Le reste de ma vie @summerwenxili - Tumblr Blog

Emile Zola

It all started with a question that I’ve received last Friday morning.

I’m currently working for a language training agency. Essentially we build bridges between French people who want to learn English and available English teachers within our network, and I do the administrative part of the bridge: match teachers with student, book and cancel lessons, and pretty much everything related to the process. It isn’t much of a job, I admit, but I get by. I sometimes ask myself what I could do if I was not living in a foreign country, but as my life is definitely better here than in the country where I was born, this isn’t actually a question. We all want to imagine a better life under a different, unrealistic situation, such as ‘in the past’, ‘before I cheated on her’ and ‘in a forest with unicorns’. We get nostalgic, but come to think about it, the things we’re nostalgic about were probably not there in the first place. The past wasn’t really better, you were going to cheat on her even if you had known that would lead to your split, and a forest with unicorns -- that one probably does exist, we just need to find it, but nobody did so far.

I was just having a video conference call with one of our customers. She wasn’t exactly unlikable, at least before I asked her if she could give me some details about the kind of oral expression practice she’d like to have with her English teacher. She replied, in French, “Well I like to talk about books. I mean I like reading, and Emile Zola is my favourite.” there she stop for a second, and she said, “oh I’m sorry, do you know who Emile Zola is?”

I’m not even sure if she was being scornful or condescending----actually, I am kind of sure that she thought that she was asking a legitimate question. Which made me wonder why it was legitimate to her. And I concluded that it couldn’t be helped. I do speak French fluently, but I am still obviously a foreigner, and non-Caucasian female one. In fact, if I was an Australian white male, even if I didn’t speak French, she wouldn’t have even thought about asking this question.

Yeah, I admit that I’d love to be a straight white male from an upper middle class family. Or at least white. I have never thought too much of the concept of “being proud of your origins”. I have always considered it as a scam: people who cannot benefit from the things they get at birth trying to brainwash themselves into believing that there’s pride in it.

Being a foreigner. When I first moved abroad I didn’t think much of it. I thought about it was a linear process: I finished my first 18 years of life in my hometown, next 4 years between Macau and Portugal, and started my 23rd year of life in Paris. What I didn’t know was that I actually was going back to square 1. I did not start my 23rd year of life with 22 years of experience; people look at me, they see a foreigner with no knowledge of the country, and unless I prove otherwise, they’ll treat me as someone ignorant, or a secondary human being at best.

It’s been almost 5 years that I’m here in France. At first I tried everything to integrate. I learned the language relatively fast, listened to French music, watched French movies, observed and studied French pop culture; I wore black all the time and I picked up smoking on the way. I don’t remember precisely when, but at some point I stopped this process of “French-nising” myself. Probably when people insisted on talking to me in English when I was able to speak French. Probably when people talked about me in French in front of me as if it was unimaginable that I understood. Probably when people screamed “nihao” “ching chang chong” to my face as if it was funny. Probably when people asked me to stop being furious at a commentator for describing some Japanese athletes as “little Pikachu” because “it’s a harmless joke”. Probably when I realised that a Chinese sex worker was murdered in the center of Paris, and nobody talked about it, and nobody cared. Probably when people explained everything and anything that I did by “oh, she’s Chinese”. Or probably when people asked me if I knew who Emile Zola was.

I don’t try to integrate anymore, because it requires an effortless puff of smoke, but I’ve used too much effort in the process to pull that one off. I want to tell someone, anyone, that this is not easy. It is not easy to live a life when you have to constantly prove yourself, justify yourself and explain yourself to a bunch of people who seem to understand each other perfectly well.

After all I’m just a foreigner. And this is after all, my own choice. I wanted to be out of my country since I was 6 years old, and I did everything I could to make that happen. So who am I to complain?

I did not idealise Paris before coming here, to be certain. But I also did not expect to be treated as a secondary human being. Alas here I am, and it seems to me that my life will stay this way.

I’m not fine with this. But I also have no option. I can only put it in my pipe and smoke it.

Communication or the uselessness of it

In this world where we are living in, communication and human skills are painstakingly overrated. You open any job offer, nine times out of ten they ask you to be ‘a people person’ of some sorts. And that is hideous, really.

I hate communication in general. I panic when I have no choice but to make a phone call, and I get even more desperate when I get phone calls from total strangers. I don’t even reply to emails unless I really have to.

I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this. If anything, I have increased my tolerance towards communication over the years, against my will. While from time to time, I do enjoy a good debate or an enriching conversation with certain human beings. But in general, most of the conversations we have on daily basis are at best useless, and most certainly a waste of time.

Take after work drinks with colleagues, for instance. There you were, after a long day of work filled with conversations of no intellectual value whatsoever, your colleagues announced to you with some sincere and sanguine excitement that the entire office is going for a drink in the bar nearby, and it’d be great if you can be there too. You forced a smile, and quickly went through your memories: for the last five invitations of this kind, you’d used excuses including appointment with your ophthalmologist, your dentist, your gynecologist, your bank account manager, and your downstairs’ neighbour who counted on you to water his plants. You were running out of excuses. So you nodded, you said nothing, you followed them, because another refusal would make it too obvious that you hated socializing. Why is that a sin? You don’t know.

In a perfect world you would have been at home, drinking tea, watching another episode of Gintama and singing the opening song out loud because you don’t give a damn. But there you were, you were in this bar. Your colleagues claimed that this was the best bar in town, and when you looked at the menu, the only drink they had was beer. And you hated beer. You have always hated beer and you hated even more the face people make when they heard that you don’t like beer, as if they just heard someone claiming that he hated chocolate or babies.

And yeah, you hate both of them, also.

They started talking. They first talked about work, each of them talk about what they did at work. Then they talked about the work of their boyfriend/girlfriend. They talked about some non-subjects in the middle, then they started to gossip their ex-colleagues. Once that was done, conversations of their private lives started. They talked about their wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, they talked about how they enjoy being single when they obviously did not, they talked about the prices of cars, of real estate, of clothes, of a visit to a famous hairdresser. They talked about children, the dream to have children, the problems of their children, and their parents, their in-laws, their distant uncle’s neighbour’s dog. They talked about clothes again. They talked about cars again. They talked about real estate again. They talked about real estate once again. They talked about real estate till the cow come home. In your desperation for the party to be over, you started to imagine a group of cows arrived and attacked the bar. Of course nothing of this sort happened.

You pretended that you’re listening. Of course you were not really. You asked yourself, is it my fault? Is it my fault that I really don’t care about the new boyfriend, the marketing project or the newborn baby of my colleagues?

No, it isn’t. It isn’t because at the end of the day, they don’t care about you either, and even if they do, it doesn’t even matter. The point is, why on earth do people seemingly enjoy these useless conversations? And why were you there, against your will, wasting your time? And how is it fair that you’re not even supposed to be writing this article at all because it is almost politically incorrect to complain about useless social events?

Because that is how this world works, they say. You have to socialise with people, they say, even when they clearly do not offer you any insight of anything at all apart from the mundane realities that we’re going through. And when you look around, everybody else seemed to be genuinely having fun. Gosh, I hate having fun. You said to yourself.

Yes, that’s it, having fun. I have never been able to fully seize the point of having fun. I looked at the moments when people claim that they had fun, and I am confused. They claim that they had fun because they were surrounded by human beings with whom they have no real connection, they talked about things that did not interest anyone at all, and they became painstakingly embarrassing after binge drinking. If that is really what fun is to the majority of human beings, let me die at the bottom boredom.

The trouble is beyond the simple fact of people having fun in incredible situations. The real trouble is useless conversations are killing other conversations. In a room full of conversations about newborn babies and consulting projects, no one can possibly start a debate on euthanasia or the use or overuse of plastic. And while we’re at it, let’s be honest, it doesn’t apply only to drinks between colleagues. Whenever one meets someone new in any kind of situations, there is a great chance that the conversation stays dreary from the beginning to the end. Jobs, clothes, career, children, real estate. Nothing new, nothing inspiring, nothing creative ever comes out, dullness reigns till the cows come how, go out, and come home again.

Finally, after a full 3-hour long presentation, you were finally free to leave. Of course, you were free to leave from the beginning, in a theory, but you were really free to leave only after a certain amount of time spend amongst these dreary conversations, which demonstrated, wrongly, that you enjoyed the night and you were ‘part of the team’. Call it a “dullness tax”, if you may.

On the way back home you listened to some teenage-girls-resistance-against-the-world song again. It was funny, you hated teenagers when you were a teenagers and you still dislike them now, but now you knew that they had some luxury that you don’t have anymore. They can scream that they’re against everything, but you, a miserable, insignificant adult can only try to adapt yourself to the society, lest you’d be called an unfit. When you’re an unfit as a teenager, you’re just an unfit, that’s not funny, sure, but as an adult it makes you a total joke. You cannot disagree with the dreariness that keeps the world the way it is, you cannot refuse to be part of this society, and when you turned back, you see no way out.

When did all of this start? And how long is it going to last? I don’t know, but somehow I’ll have to find a way out of all of these before the end of myself. Before useless communication eats me alive.

