Happy New Year, everyone!
I haven’t written in a while due to a number of reasons. Firstly, I was adjusting to a new lifestyle, way of being, and a new work environment in this crazy place called China. Nothing could have prepared me for the changes this place has undertaken since 9 years ago when I was here as a study abroad student right after the Beijing Olympics. I had the wrong expectations.
Secondly, I had been missing the inspiration to write, going through a difficult time, much more than what I admitted to myself at the time. It’s not because I wasn’t traveling much that I felt that I couldn’t write or be inspired –I just felt my heart heavy. I missed my friends. I missed my family. I had hoped that Shanghai would be my next home, at least that was the plan, but despite my best efforts, the city at the time didn’t inspire me in the way that I wanted it to. Of course, you can’t force inspiration. By far, Shanghai was easier to adjust to than Mumbai, but I wasn’t expecting the anonymity that a big city like this provides again. I was no special snowflake, and it was frustration all around. Thirdly, VPN issues had me TIGHT, like crazy.
After having shut down the site for a while, I’m back now.
Really, I want to be here, in this space with you. And I’m glad, to have retreated into my own space for a while. I was able to question why it is that I do what I do in the first place, not just with regards to this project, but with regards to MY LIFE. I stood in front of and confronted the life that I lived and the choices that I will make moving forward.
When I started this journey, I knew that I couldn’t write the same content as everyone else. That just wouldn’t be me. I also didn’t want to keep writing the same type of thing over and over again. Life abroad is not a fantasy (I think I tried to show that), nor is it a crazy emotional rollercoaster. I know that even maintaining the semblance of fantasy is not possible living a solid 9 to 5 life. And for a while, I considered doing other projects, but nothing seemed quite right. Without the right people around me, I ultimately ended up feeling discouraged each time.
But Shanghai has proven to have an underbelly, and I’m starting to build some friendships here, to find my footing. I’m digging that inspiration again, as you can see from my New Year’s Day vlog/satire below.
I am glad truly, for everything that’s happened, and I hope to bring you more content, especially video content. I stand where I am now, in a more grounded space.
So, where am I now? What have I been up to?
Shanghai, China, outwardly, easily, the most materialistic city I’ve ever lived in. I didn’t know how I was going to find my people for a while or relate enough to stoke something real, but transitioning again, I remembered to hold strong and to live more of what I love.
Work was tough. Transitioning from a homeroom teacher to a subject teacher, teaching less internationally, more Chinese students, forced me to develop in ways that I wasn’t willing to initially. I nearly went in kicking and screaming, but lesson learned -play the game better, play it smarter.
I have lived the truth of knowing that I am no daughter of China. Period.
So? What does 2018 have in store for me? More yoga, hopefully. I’m going to teach this year, a lot more. More creativity. More relationship-building and more of putting myself out there. There is a place for me here, I’m sure of it. I’ve even started doing a different kind of writing, writing for a newly-launched, local satire magazine… under an alias. Maybe some improv? Writing a book? Dance… definitely much more dance and getting strong in my expression of self again.
Before the end of 2017, I had a break, the opportunity to travel again. Everything tough was telling me to go home to New York, even if only for the brief stint of a week and a half post-landing, but the even tougher part of me told me to stay in China, to see if China could have the soul that I had been missing so sorely since India, since Indonesia, since Taiwan, so I traveled westward to Yunnan Province, the place that backpackers and my resident assistants in my Beijing study abroad program could do nothing to stop talking about nearly 10 years ago.
I imagined Kunming to be a place full of waterfalls, where barely-clothed expats in loincloths hung free in hammocks made of giant banana leaves. Well, that wasn’t the case. There was just a chill and special Chinese city with elderly on goofy exercise equipment. From there, I traveled westwards to Dali, South to Xishuangbanna, east to the villages of the Yuanyang rice terraces, and then back north to Jianshui and Kunming. I found some of the spirituality I had been missing, but more significantly, I found good ol’ Yunnan hospitality.
I felt my strength, my lightness again.
I’d ask for help, for directions, and felt surprised, that people would actually help me! They’d have time. Except, in asking, I’d always expect that they would want something more. Before I ever finished saying a thank you, I’d walk away in the direction of the next bus, next scenic route, next new alley to explore. I went into interactions expecting that people would want something of me afterwards, but whereas that was the humorous reality in India, here that didn’t happen.
How my heart melted in these last ten days I couldn’t tell you.
I also can’t seem to explain to you the sheer the sheer amount of anxiety I felt the night before this trip. I kept asking myself, “Why?” I knew how to travel once, how to pack my bags strategically, systematically, how to plan, how to be unplanned, so what was it exactly that was making me feel like I should hold myself back in uninspiring Shanghai?
You know, every time I pack my bags now, it’s like a remembering, of who I am, where I’ve been.
What it really came down to in the end, was wondering if I was still the same person who could love change? Who could love, what travel, ready or not, essentially forces out of you? Could I be malleable again?
What if I’m not the same? What if travel doesn’t actually make me happy? What a discovery that would be… Then what? Could I be open to what was coming?
That answer could be yes. This piece was written wholeheartedly on a train ride back to Kunming.
I’m happy to share again, to question, to explore, “what do my choices and hopes, say about me?” I also recognize now that as an artist, not only do we have to know what it is that moves us, not only do we have to express what speaks to us, we have a responsibility to move. Otherwise we get stuck, uninspired. We have to evolve and evolution requires experience, mistakes, wisdom, willingness to change, so it is in that spirit, that I hope to bring you more of what was and what is.
Welcome back, to something old, something new, something once blue, and to Liv, with hardly a silver sixpence in her shoe. Welcome back, to That Liv Life.
