Nothing is Certain Except Growth and Mosquitoes

I have so many mosquito bites on my legs that my skin looks like an astronomy chart of constellations. Or a connect-the-dots coloring page for kids. The mosquitoes here are black and white, like a zebra. The first time I killed one (and it took a while of swatting before I managed to land a hit), I stared at the bloody little smudge in the palm of my hand in fascination. Its tiny legs (and probably body, too, but I couldn’t tell) are black and white striped. They’re small but unbelievably sneaky and vicious; most of the time I only notice I’ve been bitten when my skin starts feeling irresistibly itchy. I can't help but scratch at the welts left behind.

Once it’s dusk, it’s impossible to avoid them. While waiting for a cab to go play hockey, I try and keep moving, naively believing they can’t land on me while I’m rubbing my legs together like a cricket to minimize surface area – but by the time my driver arrives I’m sure I’ve lost a liter of blood to the mosquitoes at least. They catch me while I’m ordering dinner at a food stand or unlocking my bike to go home, and there’s always one mosquito stuck in the stairwell of my apartment building that manages to get me in the time it takes to fish my keys out of my pocket and unlock the front door.

But anyway.

I’m leaving Beijing in less than nine days. I think back to just a month ago, when I spent my first night alone in Beijing, and can’t believe how quickly the time has passed – yet I’ve experienced so many new things and learned so much about myself that it feels like it’s been a year.

During my first two weeks, I felt like a tourist on vacation: taking pictures of everything and framing my experiences so that I could tell my friends and family about them later. I checked my US phone every hour, waiting for my friends across the time zones to text me back, futilely clicking on American apps and watching the loading icon turn over and over as my phone tried and failed to bypass the firewall.

During my third week, I wanted to go home. It was just a little, nagging thought that would surface once in a while, particularly when I’d walk home from campus and see parents and grandparents playing with their kids in the park, or when friends would pass me on the street, hand in hand or with arms slung over shoulders, pictures of perfect, casual intimacy. I craved it. I wanted to get a ride home from a friend on the back of their electric scooter. I wanted to share an umbrella in the pouring rain. The backbone of Chinese culture is community and family; Chinese people may not express their affection in words, but the love and care people have for each other is not hard to miss. I ached in the absence of familiar love in my life; I missed my support system. 

But then I went home to Xi’an for the weekend to see my family (I took the high-speed rail, by the way. Over 300 kilometers (about 200 miles) per hour! And I took the subway to the train station. Truly, what’s better than public transportation??), and I got what I wanted. Spending the weekend with my family reminded me of how nice it is to be taken care of, and how nice it is to let myself relax. I went back to Beijing that Sunday night and left my homesickness behind.

I spent my fourth week in Beijing working on my research paper and exploring museums, shopping centers, or parks (anywhere with good food and interesting things to look at), and playing hockey. With each passing day, I checked my US phone less and less until one day, I left it at home without a second thought.

(Side note about food – my first two weeks of eating in Beijing felt like seeing the sun after a lifetime of staring at a candle. Even the dining hall, with food that all my labmates were tired of, felt like a luxury. All these options! So many rich flavors! All at less than 25 RMB (about 3 USD)! Everything looked good, nothing tasted bad.

After a while, though, as I started eating more of my childhood favorite dishes, the more I discovered that they all tasted… not like how I remembered from when I was a kid in Xi’an. It wasn’t warped from nostalgia, either. My comfort foods in Beijing definitely did not taste comforting.

When I told my grandma about my experiences, she scoffed at me. “No one has ever thought that Beijing makes good food,” she said. It’s a sentiment I’d heard from my cousin, too, when he lived in Beijing, but I didn’t believe it until I experienced it myself. Beijing is certainly not known for its food. Which is fine, because the quality is still fairly high. But my main concern is when I come back to America. If the Beijing sun has dimmed to a flame, what will the candle of the US taste like?)

I’m now approaching the end of my fifth week, and I want to stay. I’ve made good friends through climbing and playing hockey (in my first several hockey games I got called “the BU kid” because of the reputation Boston schools have in China – much like what Americans feel towards Stanford, I suppose. I found it hilariously endearing). I've been introduced to so many new people, places, and opportunities, and I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to build on these relationships into the fall, but incredibly grateful for the experience.

I’ve also grown terribly used to the extensive and efficient public transportation system in China, biking on protected bike lanes on every street, the nightlife, accessibility to cheap and healthy food, and the safety I feel when I walk alone at night.

(Another quick note, about the weather: the rain here is unlike anything I've ever experienced. On a cloudy day, once the first fat drops of rain hit the ground, I have about thirty seconds to run for cover before the heavens split open and a torrential downpour unleashes onto the ground below. The rain is thorough; every inch (or should I say centimeter?) of exposed surface gets drenched within seconds. I can hardly fathom where it continues to come from. Surely the sky will run out of water? The rain continues, ceaseless, for hours. The streets turn to rivers, and courtyards become oceans. The clouds hang dark and heavy over the city.

The amount of moisture and precipitation in Beijing and my lack of preparation for it is so novel that I can’t tear my eyes away from the window, staring at the sheets of rain coming down from the sky. Sometimes I’ll put on my sandals, arm myself with an umbrella, and take long walks through the neighborhood, looking for deep, wide puddles to wade through, mesmerized by the thrumming sound of rain and the patterns it makes on the pavement. Is this what it’s like to be a fish? Still able to breathe while surrounded by water on all sides?)

I may be preemptive in writing a goodbye post, but my internship ends today, and next week will be busy with going home to Xi'an, and then coming back to Beijing to pack and wrap up loose ends. Then I’ll be headed back across the ocean…

In Chinese, goodbye is “zai jian,” literally translated into “see you again,” or “until we meet again.” So, to my summer of solo travel in China, and everything I’ve learned and loved: 再见！

the "social media wall" -- intentionally set for climbers to look "cool" for their online friends