No Exit

April 16th. It was supposed to be a pleasant day of spring. It must indeed be one for some of us. The sun is fragile and the sky is bleached blue, French high schoolers are queueing for a subway sandwich with their best friend of the day.

They are very different from Chinese high schoolers. They don't wear our saggy, unfitting uniforms and they don't look like that they are putting on a fight of life and death. Last time I checked, the lot of Chinese highschoolers has not improved much. I'm not pleased or infuriated. It makes no difference for me now.

I have left my hometown under the most common circumstances at the age of 18 to go to a not-so-bad university, in the jealous eyes of many of my peers as well as their parents. It was not only about me being able to get out of the town, it was also about the fact that girls like me wasn't supposed to be able to achieve anything other than being pretty and useless. After all, throughout my high school life, I did not renounce my right of playing on the computer or my mobile phone, I did not cut my hair to show my determination to succeed, my best friend was close to be a highschool dropoff, and I skipped school relatively regularly. I did not see any of these as something to stop me from succeeding the university entrance exam, but other people disagreed, apparently. According to them I did not suffer enough, theirfore unfit for success.

They should be glad to see that I haven't succeed anything in my life after all, and will not do such a thing in the foreseeable future.

Not that I was really up to anything in the first place. Actually, what to do with my life had not been my major concern until relatively recently. Probably until August, 2014. That wasn't too late if I had been born in 2001, alas I was born long before that. It took a while for me to realise, though, that I am not interested in any of the jobs that commonly exist in the job offering list. I'm curious when I see someone in my contact list becomes a marketing director, but I'm not really jealous even if I'm in the place where I am. I'm curious because I wonder if he's promoted to do more sophisticated powerpoint presentations, or if he's giving himself the title because he had opened a new Instagram account. Then again, it makes no difference to me.

I've been thinking about myself. It sounds selfish as a sentence, but at least it is very honest. I had thought about the rest of the world, but it strikes me how little difference that makes. My abilities are limited, my emotions are pale, my financial means are contrained at best, my political orientation doesn't matter since I cannot vote and I'm a foreigner. I looked at the world with despise, but I might as well be part of it. We are all here, the basis of this system of billboards, credit cards and real estate agents. We're or part of it, or nothing at all. Me for one would not like to live in North Korea.

I have sent 50 emails since the beginning of the day. I send about 750 email per week. All in the same style, a business professional tone that is as charismatic as a swivel chair. If none of them existed, the world is still going to be the world as we know. That's about the size of it. But it doesn't make any difference to me.

With time passing, the question of what to do with my life seems to be less and less relavent. I might as well just sit on the same swivel chair, send identital emails and wait to be replaced by a robot. There are thousands of examples of people trying to change their life with success, but there is no available example of people trying to make a less boring world with success.

We're all in the gutter, and most of us stay in the gutter.

Hey, you weirdo.

It was last year, at the end of May, when I woke up to the horror that there was water with blackish dirt everywhere on the floor of my apartment; it went from the kitchen, passing the corridor, until the toilets and the entrance of the bedroom. It turned out that because of the historically heavy rain of the night before, a major tube of the building had been overloaded therefore blocked. By the time that I woke up, it was still raining a little bit; it was the end of May but it might as well have been the beginning of February if you looked at the colour the sky.

Then just all of a sudden an idea came to my mind: I probably would not find any shelter by myself if I indeed would need one. As a matter of fact I did not need to, since the damaged area was limited and in any case I will not have to find a shelter by myself anyway. But it did shock me a bit, even as a fact that I had subconsciously known for very long time, which is that I do not have any friend here in Paris. I do have friends in fact, but most of them do not even live in this country. So why did I always say yes when they ask me if I have a lot of friends in Paris?

I know, everyone lies, but I wonder why did I do it for this question.

That reminded me of one day in my second year of primary school, it was a sunny day—it’s almost ridiculous, my hometown, a depressing city whose sky looked mostly like a dirty mop, was always sunny in the worst of my memories. That day, the 9-year-old me got 80 out of 100 in a class math test, and when my parents went to pick me up for dance classes after school, the teacher who was in charge of my class had a long talk with them—or as I would call it, the teacher reported a long list of crimes that I committed to my parents.

Someone who got only 80 out of 100 for mathematics should stop dancing and focus on studying, she said; this kid never finished her meal and threw the rest away, never thought about the poor children in Africa who would dream to have her food, she said; on the top of all of this, she even does not have any friend, there must be something wrong with her. My parents looked shocked at the result of my mathematics exam, but mostly ashamed when they learned that I did not have any friend. They promised to stop me from going to dancing classes, eat more, but were almost too ashamed to talk about the friend thing. How could she not have any friend?

I learned so much that day. I had not known that 80 out of 100 was that bad, I did not realize that me not able to eat the food from the school cantina would cause children famine in Africa, and definitely did not think not having friends was a crime and a sign that I have ‘something wrong’. But what did I know as a kid of 8 year-old? My parents were convinced at least. They stopped me from going to dance classes, told me to stop dreaming about being a dancer and think about something more realistic, and started to ask me almost everyday if I made any friend at school.

They kept asking me, why didn’t I make any friends? And I did not know how to explain, that I just didn’t find anyone to really befriend with. How come? There are so many people in your class? I don’t know, there was just no one that I can befriend with, they’re not awful but I don’t really see myself being friend with them, is that a crime?

Inside of my primary school classes you have different circles formed around different ‘center person’, such as the circle of the prettiest girl, the circle of the son of a rich chain restaurant owner, the circle of a girl that knew many seniors of the school, etc. I was pretty much an outsider of all these and I liked it that way, but the pressure of making some good friends to prove that there was nothing wrong with me pushed me into trying to be part of the circles. But me trying to be part of the circles was a bit like Turkey trying to enter European Union: most of the members were okay to talk to me or even lend me a pencil when I needed one, but why should we accept you as part of us? You are not beautiful, not rich, and you know no one outside of this class, and come to think about it, you’re weird, otherwise why are you not in any circle yet? Okay if you want to play with us, but probably you should look after our clothes while we are playing, you’re a newcomer after all.

Mum told me to be nice to them, to give them compliments, to be as friendly as I could get. But since the more contact I had with them the less I was able to do any of these. I hated myself, when I tried to tell a girl that her clothes were pretty and she said of course you wouldn’t have the money to buy things from this brand, when I sat in the corner of the playground to take care of the coats of the girls who were playing together. It felt weird, I had sat in the corner of the playground before, but I had never felt that lonely, and supposedly I became ‘part of it’. Still, I followed them wherever they went, I was afraid that they would somehow leave me out of their plans, and make me the weirdo who did not have any friend again.

What was the point?

I did not really become friend with anyone in my primary school, I was much less happier since I became ‘part of it’, and I was constantly worrying if they would throw me out of the circle all of a sudden. But my teacher and my parents believed that I did make friends with them, probably that was all what mattered. That was all that mattered even for me—at least I was not a weirdo, as they said.

It was almost 15 years ago, and I never had a chance to ask my teacher how bad it was to get 80 out of 100, why should I stop dancing, and just why was there ‘something wrong with me’ when I did not have friends. But I know at least one thing for sure, it is that not having friends is still a shameful thing to admit, even if I am in a different continent now, it did not change at all. The society divides people into different circles: classmates, colleagues, or other things, somehow you’re always supposed to find a friend within a certain circle, otherwise you’re—weird. Being friendless, for one reason or another, somehow reflects—for the rest of the world—that you’re very possibly a terrible person, whereas if you’re single, they would say that it was just luck and time, and after all you can be okay or even proud of being single if you want to. No one tells you that to make friends you need luck and time too, you need the occasion to meet the right person, and definitely no one would tell you that it is okay to have no friends and even be proud of it.

It’s probably not okay anyway. Probably everyone needs a shoulder to cry on, a heart to talk to, and a shelter when your apartment is ruined by natural disasters. But when I thought about me sitting in a corner on that playground in a weirdly sunny day, I know that it is better to be alone than to be surrounded by people and feel lonely, just so that I could look normal. Don’t stigmatize people for not having friends; they’re probably just as normal as you are.

#friends

The Memory of A Left Ear

I often dream about my high school. These dreams are usually nightmares, and if not, they are certainly filled with a queer blankness that makes my heart feel heavy minutes after waking up. It feels like probably a certain regret from that period of my life has been haunting me and trying to get me back there in order to modify a part of my memory, just every time I was there, I never knew what was it.

I had a stressful student life in high school, used to get up at 6 am, arrive at school at 7, leave school at 8 pm and study until after midnight, from Monday to Saturday. That might be a regret but as far as I was born in China there was little room for improvement; in any case, others high school in China had only worse schedules. I spent days and nights studying things that I had mostly forgotten at the moment when I finished all my exams, but I don’t think I would have done otherwise if I could. It was thanks to my good exam results that I was admitted by my university, therefore get out of my hometown forever and for good. I would have loved to have a different teenage life but there was nothing I could do. So if there was no much to change there, what is this regret?

These recent days I have got a bit of an idea. It might be this accident happened during the graduation ceremony that I almost forgot during these years. And it didn’t even have too much to do with me.

