Alex

The water of the Jangzi river is brown. There is no way to say it to make it sound more romantic, it's brown. But yesterday I was standing on the east bank of the river, watching the magnificent view for the first time. A blood red sun was setting over the west side, it spread a soft, dirty golden light over the city, and the sun was reflected, transformed into pink ripples in the surface of the river. I was at peace.

I arrived to Wuhan early yesterday morning. I found my way to the hostel and went to sleep. I woke up, ate lunch, moped around for a while, got a belly ache and a head ache and a miserable feeling in my chest, so I went to bed again. I had strange, half-awake, half-asleep dreams, fragments of my dreams wound itself around the part of reality that I was still aware of. I woke up, less tired and without ache, but still miserable. I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt alone and alien and confused. It was the same last year when I first arrived to Beijing. I panicked. I wondered if it would be a bad idea to just take the first best train back to Beijing and spend the rest of my summerbreak there. But I know from experience that I have to give it a couple of days before I feel comfortable. 

At six o'clock I realized that I couldn't just stay at the hostel all day and decided o take a walk, in lack of better ideas. As I passed the reception the all-sunshine girl behind the desk asked me (in Chinese):

"You going out?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know."
"If you tell me where you want to go, I can tell you how to get there."
"I don't know where I want to go, I have no plans."
"Ah, then I can decide where you should go!"
"Okay."
"You are going shopping!"

And she showed me the way I was going on the map, and wrote down the numbers of the busses, and the names of the streets and stations I was getting on and off on. I did something yesterday that I've never done by myself in Beijing. I took the bus. Fisrt I got on the wrong bus, but  I was, by some kind of miracle, very well aware of what street I was supposed to follow, and noticed the wrong turn and got off the bus. I managed, by sheer accident, to get off the (right) bus at the right station. I changed to one of the many ferries crossing Jiangzi, going from Wuchang to Hankou. Well at the other side I started the search for the shopping street I was heading to. I found it after a while, another accident. I was so hungry when I had been looking for it for some time, so I stopped at a restaurant to eat, and when I got out again I realized that the street I was lookng for was right under my feets. After some late-night shopping (try to go shopping at 9 P.M. in Sweden, and good luck) I completely managed to missunderstand where my bus home would departue (at Hankou, where I was) I passed the river once again, naturally not finding the bus on that side, and walked home. It was.... a tad further away than I had expected it to be. But I only got lost a little bit.

I felt emediately better when I had something to do, and the panick ceased. I'll like it in Wuhan. But if I stay here for three weeks until school starts, I will rot. So I'm taking a train to Hangzhou on Saturday, and will travel around a bit until it's time to get back. And I am seriously thinking about dropping by Beijing once again before summerbreak ends. I left Beijing for the wrong reasons, and I had really liked to stay a bit longer. But perhaps I wish to return for the wrong reasons too.

The thing with Beijing is that... well.... I love Beijing. Yesterday when I first met Mark the Californian here at the hostel, and he asked me where I'm from, I had to bite back: "Beijing". Today I refered to Beijing as: "back home", without realizing what I was saying before it was too late. I think that this is because I have accepted my identity as an ex-pat (ex-patriate, someone living abroad), and left my country and won't call it home (even if it, in the end of the day, undeniably is my one true home). In this foreing land I'm now living in, Beijing is the only place that is familiar, so Beijing becomes "home". I guess Wuhan will take that place, soon enough.  

 The air is hot and humid. I bought a pair of trousers yesterday and then realized that I won't be able to wear them in a couple of months, it's too hot. The houses are worn and the facades cracked. Except from two guys at the hostel, I've only seen one other foreigner (and I stared at her, just like the Chinese do). This is a good place to spend a year. And if I would continue getting homesick, Beijing is just 10 hours and 270 yuan away.



Alex
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