Written by Tracy Wang May 22, 2015
edited version 14.06.2015
To leave or not to leave is always a dilemma. Much the same as Schrodinger Cat, you won’t know until you
leave.
We are used to leave things behind, be it
something, a habit, a person or sometimes even a city.
When a friend recently left Beijing after
living here for 5 years, I thought about the different stages he went through
and compared them with my own experience a year ago. I
was about to take a job assignment for Shanghai.
From the start here are the stages of leaving as I see them.
First of all happiness! Of course there are many little annoyances that come
with living in a city, and Beijing has its own footprint of these:
1) Traffic: It always feels like you are experiencing bad luck when traveling
in a taxi, especially when passing through well-known and notorious
traffic jam hotspots like Sanlitun. You have to deal with your own frustration.
Best remember
the tips your mediation teacher gave you. Always keep the cab driver happy and sane, so he doesn’t make
any suicidal maneuvers and drive straight into a bridge support.
2) Pollution: Anyone staying 5 or more years in Beijing has noticed that the air
pollution has gotten worse. It’s become a daily ritual for many to check the PM
2.5 levels first thing in the morning
on their phone app.
3) Culture: Like me, it’s the charming traditional culture of China which
makes many people come to Beijing. Except it’s an illusion and now more of a
fading memory. Many hutongs continue
to be torn down. Once tranquil hutongs, like
Nanluoguxiang, have now turned into endless shop
fronts for cheap snacks and trinkets, with vulgar noisy
bars every few meters accommodating the thousands of tourists that herd in groups
through the alleys. Are globalization, economic growth,
increased personal wealth and tourism strong enough reasons to blame for this
loss of culture over the past decade? It's hard to say, but it’s disappointing
for both those who live here and tourists visiting the city.
4) People: There too many people crowded into Beijing. It feels like someone
is always stepping into your path to block you or spit in front of you. Someone said
living in Beijing is like video games
from the 90s. I feel the same especially when you are
in the sidewalk and there’s some tricycles horning at you from God-knows
nowhere.
You realize that it is never easy to live
in this city. Beijing has sandstorms in spring which make you raise your
clenched fist at the heavy yellow-grey clouds, swearing that you will soon
escape the city. Then a chance suddenly appears in front of you to finally
leave this hellhole and you think; “Hell yeah, I’m out of here!” You begin
telling everyone you know, making sure all are aware that you will soon depart
the grey pollution.
Not long
after that initial happiness, sadness
will sneakily start growing in your heart. “Oh, I lived for so many years,
there are also a lot of things that I love”: the easy life, the cheap drinks in a dark hutong bar, the friends
who accompanied you on travels and hikes, visits to good bookstores you found
after hours of searching, visiting every new restaurant you heard of … your
foodie and drinking buddies, the freaks that wake you up in the early morning
and drag you to Xinyuanli Market. You know every corner of Gulou and Sanlitun
and every short cut connecting them.
That’s when you start to struggle and it’s dawning on you that all your friends, dearest and not so dear, are here in Beijing. Do you really want to leave them all behind and move to a new place? Will you make new friends there? Where will be the cool places and bars to make them? Will you understand the crazy dialect? Will you be bored to death with loneliness?
That’s when you start to struggle and it’s dawning on you that all your friends, dearest and not so dear, are here in Beijing. Do you really want to leave them all behind and move to a new place? Will you make new friends there? Where will be the cool places and bars to make them? Will you understand the crazy dialect? Will you be bored to death with loneliness?
During this phase you might cry a lot about the upcoming departure.
You’ll be frail and emotional and panic about the new life you are going to
face. The packed up boxes in your flat equate to years of rich and happy
memories, and you wonder how could you move them to another city? That’s
insane.
Finding myself at exactly the moment,
everything packed up and my friends ready to wish me farewell, I visited my
prospective future home of Shanghai on a business trip. I started to see the
city in a different perspective as a future resident; “Is this what I want? Is this the place I want to move to?”
Visiting a city for fun is one thing, but living there is
totally different. You need to look
for a new apartment, choose a district to live in, talk to the landlord see if
s/he can receive packages for you. You have to access public transport
and find supermarkets. After the visit I returned to Beijing with even more
bittersweet feelings.
But then you start to accept the fact that you will move, and you have to
make a list. You pack the things you want to keep, (you’ll hate yourself because you can’t just
stuff everything in one suitcase and go), return the library/shopping
mall/membership cards, visit the bars or
restaurants you like, go to the museums and galleries and all the cool places
you are going to miss. Then you need
to meet the people you want to say goodbye to before
leaving, and even schedule your farewell party. Then shoot, you find you are
really running out of time.
In the end, you finally make the decision (or pretend that you
do) by comforting yourself with thoughts of the new experiences and friends you
will make. During the endless farewell meals/parties/meetups, the goodbyes are
getting more and more annoying. You are getting tired of the crying people, and
try to avoid any more emotional scenes. After returning beer kegs, books,
plants and furniture, you feel you’re a new, free
person. With renewed hope and a thirst for adventure you can’t wait to leave.
Having been through all of that I was ready to move without any reluctance. Then, just as I had experienced every one of the stages
of leaving a city, my job transfer was cancelled
just three days before my departure.
Was the whole thing a nightmare? I felt
like I’d been
cast in a dramatic version of the Truman Show. Trust
me, there were more than a thousand versions of ‘really, what if’ going through my mind at that time. In the
end I had no choice but to stay. Heck, Beijing, I still love you.
All the best with your new life, Craig. Now
I have to wipe away the tears.
Cheers :)