The graduation ceremony was an ordeal. I don’t know if anyone would attend it anyway should it have been any other day than the day to take the university entrance exam result certificate. It was supposed to be an occasion to meet our schoolmates for the last time as the students of this school, to remember the best of our memories that we shared, and to give each other the best wishes in the future. But it became an ordeal, because it was just another occasion for the senior managers of the school to give useless long speeches about how they love the country and Chinese Communist Party and how we as the alumnus of the school should do exactly the same. When we were finally released from the ceremony we ran out of the building as soon as possible, I still remember the weather was as pleasant as never, with the sky blue and smooth like silk. Everything was charming for about two minutes: the weather was good, and students gathered under the sunshine talking about future and dreams. In my six years of student life on this campus I had never felt that free, and I was sad because the best moment was going to be the last. Then this accident happened.

While about 15 of us were together chatting, our responsible teacher for our class suddenly appeared with this severe facial expression, ordering, ‘ZY, you, come here.’

Our responsible teacher was a middle-aged man of around 50 years old who worn a pair of medal-framed glasses and mostly greyish clothes. He was a competent Chinese teacher, a determined man who allowed not objection to his plans; he went on a fury when he realised any of his students have any other preoccupation than studying, and he rarely smiled, but when a student he did not like did very well in exams, he had this queer mocking smile as if he was saying ‘oh really? Next time you might fail.’

ZY was not exactly a friend of mine. He was a friend of my friend and since we were classmates anyway, we did study and play sometimes together. But there was something that stopped me from knowing him better than I did, probably because he was an all-time rule-following good student that our responsible teacher treated as an example for everyone and I was a bit of the little rebel of the class. I was confused at the facial expression of the teacher at his appearance, even more by what he said, for normally the one who was ordered to ‘come here’ was someone like me.

‘Take that thing on your ear off!’

‘Eh?’

ZY just got his ear pieced the day before, and we were talking about it just now. We were asking him if he disinfected his ear correctly, and that he should be careful while taking shower and so on. Why did he have to take it off? True, the school ruled that we could not were any accessory, but didn’t we just graduate?

ZY did not seem to understand much more than I did. The honour student of the last three years looked into the eyes of the responsible teacher with disbelieve and horror, not being able to pronounce a single word. His face became very red, while the rest of us looked at each other, not sure how to react.

Seeing that ZY did not follow his order immediately, the responsible teacher went on shouting, ‘Are you deaf or what? Now! Take it off! What do you think you look like? You look neither like a man nor a woman—you just look like a gay! Don’t you have any shame? Don’t you have any dignity? Take it off right now, don’t make me feel shameful for you!’

With a bit of hesitation and clear anger in his eyes, finally ZY decided to follow the orders of the teacher. For the rest of the time, everybody was rather quiet. ZY’s left ear was swollen and red, his face changed from angry, to disbelieve, then to aloof. As too me, come to think about it, I can hardly believe that it was the last time for me to be in my high school. After getting my exam result certificate, I put my school uniform into the trash bin of the classroom, left school sulking, without even a single tear shed. I probably wanted to cry for a moment, but my heart was not there anymore. I wanted to do something, but I ended up doing nothing. I did not think I’d really leave my school like being released from prison, but finally that was how it was, and there was no better description.

That might be the thing I wanted to do the most, if I could do anything to change my high school life: to ask our teacher just how did he feel entitled to inappropriately insult ZY for breaching the rule of a school he was not attending anymore? Just how entitled he felt to control his students according to the rules that were not applicable to them anymore, or according to his own reactionary views of masculinity that did not have anything to do with us anyway? And him out of all the people there, him who had done nothing but following the rules? We spent 3 years studying under pressure from every direction, without the right to question the authority, to have any hobby other than playing on mobile phones during class, to change the colour or shape of our hair even just moderately, or just to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Just when we thought that was finally the end, the authority arrived, claiming that he was going to control us so long as he could. Just why?

Unfortunately I did not pose any of these questions. I stayed silent together with everybody else, even we knew very well the order of the teacher unreasonable, his language inappropriate, his attitude lamentable. But I froze as everybody else, probably because we were a bunch of cowards, probably because we were used to treat the authority as unchallengeable, or probably just because we were educated by teachers and the society as a whole to not to mind other people’s business. Now I regret, but it is all too late.

This accident was probably not the most painful experience in my high school life, but when it came back to my mind I realised that there were few things that sadden me much more than it does. But I had let go the moment when I could react, now I can only sigh, and wish without any real hope, that this kind of accident do not happen too often.

Foreignness

Foreignness will stay with me until forever. I guess I am fine with it.

It has been 2 years and a half since I arrived at the land of wine and cheese. 2 years and a half is nothing for a country, in history we’ve seen countries that screwed themselves up for 20 years or more but they can still get up and build everything anew. At least before the technological revolution that is taking place right now. But for an individual, if you wasted 20 years of your life taking a wrong path, we can pretty much say that you’ve wasted your life.

I haven’t wasted the last 20 years of my life. I can’t say that for the last 2 years and half either, it would indeed be very unfair. In terms of quantitative goals, I haven’t failed entirely after all. I wanted to settle in Europe, France or elsewhere, so that I would not need to return to China. That I certainly achieved. But when it comes to qualitative aims, the results are more than ambiguous. I wanted to be here, I wanted to be part of it, partly because I have always felt that I was an outcast in one way or another in China, and naïve as I was I thought if I go somewhere else, I’ll finally find myself fitting in. I actually thought if I go to a metropolis like Paris where all kinds of people could be found, this feeling of foreignness would fade away gradually. That was blatantly unrealistic.

To be sure, I did find more people here to talk about politics freely than in China, where many people get offended for any legitimate criticism on the Chinese government. And I do appreciate the people who are open to listen to different opinions rather than keep asking me about ‘why do the Chinese eat dogs’. But my sense of foreignness actually never fades away. It actually stays with me and grows stronger. I speak the language quite well, the food is generally good for me, I still enjoy the city, but I know still, that as long as I live, I will never be part of this society, no matter what I do. I will feel like a foreigner, forever and always. How could I feel less like a foreigner, when I know that my parents are thousands of miles away, and if anything happens to them, there is nothing I could do, at least not immediately? How could this sense of foreignness fade away, when people are all the time very surprised that I could speak French and I know quite a lot about French politics, because they supposed that I should not be able to? How could I feel any less alone, when I realize that to talk to most of my friends I need to calculate the time difference to avoid waking people up at 2am? Not to mention every time when I did anything different, rightly or wrongly, there is always someone who sums it up as ‘because she’s Chinese’. Does my nationality, or rather, western people’s stereotype of my nationality, have something to do with everything that I do? I learned in life, that it does for many a few people. Because after all, I am a foreigner.

Sometimes I walk alone on the streets, and I started to wonder if it would be the same for the rest of my life. I am not unhappy, but what if everything around tells that I do not belong here, and what if I do not know where I belong anymore?

There are things in life that we do not choose. Our family, our place of birth, our physical appearance and so on. Then there are things that we do choose. Our subject of study, our job, our place of living. It is the consequences of our choices that are out of control. I might as well just accept that I will forever feel differently, think differently, while living this life that I chose.

#foreignness france China immigrant

A million and one times, thank you.

Because there is absolutely nothing pleasant or fair about raising a child.

Before I turned 19, we did not have a completely peaceful relationship. As a teenager all I wanted was to be alone, eat meat and read only books that interest me, but you wouldn’t have any of that. You asked me to eat more vegetables and I hated it, even though I know I needed it. You asked me to do more sports and I hated it, even though I know it is for my own good. You said that I had to make more friends and I hated it, but for this I should probably defend myself: a real friend never comes and should never come from deliberate efforts. You asked me to study more—well, several times at the last year of high school, it was you who called the teachers in the morning saying that I was sick, so that I could sleep one more hour.

I left home at the age of 19 to study in Macau, and it was not you who got all emotional and asked for Skype every now and then. It was always my dad. Given his health situation I also knew how important it was to well manage his emotions, and when it comes to you—I was sure that you would manage yourself. I was just unreasonably sure that you were happy for me to be finally out of Mainland China. I am still sure you are. You never wanted to limit me within our horrendous hometown just so that we could see one and another regularly, you had it yourself and you wanted something different for me. I was convinced that you are the superwoman, someone very much disciplined and wished me to be the same, someone who looks so young that people always thought that you were my sister, who is slim but strong in the same time, who always jokes about everything and anything with insouciant laughter. and I just didn’t see you as someone who cries to her pillow at night because she misses her daughter.

I thought you were this superwoman, and I wanted to be the same. I almost never cry in front of you even in the airport, because we always tell each other that it was better that I left for new adventures. Until last Wednesday when I went to the airport with you, until when it was finally the time that you had to go, after years of constant separations from each other, we finally cried on each other’s shoulders.

