Life | Phases/stages of Leaving a City You Used to Love

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?

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 :)