Alex

Birthday yesterday. I am now 21, getting old. As some of you know, I actually did have a 20 years crisis last year, the basic issue of this crisis was that I was turning twenty and still living in Sweden. I compromized with myself, and told myself that it was okay as long as I moved out of the country while I was still twenty. And now I have, so no harm done.

Those of you who know me well enough also know that birthdaying is always a bit complicated for me. It's supposed to be a special day, and everything is supposed to be so great and so fun and that's just too much preassure for me. So celebrating my birthday in China with people I just met two days earlier was actually great, I had no expectations at all hanging over my shoulders.

So what did I do on my birthday? Well, I painted a chair at the hostel, took a nap with the puppy Yatou by my side, ate dinner with the Art School kids, Marc the Californian and Guo the Chinese punk chick. The all-sunshine girl who works at the hostel gave me a little gift. It was a piece of cloth with the characters: Qiu Rui, Shengri kuaile, 1985.8.11. Which means: Qiu Rui (my chinese name), happy birthday, and the date. At the end of the cloth there were two traditional chinese stamps, one with the hostels name and one with her own name Yangguang (which actually means Sunshine, what a coincidence). Guo gave me a necklace. In the evening after dinner, she brought me this great, beautiful birthday cake, she had written "For Alex"  on one end, and put two candles shaped like a 2 and a 1 on it. So we ate cake, crisps, fruit, and drank beer until we fell asleep. It was a very good birthday. I was so touched by the effort these people that I've only know a couple of days put up to celebrate my birthday.

Oh, and the Art Shool kids are a bunch of 17 years old kids who stay at the hostel and go to an Art School just next by it. They are so sweet and so funny, and they get drunk really quick. Their English is even worse than my Chinese, but we manage to keep a good conversation mixing the two languages anyway.
 
My train for Hangzhou leaves in less than two hours. I will leave some of my luggage at the hostel. It's the kind of small,  nice hostel where you dare to trust the staff to take care of your things for two weeks. If you look on a map, check out the distance between Beijing and Wuhan, that trip took me about ten hours. Then check up the distance between Wuhan and Hangzhou (next to Shanghai), it's not even half as far as Beijing-Wuhan, but this trip takes over 16 hours. I'm going to have a ball, yeehah! I'm going with California (yes, that is Marc, I have to call him something else to differ him from the Marc I got to know in Beijing), so at least I'll have someone to  talk to. He's fun to hang out with, so I think that we'll manage to not kill eachother even though we don't really know eachother and  will now spend maybe as much as two weeks in eachothers company. Might get intense, but we've promised eachother to kindly tell the other one that his/hers presence is no longer wanted, in case we get tired of eachother.  

I have now learned that the mosquitos in Wuhan is much, much nastier than those in Beijing, and I truly do believe that if I would have to put up with their intimacy any longer, I will go insane. I have b ugbites everywhere, When i wake up in the morning, I have 7 new bites. When I get out of the shower, I have 5 new bites. When I get dressed, another three. And during the long, sitting-out-in-the-yard-talking-and-drinking-beer nights, I can't even keep track of how many bugbites I get. I hope the mosquitos of Hangzhou is kinder.

Oh, and thanks to Flygande Sillen for correcting my spelling mistakes and wishing my happy birthday. Even though I am a bit confused about which identity might hide behind the nick-name Flygande Sillen (which means the flying hering). I would boldly guess that it's my classmate Felix from Stockholm University, I can Imagine that his Chinese name might be translated to flying hering, it's a bit far-fetched thoug (but so are YOU, mister). And he's one of few people I know that would call me comrade. And who would look up a expression as ex-patriate in a ictionary. Flygande Sillen, show yourself!!



Alex

_{(Click on "Kommentarer" below to leave a comment.)}