We had good reasons to cry. We had not seen each other for 2 years, and when we finally met each other again, we spent merely 10 days together, including one last day in the airport. It was not enough, but it could never be enough, especially when we do not know when will be the next time. During these 10 days, you witnessed the best day (so far) of my life, I witnessed, on the other hand, your physical fatigue that could not be covered by psychological satisfaction. During the last 2 years I gradually realized that you are not as strong as you were anymore, that you got sick as well, that you do get a bit older day by day, that one day nobody would say that you look like my sister anymore because of the wrinkles and grey hair that you would have, that you do not miss me less than anyone else. Before coming you talked to me more and more on the phone, you told me big and small happenings in detail; after you arrived we spent the maximum amount of time together, we talked about things that we did not talk about on the phone. Still we are missing out from each other’s life. It’s like reading a book by following only the main storyline and ignoring supposedly useless descriptions of meaningless happenings. You thought you would know enough at the end of the book, but eventually you still don’t know enough about the characters. You merely have a blurry sketch of them without any colour.

It was 10 am in the airport. You held me very tight; so I held you very tight too, then I realized how slim you are. I felt like that I was holding a child, and you kept caressing my hair, as if you was trying to make sure that I was still there, because the next second I might disappear, I might become the voice in the phone from on the other side of the earth once again. And so I did.

There is really nothing pleasant about raising a child. You spent one great part your life to provide her with a decent life, to make sure that she is fine and well, instead of travelling around the world or simply enjoy some quiet time reading on your balcony. During her rebellious teenage years you are supposed to be there when she was bullied, when she created troubles, or simply when she was not having good results in exams. And all this might not be appreciated as much as it should be, because your daughter might happen to want to be stupid and screw herself up. Finally she started to be understanding, be nice, she started to realize how much you love her, but now she has her own life, and you are most of the time only on the other side of the phone. And one day you would be like a child, you would need her help like she used to need you (with the almost non-existent Chinese social welfare system, you would very probably need her more than she needed you), but she would be several thousand miles away, and you wanted it for her yourself, because you know that she is happier there. All in all, you spent most of your tears on this little monster, but still all you want is her smile.

There is nothing pleasant or at least fair about raising a child. There might still be some pleasant moments, but all in all, it is a heartbreaking job. Thank you a million times for undertaking it, my mum, my dear.

Racism against Asians are not racism? Then what is it?

It was 2014, at the departure party of Pauline. She was from my school, a joyful, smiling girl that I befriended through another friend of mine. I had not known her for a long time, but she was always kind to me and invited me to her party. I remember the party as a good memory until the arrival of this guy called Cedric.

As the party goes on, as I was standing about two meters from him talking to another girl, I heard him saying to a group of other people: ‘euh, isn’t it weird that there is a Chinese girl here in such kind of a party?’

Some people said ‘you’re a bit racist hahaha’; others simply laughed it off. I did not even react to it. I guess they thought the reason why that I did not say anything was because I just found it to be a joke and no need to make a fuzz of it. But they were wrong. I wanted to keep quiet because it was a nice atmosphere, I wanted Pauline to remember the night as a nice memory. Even though in the same time I wanted to say to this Cedric, as well as to those people around him who thought it to be a harmless joke, that what is said is disturbing to be, and whoever think it to be a harmless joke should think twice.

Why should you think twice? Because imagine if we replace ‘Chinese’ with another nationality. ‘Isn’t it weird that there is an Arab here in such kind of a party?’ ‘Isn’t it weird that there is a Jew here in such kind of a party?’ ‘Isn’t it weird that there is a black here in such kind of a party?’

I hope that by now you can see what I mean. Why is that while people are becoming increasingly sensitive about racism, racism against Asian people is hugely tolerated? Why is the absence of black nominee on the Oscar list outrageous, but the joke during the ceremony of Asian people being uncreative accountants and the source of cheap labour is considered only as a ‘harmless joke’? It is true that we in China we are good at counterfeiting; we do a lot of it. But why is describing black people as slaves considered as racism, while describing Chinese people as counterfeiters not? Where is this double standard from? I am not saying that other non-white ethnics are not facing any racism, on the contrary indeed they do, but why racism against different people is treated differently? Because there are different ‘racisms’?

Among many other reasons, the awful truth is that we do not stand up for ourselves. Studies have shown that Asian origin immigrants integrate the best in western societies, and I believe one of the reasons why is that we do not like to create troubles – even when we have all the right to do.

We do not make trouble, sometimes because of culture background, but also because there is not much violent racism against Asians. When there is no violence to draw people’s attention, ordinary racism become tolerable and as it is now, normalised; by the others, but also by ourselves.

It’s about time for everyone of us, not only Asians, but also non-Asians, to realised that we’re treated unjustly. It’s time to realise that first, not all the Asian looking people are Chinese. You should know this, because next time when you’re trying to make a racist statement, better not start with ‘that Chinese’ before you have got a minimum idea of her/his nationality.

And secondly, it’s better that you do not make any racist statements, but if you do and when you do, you should realise, and recognise that you’re being a racist. It’s when racists do not even have an idea about themselves being a racist. There are things that you would consider as ‘common joke’, it’s time to realise that it is not funny.

It’s not because that it sounds like a harmless joke that it really should be. ‘It sounded’ perfectly normal for many people to put all the Jews into ghettos, ‘it sounded’ perfectly normal to sell and treat African slaves worse than animals. It doesn’t any more, for everyone’s sake.

I don’t know if someone is going to call this the scream of extreme political correctness. I know that I am asking for something legitimate: the end of ordinary racism against Asian people. And if such a legitimate request would really be considered as extreme, then there must be something wrong, and history has already told us what is wrong.

(But well, history also tells us that we’ve learned nothing from history. I just hope that for once we will do.)

#racism #asian

13th of November and afterwards

November is never the month to restore hope in human race. It is generally grey, rainy and cold, days are getting remarkably shorter, and long nights are the best moment to reflect on the dark side of life. This is true for every year, but particularly the November of 2015.

It might not be fair for me to blame November; after all, in my personal perspective, human race has been constantly helpless, November or not. But there is a reason to say that this November has shown how helpless we are. The Paris attacks, which happened precisely in the city that I am living in, was a tragedy that consists of blood and tears. But what happened afterwards actually demonstrates something equally pathetic, if not worse. Using the attacks as an excuse, all the rhetoric against refugees resurrected themselves overnight—maybe resurrection is not quite correct since it never really dead.

In European countries, in the United States, voice from the right wing is influencing public policies and shaping them into an increasingly nationalist form. It comes in the name of security but is built on the ground of selfishness. Turning back to the Syrian refugees that are desperate to escape from the hand of monstrous murderers is the same as indirectly murdering them, but this, according to many, doesn’t matter. As the French army intensifies its strikes on Syria, civilians are being injured and killed, in addition to the threat of Daesh, now they have ever more desperate to leave their destroyed home. In the meanwhile, some of us in western countries shout at them, ‘don’t come. Die at home. We prefer that you die at home.’

You can say that you just do not want them to be in your country, but you do not wish them to die. Well, what difference does it make anyway?

The direction that we are turning to now is toxic. On 13th November, the terrorists were not trying to stop Parisian people from taking a drink, having a cigarette on the terrace or enjoy a concert; it was trying to (and unfortunately partly succeeded) create Islamphobia within the people—the young people, that are more tolerant and open-minded that the other parts of the society. Hatred towards Muslims is what Daesh needs, because the increasingly widespread Islamphobia is going to do nothing but enlarge the division of the society, which is already huge. The left out part of the society, the ones that receive hatred and cannot find their place in the society, will consequently become vulnerable to the temptation of terrorism; it is not that complicated to see that the more islamphobic we are, the more fighters Daesh will have, and the stronger Daesh will become.

There is of course a lot of complications that we will have to cope with when we accept a huge number of refugees with a different culture, which is the same as accepting Jewish refugees during the WWII: it should not be the reason to leave them alone when they are otherwise dying. What is needed is to have comprehensive screenings of the refugees once they arrive—which is not yet the case for the European Union. But preventing the society from becoming racist and islamphobia is at least equally important, if not more, since many a few of the terrorists are European passport holders. To fight back Daesh as a normal citizen who is neither a politician nor a soldier, we need not only to carry on our lives—having fun, enjoying music, food and love, but also to be tolerant and conscious about the importance of a tolerant society, a society that recognises that other people’s lives matter as well. That’s what history and reality is telling us, but as always, history is telling us that we have learned nothing from history, and people are too lazy to learn about the reality.

With most of us are, thanks to Internet, having more and more information to refer to, some of us are having ever less ability of thinking about anything. Extreme politicians are getting ground across the Atlantic, in several mature democracies, and this is exactly the reason for it: extreme politicians constantly and recklessly present simple answers to complicated questions; it is tempting for some to accept that they are right because that could spare them the time to think about what is really happening. Why is there unemployment? Foreigners! What should we do? Kick them out! Why is there crime? Foreigners! What should we do? Kick them out! I used to believe that we, humans, have a problem of being naturally evil. Now that I reconsider it, the real issue is actually laziness to think. The mass information that we get everyday, from which we can have much valuable thinking, is becoming the reason why people stop thinking, and that is why some people are easier than others to be manipulated, by the media or by the government, without even noticing it.

It is not only sad but also scaring to see that democracies are democratically becoming inhuman. If democracy is deteriorating, it is not only because countries like China is not playing the game, but also because voters in democracies are horrifyingly clueless, making no effort in getting any clue and being completely comfortable in letting their cluelessness murdering other people just because they do not know them. If one day terrorism is really going to conquer the world, you do need to remember that you have your own blood on your hand.

