Better Late than Never...

So I've finally landed back stateside, and I'm currently chilling near Times Square. It's great to be back in New York and I can't wait to get to Vassar on Thursday. Here's something from a while back, written on 4 August as I waited for my plane back to Hong Kong.


I’ve noticed that I have a horrible habit of writing blog entries in transit, but in some ways, I think that’s quite fitting. This time, I’m sitting in the Beijing Capital Airport waiting for my flight back to Hong Kong for the last chapter of the summer.

The last few weeks of this internship have been very busy, with more contracts and proposals to translate than I ever imagined could have come in. One day I even got the real work experience by having to stay late and come in early to meet a very specific deadline on a contract that was handed to me just before I was supposed to leave. As much as a desk job is a huge drag sometimes, I think I’ll miss the routine of it all: getting up, catch the bus, get on the metro, get on another bus and then start the day. Then do it all over again. I wish I had more energy to get out and around the city, other than the areas than I usually frequented. My entire life was essentially confined to eastern Beijing: the Chaoyang District and the Dongcheng District. Even though my program officially ended yesterday on Monday, I decided that Friday would be my last day, and I had a great time walking slowly, not having anywhere to be in a hurry, and checked out some temples. The Confucius Temple in on Guozijian Street (Guozi Jian indicating its history as a place where the imperial exam for entrance into the civil service was sat) was especially amazing. Overshadowed by it’s neighbour temple, the Yonghegong Lama Temple, which I later went to, the Confucius temple was awesome. After a walk down a shaded street lined with incense merchants, beads, and a few old people just hanging out, I reached the gates of the Confucius temple, called the Master Gate. After paying the 10RMB entrance fee, I walked into the silence of the temple grounds and smelled the summer. You know that smell of wet dirt and thirsty grass, the smell that wafts as the trees pant in the breeze and sweat their various smells into the slightly humid summer air? Yeah, that one. I think in the two hours I was on the temple grounds, I saw no more than 40 people, mainly Chinese tourists, strolling the weathered stone walkway and taking in everything the temple had to offer.

I read an article in the New York Times last night about museums, and how people roll through, snap a few pictures and say that they’ve been as opposed to the tourists of 200 years ago, when, with sketchpad or oil paints in hand, they would sit and set about attempting to capture the scene set before them. I may not have had by oils and sketchpad, but I found it amazing to sit in the shadow of stone tablets that stood for hundred of years and slip into the timelessness of the temple. I tried doing this same thing at the Lama Temple, but found it a little bit harder, since bustling tourists and tourist groups would come through and blow through the exhibition halls faster than the nonexistent wind.

And now I sit once again, with no choice this time but to sit, plus another three hours to sit some more. Sitting is one of those odd things that brings out the quiet in your head, the one that we usually try to find things to cut out. But in the waiting hall of an airport, with countless people passing by both right beside you and on the runways outside, I find it easy to slip into that silence once again as the gentle hum of the turbofans ripple through the air.

It’s been a pretty big summer for quietness: no internet at my flat, no Youtube, no Facebook since the beginning of July and a few train rides to occupy my time. No internet at home is something most people my age would find impossible to deal with, and cut straight to the nearest Starbucks. I talked to my parents probably once a week on the phone for about half an hour, and the rest was intermittently sent emails between projects at work. My connection at work was so slow that my perhaps ten minutes of Facebook were a gigantic luxury, and then it was gone altogether. The quiet that I was afforded was probably some karmic pendulum overswing, from a world of overstimulation to peace. It was like that week trip you take, where for the first 2 days without email you absolutely crave it, then on the third day you just let go and don’t care anymore, then once you get plugged in again, you never get out. I think I’ll probably get like that again, where staying connected is the only way to find out anything about classes, sports meetings and life in general. As I stand up only to begin another round of sitting, maybe I’ll relish my last bit of head-quiet like my last bit of time in Beijing. I’ll sit down, find my happy place and go along with the rest of it.