清净

Complications upon complications! My root-finding, self-discovering, identity-affirming trip rancified by all these nights spent in hostels all over China.

I have always been walking the narrow line between two worlds, but never so literally.
Everyday, I go out of the door, into my Chinese reality, where we have an efficient labour-based recycling system, posh boutiques, spit stains covering all imaginable public space and the most life-savvy people in the world.

Walking into the door,this other world is harder to define, consisting of chitchatting in English, signs in English, overhearing cursing and bullshitting and flirting in English, and, not to forget, burping a-l'anglaise.

Sometimes people attempt to address me in Chinese. Only sometimes.

In the English world, or, rather, the world of the English, I cease to represent myself but becomes the ambassador of my heritage.

In this world populated mostly by foreigners (I know it's because of the unfortunate choices I've been making by booking the most "popular" hostels), I am seen as "that Chinese girl", which feels so oddly out of place to me. Am I not in China? Don't I have other character traits that shine through my apparent ( as in visible) chineseness?

The saddest part of this whole affair is, sometimes, I enjoy being "that Chinese girl".Shame...

But, when I am out there, in the Chinese reality of the majority. Perspectives shift.
I become, even though only internally, "the chinese-canadian girl". What motives, unbeknownst to myself, secretly turning, grinding, interlocking, are driving me to always identify with the minority?

Can't I just belong, for once?

atma-graha

holding to the concept of the ego