#paris #paris attacks #refugees #terrorism doesn't cure stupidity

Kids’ Stories

When I was a little kid I was in one of the high-ranking primary schools of my hometown.

I still remember being this isolated little kid in that weird classroom, where we had to swear that we were going to love our country and the communist party until the end of my life. I didn’t pronounce a single word when we had to swear together, though I pretended to do so. I was of course not as politically aware as I am right now, but I was (and I still am) simply an unpatriotic kid and I decided that nobody could decide what I was going to love. If I am not going to love this country and this party (I barely knew what it was anyway), nobody could ever force me to do so.

I was a complicated kid who didn’t have friends until the fifth year of primary school. The good thing was nobody was bullying me: I was too normal to catch any attention. (There will be something about bullying in the coming paragraphs). I was quite well by myself, if anything was annoying me, it must be my teachers. They were sure that a kid cannot just stay by herself—in a way they were right, I know—so they had several meetings with my parents, even made some awkward efforts such as encourage everyone in the classroom to play with me. I looked like the Grumpy Cat I guess: nope, leave me alone.

I think that actually said a lot about myself, though now I am a completely changed person. I am much more outgoing and less grumpy now, most of the time, but I still hate being forced to socialize. It was indeed sickening when I was told in this business school that you have to keep good relations with your classmates, because they might one day become your business partners or rivalries. Again in a way they were right.

Now I am indeed different that the little girl who was always alone, silent and read a lot of books. I like to talk to people as much as I like to read book, and I learn a lot from interpersonal interaction, probably more than I could ever learn from books. Nevertheless I like to keep a conversation only when it inspires me in one way or the other. Otherwise I am just better off being alone. My attempts to change myself to other directions were in vain. I was in the student union at the beginning to university, trying to make more friends than just a handful of people ‘that I really enjoy being with’. I failed spectacularly. I guess the core of one’s personality will not change easily. I don’t enjoy being with people if it is only for the sake of not being alone. I’m truly happy when I’m with people that I appreciate, but otherwise I enjoy being by myself. Too bad as a kid I was not able to explain this to everyone. Too bad they were so sure—they might still be—that one, an adult or a kid, cannot be happy and healthy if he or she is alone.

So go back to the story of the little Grumpy Cat. Under pressure from all directions, I started to play with some other kids with whom I had nothing to say anyway.

Like the Grumpy Cat: I had some fun. It was terrible.

My primary school was kind of a good one. In China, as a theory you’re supposed to attend compulsory education at the school that is closest to your home registration, but people with relations are always able to send their kids to good schools. In China, people with good relations are always able to do what they want, including lightly break the law. That might explain another reason why I cannot live there.

My class was unfortunately full of this kind of ‘special cases’. I remember the richest kids were the most popular ones, because everybody—yes, I mean it, every kid—was talking about how rich this little girl S and this little guy J were, not even discreetly they said that they want to become friends with S and J. Had I cared more about having friends, I might have found money to be something great. But the kid in isolation was thinking about something else, as always.

If kids with money were popular ones, it is not hard to imagine that the poor ones were bullied.

I almost forgot that story until quite recently. The last year of high school was such a pain in my brain that I was very much convinced that before and after that year things were definitely better. But then I remember this kid called F. He had darker skin than most of the other kids (in the up north of China, we tend to be very pale), always dropped this or that on the floor, always laughing—a very normal kid. This very normal kid was actually the subject of bullying by the rich kids. I remember them calling him ‘poor farmer’ and other things. But bullying in my primary school stopped at that level, fortunately. There was no violence as far as I remember, and even though always being mocked and laughed by everything he was doing, he was still always smiling. The (almost) good thing was that I don’t recall him being really ashamed of being poor. Maybe out of a kid’s frankness, he didn’t mind saying, ‘yes, my family is poor. It’s true.’

Along with F there were some other kids were bullied, but I remember only the story of F, because something else happened. The teacher that was in charge of my class ‘suddenly’ realized F was from a poor family. (Yes, after two years of being in charge of the class, listening to everyone call him a poor kid and witnessing his patched clothes.) She organized a donation from all the members of the class. The rich kids brought toys that they were tired of, used notebooks and broken pens, and some pocket money. They gave them to F as if they were saviors. I don’t know if at that age they understood what was hypocrisy. (In case you are wondering, no, at that age I had no idea about this word. But I was disgusted inside out.)

The teacher was even interviewed by a local newspaper for her initiative in ‘taking care of the disadvantaged students’.

I didn’t know what did F feel about that. I remember he was smiling as usual.

Before any question emerges here, I must say that I have no idea if this was the common case in China or not. The truth is this might not even be the case of the neighbor class. As I have no intention of generalizing people, I hope you will not either.

This way I spare myself from answering whether this was true all over China. And for those who want to give me a patriotic education, you can spare yourself from wasting your time as well.

#kids primaryschool bullying materialism

The Defender of Racism that you are

Going through the comments on any news regarding immigration flows to the EU can be quite a challenge on my temper, but still I try to do it from time to time in order to catch up a bit with how inhuman they are becoming. While some of them are just ranting absolutely nonsense, others are providing some seemingly vigorous arguments, which turn out to be, at the end of the day equally nonsensical.

We can try to have a conversation with several kind of person. Let’s call this imaginary person ‘Person A’.

Person A says he is tremendously sad about refugees died in the ocean, but saving them from the sea and increasing the efforts in these kind of action will encourage them from coming, and decreasing these efforts should naturally make them less inclined to take the risk of crossing the ocean in the first place, or Europe should do something to reduce the motivation of these people. Statistics reveals different reality. Operation Triton, a border-surveillance mission that operates south of Italy was suspended at the end of 2014, but the number of people that tried to cross the ocean increased regardless. People are coming because of various reasons, but if by discouraging them from coming you mean that Europe should terminate ISIS, stop civil wars and declare world people, you are asking too much from the EU, aren’t you?

Person A listened to this then replied yes I see, but still we need to discourage them from coming because we have already so many problems in Europe. We have a broken economy, rising unemployment and social inequality. We have to resolve our own problem first.

I find it very funny, that this kind of people can talk about humanity for one minute, and then talk about economy during the next minute as if humanity never exists. This is not to say that humanity and economy is incompatible, but when you’re talking about the European problems, you’re not ‘tremendously sad about the drown refugees’ anymore, I suppose.

‘No, of course I am still very sorry for what happened to them, but we do have economic problems here.’ No, you just made it quite clear, that people are dying in the ocean, in starvation, in civil wars and in the hand of jihadists, but since European is in such a dire economy, let’s just stay here, try (and fail) to resolve our problems (by austerity, who destroyed it went), in the meanwhile they can die if they must. Europe does not have too many refugees. Roughly 270,000 asylum-seekers have reached Europe by sea so far this year, it is still only one asylum-seeker for every 1,900 Europeans. With all the problems it has, the EU is still one of the biggest economies of the world. Lebanon has welcomed 1.1m Syrians, roughly a quarter of the local population. Turkey has taken 1.7m. Tanzania has hosted hundreds of thousands of Congolese and Burundian refugees. These are countries with much smaller economy, much bigger problems, and yet EU states can barely agree on sharing the refugee burden on Italy and Greece. At a moment when everybody is pointing his finger on Greece asking for cuts on public spending, asking the Greeks to respect ‘European values’, it is almost a funny questions to ask the owners of these fingers: how on earth do you think the Greeks should cope with this?

It might as well be worthwhile to point out that, even though person A talks about the problems that we have already in Europe, he shows no intention whatsoever in making any contribution. He has never given his sandwich to a homeless person, he exploits his employees whenever he can, then he goes to his Facebook posting something against Chinese people eating dogs and a supermodel wore real fur for a fashion show. ‘This is inhuman!’ said him. Maybe.

‘Still,’ said person A, after walking his dog, ‘these immigrants, Muslims, they are potential resources for terrorism. If you let them in, they might be the next terrorist targeting at the next Charlie Hebdo.’

It could be useful to start with how ISIS recruits its members online—which makes essential everybody a potential terrorist that might put threat to your peaceful life, including your atheist neighbour. Nope, not only Muslims, to your surprise perhaps. A pair of 22-year-olds from Birmingham bought a copy of “The Koran for Dummies” before leaving Britain to fight for IS last year (the dummies were arrested on their return after failing to delete jihadist snaps from their camera). But forget about that, the biggest flaw of this argument is that it is equal to say that in a building there is potentially someone who is going to set up a fire in the city. So to avoid that when the building is on fire, let’s just stand there and watch it burn.

Is that what you’re saying? No of course not, by the way look that this, your post against dog eating just got 15 likes.

Person A wouldn’t be stopped. ‘But still, they erode our values. Here we live in a democracy and they live in authoritarian regimes. We respect freedom and equality. They do not integrate to our society. They commit to crimes, from theft to violence. They just don’t fit in here.’

If we are talking about cultures, it is worthwhile to point out that cultures are not fixed terms in the first place. Have a spaghetti alla Bolognese might be something very Italian to do when you’re going to Italy, but 500 hundred years ago there was not even tomato in Italy. A woman in the US couldn’t marry a man of another race just a couple of decades ago, today she can marry a woman from any race if she wants. Cultures have no intention of keeping themselves in the way you got to know them, and they certainly do not need your defence. An inflow of new culture might result in some clashes, but before you surprise yourself, remember this is always the way cultures keep themselves dynamic.

