. We've been on an outing, cut short by the ominous weather forecast. I'm going home early, stopping on the way to stock up on bread, water and candles.

See you later.