Random: Stress-induced nostalgia

I think: 100 questioned bio final at 7pm tonight. I think: 18 pages to rewrite by midnight tomorrow and no one has send me the papers yet. I think: I have six different conjugations to review (not counting the imperative or the irregulars), five different declensions to go over (not counting the adjectives or the irregulars), and five sections of a play to memorize, on top of reviewing the sections on organic chemistry and nuclear chemistry (which, for some reason, also included the string theory, which is nice but utterly inexplicable).

I ended up making hot chocolate because clearly this much stress requires as much sugar to repair it as possible, even at a time as early as eight in the morning. But hey, I'm an adult, and I can have hot chocolate for breakfast if I want to. And then, after the first sip and the first glance at the grey-grey-grey sky my mind hesitates for a moment before wandering off by itself, vaguely in the "why-am-I-here" direction before heading purposefully toward the nostalgia department. Toward Beijing.

I haven't thought about Beijing for a while, mostly after I discovered thinking about it is no longer--if not strictly unpleasant, but not pleasant either. Recently, however (possibly because of the circumstances), I find myself thinking about it more often than I want to. It's almost like a frostbite: it used to hurt in the beginning, now all you can see are the white spots, but you can't feel anything, yet. You know that sometime later it will hurt but currently it's just a strange numbness that makes you curious, touching it again and again like a compulsion.

It is a little like that, but mostly not, because I know the city that I grew up in, that I have called home all the way up to my eighth grade year doesn't exist outside of my head anymore.

That is what I always admired about Europe and despised about America. Americans aren't comfortable with the concept of past. Old things are ignored, often torn down, and they stress NEW and BIG and FLASHY, building on top of the ruins of their history. Not that those things are bad, necessarily, but I have a strong preference for places where the past can exist with the present. I like cities (most of which I have only seen in pictures), where even the ruins are left standing, but there are clearly present day things there too, like electricity, internet, and cars (see, I can follow priorities).

Beijing used to be a little like that, but mostly not.

The capital of China used to be in southern China, before they moved it to Beijing. It was after the nine provinces were finally united and things have settled down a little. Beijing was picked for it's location: it's located in an area where there will never be an earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, where there are (or at least, used to be), plenty of natural springs, where it's fertile and at the center of the easiet pathway of commerce between northern and southern China.

It used to be beautiful and, growing up, I could still see the faint traces of beauty left: the yellow-gold tiered roofs downtown, the red walls and lattice-worked windows. I could see the huge trunks left on the side of street, where a row of old weeping willows used to stand, besides the--DRY creek bed? When I go through one of the parks--Summer Palace, Bei-Hai, I can imagine what the place must've been like before the Palace walls were first destroyed and Beijing because THE place to be in China. Before the first flood of people came.

I place no blames. My grandparents came from North of the Canton mountains, West of it, and of the vaguely-south-ish place near the bulge of where the rooster's stomach begins, if you imagined the map of China as that bird.

I have memories of wandering through a small path of wood with my cousin of my grandma when I was four. It was gone by the time I entered elementary school. I have memories of the small village and farm lands across the road. A shopping center now stands there, with an Ikea painted in hideous bright yellow and purple (I have nothing against Ikea. I like Ikea. I just don't approve of THAT particular color combination). I remember the small stream turning into a sewage ditch, and then later a last ditched (no pun intended, ha ha) attempt to clean it up. It was good, the attempt, but it will never be what it was before. I hear my parents tell me about the peach trees that used to grow all along this street near my grandparent's place, and how it would bloom every year, or this hill covered with date trees before they built stuff on it. I try to picture what that was like-- a Beijing with trees, flowers, and tiled roofs instead of the cement, brick, and people, but I can't. I can't picture the peach trees. I can't imagine them blooming. In my mind, my memory, the place where the trees stood are filled with people. They are not really people either, but a boiling, almost-but-not-faceless crowd that was such a common sight growing up.

Then the roads disappeared. Redrawn, rebuilt, remodeled.

I still go to Bei-Hai when I visit China, but the crowd of tourists there, the utter lack of peace sometimes makes it unbearable. (Which is a laugh, because peace in Beijing is at best an oxymoron and at the worst a cry of despair.) At other times I'm simply glad to blend in, wondering if it is as easy for the others, as it is for me, to see how I don't belong there. Not anymore. Because that was when I realized that that is all it will ever be now, with the last of the tiered roof going and all of the old trees gone, buildings and sick-looking little seedling plants in their place: it will--it can--never be more than a visit. Still, I smile a little to myself. I go to an American University, where I'm working toward a BS. I'm fluent in English and Chinese. I'm where so many would've done anything to get to and if I ever plan on going back to China I know, between a perverted urge to Americanize and corruption, that I'll never have to worry about a job.

So many want my place, yet all I can do at the present moment, it seems, is to procrastinate from studying, sip hot chocolate, and feel nostalgic for something that I sometimes think never existed outside of my head. Certainly there're almost no evidences left when I was last there. There could hardly be more if I visited now.

Maybe I'm too idealistic. Maybe I'm too masochistic. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But at least the girl who can't let go of the past is unlikely to become a woman who will repeat it.

The tiered roofs are gone, the current architecture is hideous, but at least the lights are pretty.


...

In case you are still wondering, Lucy, my previous comment about taking responsibility for the past stems a little from this.
China doesn't allow people to hold duo citizenships but nevertheless I have decided (less than week ago, actually) to apply for US citizenship anyway, and I don't think a person should claim a country without also claiming the country's history. It's like claiming the success and saying that the 101 failures of the experiment, before, belonged to someone else. It's just not right, you know?