The people that complain that newcomers do not integrate are also frequently those who block any effort to integrate them. They resent the public money spent on the newcomers, even though financial difficulty is one of the first reasons that newcomers cannot integrate in their host society. Then they talk about that newcomers do not respect their culture, but the fact is that they do not even offer any respect to these people, let along their culture.

‘But still, they are different and I just don’t want my country to keep them here.’

At this point of the conversation normally person A has already forgotten his commitment to humanity when he was ‘tremendously sad’ about the tragedy of the drown refugees. Still if you try to label him as a racist, you will meet a fierce self-defence: no, of course not, I have no problem with black people or Arabic people; one of my best friends is black!

No, having a black friend does not make you look less racist than you are, same as having a female wife does not make you look less sexist should you complain that women should be happy about what they’ve got rather than fighting for real equality. Let’s make this clear. You do not care about the refugees, nor do you care about the problems that are in Europe already. You claim to be an open-minded person, but even a tiny change in your world drives you nuts. You want to live in a static world where you’re surrounded by lily-white people, alas that world is not here anymore. You call yourself a patriotic defender of values, but me, I have difficulty in calling you a human. No, you’re not patriotic. You are not defending your culture, your identity, your nation, your society, your compatriots, first because you have yet to make your contribution to any of these above, second because you actually don’t understand any of these concepts above. You are racist; your anti-immigration rhetoric is heartless and brainless at the same time. Admit it so that at least you could be described as self-conscious. Alternatively you can be a racist and a coward at the same time. I do not see why not.

#racism #refugees #eu #crisis #greece

wnq-anonymous

10 Things You Should Never Say To A Depressed Person

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Taboo, glamorized, and misunderstood, depression is not fully recognized as a mental illness across the globe. Although studies inform the mass that depression stems from a biological disposition, it is mocked and minimized. Often when a friend or loved one reveals to us that they are struggling with depression, we have been taught in our society to form conclusions and solve their problems. We believe we are helping them by giving them a list of things to do. During their hardship, the most human approach is comfort and affection. Just listen.

Below, we have compiled a list of things you should never say to a depressed person. Uttering these words may cost your bond, drive someone to a deeper depression and create an irreversible distrust. Before we begin, we leave you with these wise words from Stephen Fry:

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”

Afficher davantage

Ask me

It is a cliché that is used at least once in one out of three Chinese TV series that I watched when I was a kid. A woman is pregnant. At the end of ten months of drama (including for sure some suspicions such as if her husband is cheating on her with her best friend and such) she is finally put into the operation room to give birth to this baby. And boom! There is a problem. Somehow the poor lady is in an unusual condition that the doctors had not observed for ages, and now she is unconscious. Between her child and herself only one can possibly be saved. The husband therefore has to answer the following question within a matter of several seconds: do we save your wife or your child?

It was (still is, I believe) such a common scene that until quite recently I have failed to even hear people ask the question of ‘why is the husband authorized to indirectly murder a new-born or his own wife’, let alone to get a plausible answer.

It is even more ridiculous if we take Chinese culture into consideration. In regions—especially those worse-off ones, the husband’s family has considerate influence on a woman’s post-marriage life. It is an embedded idea in traditional culture that a married woman should always give priority to her husband’s family. I have a thousand reasons to prove why this is pure absurdity, but here we can concentrate on the destiny of the poor lady in the operation room: an independent individual’s life is decided by another individual and his family, why isn’t there anyone stand up and ask this question? If she is to sacrifice herself to save her own baby, isn’t she the one who should have a say on it? And it is not impossible to make it happen. All it takes is a pre-operation agreement, and this agreement should be signed by the woman herself, rather than by anybody else. Why this agreement is not in practice, neither on the TV nor in really life?

Yes it is not only happening in TV series, but also in real life. And I’ve heard true story that the husband told the doctor to sacrifice the wife to save the child.

The other people, even outside of the operation room, constantly decide a Chinese woman’s destiny. I’ve seen girls in my regions—girls with great aspirations and potentials—are forbidden by their parents to pursue studies outside of my province. Not even out of this province! Let alone going abroad. Sometimes it is for financial reasons, but more frequently it is for ‘cultural’ reasons, a culture that assume that girls should not have aspiration whatsoever other than being a rich man’s wife, settling down and teaching their own daughter to commit exactly the same destiny they have committed. So the question is why are a girl’s parents authorized to decide a girl’s future? Indeed I’m sure it happens to guys as well, but more frequently, it happens to girls. If the parents of a boy stop him from going to another province, socially they would be criticized as ‘stopping him from pursuing his ambitions’, but when the same thing happens to girls, somehow—magically—it seems all legitimate. Where is the legitimacy come from?

Social norms encourage guys to explore all their potentials, but not girls. Social norms influence everyone in every society, yes, but in a society like the Chinese one, where no critical thinking is encouraged in any part of our education, social norms manipulate everyone—girls included—in a more profound manner. In public opinions, women that are successful yet unmarried all crave for a husband secretly, everybody else is calling them a ‘leftover girl’. Girls are, in generally, encouraged by everybody else, whether she wants or not, to follow the path of every other girl: find a stable job, be pretty and get married before 30. Even our ancestors were doing better jobs. You find quite a few girls that do not care that much about social definition of a girl in a Chinese classic written during Qing dynasty, but now in all the expressions of Chinese culture—be it films, TV series, paintings, sculptures, literature, everything a girl should be caring about, at the end of the day, is to get settled with a financially sustainable guy.

We are not doing a good job ourselves. Girls generally accept it, that we are at first the belongings of our parents, then our husbands. Which probably explains why the scene at the beginning of this blog didn’t raise any eyebrow until very recently. We let our parents decide for us, we let our society manipulate us, and potentially—our husbands kill us. Feminism is usually seen as a radical ideology by both male and female part of the population—something that happens even here in France at times, and I am always happy to have a discussion about how radically discriminated we have been, that the request for being treated equally sounds radical to some of you. It’s like when you heard that in India they forbid birds to be locked in cages, you think these Indians are radical, but you forget that birds are never supposed to be in cages.

But we cannot just accept what is happening, because if there is any hope in any change, if you hope that one day you will not be forbidden from trying to do what you want for your life, you will not be seen as a monster just because you don’t want to get married, and your husband and his family and anybody else for that matter will not be the one who decide if you are going to be alive or dead, the only thing to do is to start to admit that the problem exists, and the situation is not acceptable. Because it influences our life decisions, and at times even our very own existence.

It is, therefore, our duty—yes, duty—to recognize that a scene like that, in TV series or in life—is not acceptable. It is our duty to recognize that our body and soul, our past, present and future belong solely to ourselves, not to anybody else. We are not here to become the perfect girl of our parents, of the society, of our husbands (or even more absurdly, his parents), but to become ourselves. Nobody will encourage us to do so, until we ourselves start to do something about it, until we realize that it is necessary for us, not to become a heroine, but just not an object anymore, just to become a human like everybody else.

#feminism #china #destiny #debate #freedom #radical #normal

One Natural Need

‘Most people do not wish to accept that the order governing their lives are imaginary, but in fact every person is born into a pre-existing imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths. Our personal desires thereby become the imagined order’s most important defences.’

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

A great book as it is, I really cannot agree with this very sentence wholeheartedly.

The desire for some certain things are indeed shaped by imagined orders—social norms. The desire for traveling abroad, as quoted by Mr Harari, is a good example. An ancient Egyptian king might use his power to build a pyramid or get his body mummified, but he would never wanted to go shopping in Babylon.

But there is something that is not necessarily in line with the nature of Homo sapiens in this statement. It assumed that apart from basic physical needs, the rest of our desires are essentially shaped by the society rather than our nature. In a great part it is right, apart from the one awkward thing that could be physical and psychological, though more importantly psychological: love.

We need to be loved as social animals, with or without being informed by the society. Our desires for an apartment in the centre of Paris, for tanning on the French Riviera or for going on a shopping spree, they are desires that the society want us to have. The desire for being loved, on the contrary, comes from our deepest nature. We need to be loved just as we need to drink water and breath clean air. Before we started to want to travel, we already wanted to be loved by the people that we love. After the era of wanderlust, we still want to be loved by the people that we love. We need love all the time and we need to be loved back.

There is nothing wrong in it. There is everything wrong in it.

If there is something that is still true in the statement of Mr Harari, even regarding love, is that the expression of the desire for love has changed dramatically according to the changes in social norms.

If there is anything that I truly fear in this world, that must be that the desire of love is becoming a joke. But I live in such a society that whenever anybody takes anything serious s/he’d be certainly described as someone ‘who cannot just have some fun’. It is true for both the young and the old, both the rich and the poor. We created apps, Facebook groups and the like to make having fun as easy as possible, but what is truly sad is that if you get serious about anything you are not even supposed to get a serious reaction. ‘Why are you so serious? We are just having fun here.’ If you fall in love with someone at the first sight, you’re insane; if you fall in love later on, you should just ‘take it easy’. Because this is a world with no strings attached, and if you attach a string on your own neck, that’s your fault.

Somehow ‘having fun’ is becoming so important in the world that I live in. There is nothing really wrong if one wants to have fun, but there are many, many other things that are of greater importance, but it seems like we tend to dismiss it. And if there is a war between ‘having fun’ and these important factors, such as education, respect and security, it is hard to see ‘having fun’ defeats any of them, at least during a serious discussion. Only love is left in a pale, powerless state. We talk about the importance of education, respect and security, even having fun is an important thing to do nowadays, since everybody is stressed out in his/her professional/academic life. We need to have some fun. Love on the other hand sounds like something rather remote and at times problematic. We don’t want to waste our time in the search of satisfying one of our most natural needs, because we are becoming so far away from nature anyway, and that’s how we are ourselves as human beings.

Instead of socialising with friends we need more ‘likes’ on Instagram, more followers on Twitter, me too—I am no much better, let’s be honest—I need and like to know that people are coming to my blog, read it and give me comments. This is how social norms shaped our desires. But it is simply sad if we want so many aspects of ourselves to be loved, but not ourselves per se; it is simply sad that we can only love many aspects of one certain person but not this person per se, because s/he only want to have some fun, because we only want to have some fun.

We need to love and to be loved, but nobody is willing to admit it. It is all very ‘natural’ to claim to everyone that ‘I just want to have some fun’, but if you tell anybody that you need to be loved, you look almost weird, however natural this desire is. Especially in our sexist society—if you are a guy, you look vulnerable and nor manly the need for love and being loved, and if you are a girl, you look not only desperate—but also a lot of other ugly adjectives which I hate to name here. That’s not even the end of the story. In some societies that are more materialistic, the one in which I grew up if you want, the desire for love could be an absolute naïve joke.

We are a generation that are told #YOLO all the time. So we want more of everything, we want more travels, more life changes, more new experiences, more contacts, more sex, and even more hashtags. And indeed the fact that we keep changing our lives is one of the reasons for the transformation of the expression of love: falling in love cause a huge amount of emotional damages if the two persons in question are both leaving the city they met within the next one year. And it is becoming a trend that people keep moving, which is indeed a good thing that I appreciate. So why should we bother to love? We are busy, stressed young people living in modern societies, we move around and we know people all over the world, we are not the only one, the first one or the last one for each other, we are rivers that crossed in our flow. Maybe we just have some fun, which is easy for both of us.

Yes, we are not the only one, the first one or the last one of each other, and the emotional damages that will be potentially resulted by love could be huge. But how is the alternative better? How is having fun so important that we should be ashamed of claiming our natural desire, of some passionate love?

What I really realised after these years is that I’d prefer to feel hurt than feeling nothing at all. Love might be something heavy, even at times suffocating, but I know I need it just as I need a cup of coffee in the morning. And by the way, personally, doing something solely for the sake of having fun is not even interesting. I’ve passed that age, I really find myself more interested in writing this article in an insomniac night. In that case, I am having some fun right now indeed.

#love is all we need

Consume in Moderation

Almost 10 months since I arrived at CDG airport with my quasi-oversized luggage and a definitely over-excited heart. I remember seeing the shape of Paris from a window seat, I remember the chilling air of Paris at the end of August, I remember that I could barely explain how I found myself in Paris to the taxi driver by then—I guess I have a good reason to be proud of my current French level.

I was excited about coming back to Paris, because I was craving for something that only Paris has ever offered me, from the greatest museums to the tiny art galleries in the narrow streets of Saint Germain des Pres, from the second bookshops where you can find every kind of intellectual surprises to independent book sellers next to the river. If you go next the Seine tomorrow, in front of one of those stands, you might still find this retired-professor of La Sorbonne that I met two years ago at the beginning of a cold winter, who would tell you that he is a proud socialist and will always be.

You might think that I came here to do some artistic projects. Unfortunately, that is not even close. I came here to pursue my studies in international business, in a business school in La Défense.

I had never studied business before. I had some general ideas about business schools though, that they are most of the time the most expensive ones, and another one—quite interesting—is that people never ask you why you are going for business studies (apart from your interviewers). It was a clear comparison for me, as when I was in Portuguese Studies, I got actually tired of answering the question ‘why did you choose this’? But nobody was curious about the reason why I would go for a master’s degree in business, even though this did not sound like something closely matching my personality and interests. Pretty soon after arriving at Ieseg, I observed that it is common scene anyway: people never ask you why did you choose business. ‘Because that is practical, and what is practical is the thing to do.’ If you really ask, that would be the answer from most people.

Which makes wonder why some people hold this idea that business students are smart? After all, that sounds like one of the least inspiring reasons to pursue some studies I have ever heard.

That was my first observation in business schools. After the first few months I gathered that after all, business students are not any better or worse in general than the other students. They are probably more right wing, or more concerned about money, but that can be said about a lot of other domains. They are neither more intelligent, nor more stupid; however, those who do consider themselves as more intelligent than the others are indeed more stupid. And as business types are mostly extraverts, their stupidity could be shown much more easily. But that could be said about the intelligent ones as well, so giving the business bunch either an intelligent image or a stupid one is unfair. As far as I can tell, business students are people who want to study how business works in a modern society and how to improve it, which is exactly the reason why I do not understand either the hatred or the fascination about business schools.

I can relate to people’s hatred toward business. It is business that pushed most of my favourite independent boutiques out of business since they are not profitable enough to face the competition from modern business. I hate the fact that big chains like FNAC and Amazon are taking everything away from small bookshops; I hate the fact that business is changing the shape of this city. It is gradually losing its artistic halo, which was what drove me fall in love with this city at the first glance.

What I cannot deny—and nobody can, I suppose—is that however much we love the 18th century styled Paris, we cannot get rid of the imposed modernity any more. Business exists in everything and it is everything. The day I saw my favourite bookshop closed down definitively its doors was the moment when I wish the most that it had been just a little bit more commercial, so that it could have been profitable enough to survive. When I realised that I will never enter this little bookshop again while waiting for people or having an emotional crisis, I knew that it would be something unstoppable that all these bookshops are going to be replaced by standardised conveniences. As concluded by the Economist, literature will survive, because it will always have its market and profitability; not necessarily bookshops.

Profitability. All we have learned in a business school, in a nutshell, is about how do you find profitability and how to get the real profit. The cruel fact is that everybody needs profit for a simple reason—to survive. The word ‘business’ will get on the nerves of quite a few people, as I said, I can relate to that, but it is neither logical or reasonable to hate business as a whole, given that the society still needs profits to function. Plainly, we need to make money to survive, however disgustingly materialistic is sounds. If bookshops are to survive, they cannot rely solely one people’s emotional connections with them. They are essential in a soul of such a place, but living a modern world, we all need to find our feet on solid ground.

All these explain why I could not agree with any rhetoric that is entirely against business. But there is no need to have any fascination about business students or business in general either. Business schools do not produce more or less intelligence than any other school; it is one part of the society that is crucially needed, just as a lot others.

A society without business will be unimaginable, but a society without literature is by no means better. A society where everybody is in poverty is indeed miserable, but a society where inequality stops one part of the people to have any hope in life is by no means better. Business is a drug that we crucially need to make the society work, especially for Europe at this moment, but like most other drugs, we should take with moderation.

#paris #business #art #bookshop #librairie

The Racist Racism Victims

‘Asia is the most racist part of the world now.’

Yet again I saw a comment of this sort, and I can only agree with it, at least partly and only partly—after all, I have never lived in anywhere in Asia apart from China and Macao, and it has been a while since I left that part of the world. It is a shameful fact, given that we were and we are ourselves victims of racism. It is nevertheless such a persistent idea that embedded into Chinese culture, that 90% of the population do not even realise its existence, or just choose to ignore it. When you talk about it, they will furiously defend themselves and Chinese culture, to the point of starting to attack the west (same reaction as whenever you start to talk about any problem China has, such as the dictatorship of Communist Party or the poisonous pollution all over the place) as the only place where racism is originated and exists. The Chinese as a race used to be, and are still sometimes, the victims of racism. So the story sounds almost like the abused child’s theory: a child who is abused by his parent is likely to become a parent that abuses his/her child. And this is the reason why I decided to write about it: there is racism in China, much more severe than you might have imagined, and we need to at least realise it if we cannot fix it.

Ethnicism has a much longer history than racism. It started well before China had started to have any intensive contact with the other races of this planet. The often dominating ethnic, Han ethnic, considered themselves as a civilised, developed group and the other ethnics that lived in Chinese territory as uncivilised and unenlightened—they were nevertheless able to conquer Han ethnics several times in the history; retaliations were imposed on the Han ethnics, such as classifying the Han as an inferior ethnic.

Racism of China started since the very first time Chinese people have any real contact with the external world. They were seen, first with contempt, then with fear and contempt—At the dawn of being half-colonised by the west, white people were described in all the official documents as ‘foreign uncivilised peoples’. In Cantonese, the common way of calling a foreigner—mainly white ones—gweilo, means literally ‘ghost guy’. By then, racism was mainly about white people, because there were virtually no black people in China by then. But racism against white people in China for that period was mainly a psychological thing; Chinese people were not even able to really discriminate the white in any higher level than looking at them with curiosity and fear—and after all, nobody is really supposed to be friendly to his colonisers, I suppose.

The dictatorship of Mao Zedong and his Communist Party cut off the country from the rest of the world until his death. Things drastically changed 37 years ago, when the country was finally connect with the rest of the world again. Being economically privileged—or put it straight, being seen as people from the rich world, white skinned people in the perspective of Chinese culture went from ‘uncivilised’ to ‘civilised’, attitude towards them went from contempt to respect, and in some extreme cases, admire to a crazy extent.

A lot of foreigners—white ones—went to China for travelling or studying or working, they share the crazy experience of going from bars to bars without paying for almost anything as they always get invited by other guests for no reason at all. And it is funny that if you ask these people who are offered free drinks if they feel that they are privileged because of the colour of their skin. They say that it is because people are nice, they are trying to treat foreign visitors well. Then just go and see what will happen when a black guy goes to a bar? Does he get free drinks like you do? Or a Filipino, an Indian, or anyone who just does not look as Caucasian as you do?

In comparison to white people, black people and other races such as Filipinos, Indians and so on, are treated, commented and perceived in such a way that I would say barbarian, ignorant and arrogant. And this seems to draw almost nobody’s attention—I am not only talking about the Chinese, also the white people who are treated differently: seems like nobody likes to admit or realise the fact that they are having a racial supremacy. But some people do: I remember this Portuguese friend of mine told me how well he was treated in the ministry of immigration of Macao in comparison to all the other people in the waiting room—mainly Filipinos and mainland Chinese.

I appreciated the fact that he told me this story, not only because it is a good example for this article, or because it is an interesting story: it is because the fact that some privileged white people are realising the existence of racial issue in the manner he was treated. I usually find it very sad, that people ‘enjoyed’ their life in China because they were always treated as a superior race, and they do not realise it or admit it at all.

Just because we are young and we would like to fun, does not mean that there is no other issue that worth considering.

I would like to be clear here that not all the Chinese people take the white as a superior race. It is the same as everywhere, that some people are racist and some are not. And I do not need to be reminded that racism still exists in the west. To that record, I have already been attacked—verbally and physically—by racists just here in France. I know it exists here, but even Ms Marine le Pen takes detoxification of Front National as a vital job for the future of this party, at the core of this detoxification is to remove its racist image.

So you have crazy racists attacking you during the daylight in the safest area of Paris, but you do not (usually) meet (supposedly) normal people who ask with a chocked face “but is she not afraid of getting HIV?” when you tell them that one of your friends is recently dating an African. In the perception of some Chinese people—not all, of course, but let’s say a horrifying huge percentage of them, if you are to date a non-Chinese, he should only be white. Dating a black guy or an Indian sounds like such an unacceptable choice that some extreme comment on that are like ‘poor girl, she cannot find anybody else?’

All these comments are made quite publicly without any intention of concealing or any sense of shame.

The perception of black people and many other races of being violent, uncivilised, unhygienic and uneducated is unacceptable, ignorant and idiotically common, but what is even worse it how this is talked about openly without any constrain. This reflects something that is, frankly, scary: racism is so common that nobody realise its existence or the wrongfulness of its existence. That being said, it is even stranger to see that on some Chinese tourism forum people are talking about which country is more/less racist than another. ‘And no, there is no talk about the racism in China anywhere, because we do not have any.’

In some cases, the realm of racism is not limited to non-white people anymore. I have already heard stories such as white guys are beaten on the street during the daytime (it turned out that it was simply because he was dating a Chinese girl, and the attackers believed that they reason why they could not find a wife was because these white people are dating Chinese girls. I can go on for another article to talk about how sexist China is now, but here I would focus on racial issue.) I have even heard that some white people were beaten on the street for no reason at all.

History tells us that we really learned nothing from the history: racism as an ugly page in the human history is able to survive throughout all these years, resurrect itself in where it was almost killed and find new substance for itself, like weed it spread itself everywhere again and again, just the moment when you thought you have got rid of that. But the worst part of resolving a problem is when you do not even realize the existence of the problem, and this is what is happening—not only those racist people, comments and behaviours in China, I have to say, but also the fact that some people here in France are claiming that Front National is not a racist party anymore—should pay close attention to what is happening and what is going to happen, because history told us already what would happen.

For as much as I love you

‘Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer...’

--Louis Aragon

Seven months after arriving at France.

Apart from some precious beautiful days, this city has been as grey as usual. I guess people who are genuinely in love with Paris can never be those who love sunshine so much that they simply cannot live without it, and me luckily I do not care that much about weather. Most of the time when I am free, I would take a walk along the river or walk across the 15th arrondissement through Avenue Émile Zola. For tourists Paris might be la Tour Eiffel under the sunshine, for residents most of the time it is the forest of Haussmann buildings, plane trees and smoking people in their ‘Parisian uniform’: black outfit with a scarf.

In this regard I guess I look no much different from Parisians, though I know that I can never qualify as a Parisian as long as I can still be impressed by la Tour Eiffel. I can admit that I still take picture of it when I pass it by at sunset, after all I do not see how wrong it is to be impressed by art.

It is a piece of art, which is the reason why I am annoyed—as many other people—by the Eiffel Tower key rings and other tourist souvenirs. Apart from the fact that most of them were made by cheap labour of developing countries that would probably never get the chance to see Paris, it is the way they downgrade the artistic aspect of all these monuments. And this is just a start.

I first came to Paris 2 years ago. Actually, it was exactly two years ago—the end of March of 2013, when the airplane took off from Lisbon and landed me at Orly Airport of Paris. I enjoyed my trip despite the fact that the weather was as cold as god allows the end of March to be, mainly because of the artistic aspect of the city. That is the reason why I love Europe in general, but particularly Paris. I was specially impressed by the little galleries and bookshops in Saint-Germain-des-près, I can only imagine how their destinies would be if Paris was a Chinese city—greedy property developers will not allow well located properties to be used in such a ‘profitless’ fashion. Helped by local governments, they will turn all these galleries, bookshops and specialized boutiques into restaurants, luxury shops and anything that is highly profitable but with no artistic value.

I went to the bookshops even though I couldn’t speak French by then, just to look at people quietly reading. That reminded me of how hard it is to find anybody reading on a bus of China or Macau, not even e-books. I went to the little galleries. Being merely an amateur, I cannot tell the technical part of art that impressed me, but I felt blessed that these galleries could survive the attack of capitalism so that we still have the chance to be impressed, to appreciate the real beauty of human intelligence

Things are unfortunately changing. I mentioned in a previous blog about how my favorite bookshop in St Germain is going to shut down definitively. That place is going to engage in some ‘useful activities’ I imagine—and the pronunciation of ‘useful’ disgusts me. Useful, because it is going to become a restaurant that serves lavish dinners to tourists the rich locals, not because it is going to help any of the least privileged people of the city. There are so many of them, so many of them all around. But from the shut down of this little bookshop until la Loi Macron, everything seems to be focusing on how to cater tourists, how to satisfy businesses, how to woo investors. I know you are going to say the development of economy is going to benefit everybody in the end, but you know yourself that it is not necessarily the case, without effective redistribution we always see the rich getting richer and the poor find themselves have less and less social mobility.

But never mind that. Even if you were right about that the development of economy is going to benefit everybody all together in the end—which I don’t agree—what do you say about the current situation?

We are losing our bookshops now, we are losing our special boutiques now, and we are turning this once unique, artistic city into a big commercial center now, right now. Something precious are being destroyed right now and this process are not reversible. And nothing is done to avoid this happening. If anything, it seems to be encouraged, by the ranting of ‘we have to attract tourists, we have to have them stay in Paris instead of going to London at all price’.

I moved to Michel-Ange Auteuil around 2 months ago. It is almost interesting to observe how in this so-called ‘chic’ area of Paris there are so many homeless people living on the street. And it is horrifying to see them sleeping, and you wonder why on the same street some people are at their warm home, having a glass of nice wine with a piece of 19th century art on the wall.

Every morning when I pass by the Monoprix I almost feel guilty about not giving any money to the homeless guy who ‘lives’ next to the entrance, not because how kind I am as a person, just because I realized how ‘real’ is his homelessness. I do realize that some beggars actually have a place to sleep and so on, they claim unemployment benefits and they beg for ‘extra money’. For a long time I had an impression that homeless people are all of this sort, but then I realized, people like this guy are literally living there—just as you thought that that was just a part of their life, as a matter of fact that is all they have got, and you realize now how literal the word ‘homeless’ is. And nobody seems to care. They are the problem of right now, not in 10 years when we have the benefits of the economic growth.

We don’t care about the shutting down of bookshops and independent artistic boutiques; we don’t care about people living on the street almost permanently. General public is too busy to care, politicians have better things to focus on. My dear Paris, for as much as I love you, I am afraid for you, that you are going to change yourself into someone else. The lost of uniqueness and the rise of social inequality are turning you into such a neo-liberalism torned city. I wonder if I could do something, but for as useful I thought I was, I feel just useless for the moment. For as much as I love you, I don’t know what I can do for you.

#Paris #city #neoliberalism

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