(This is the answer to the question mark left at the end of “About A Month Away From Goodbye”)
This July, I move to Shenzhen in Guangdong province. Shenzhen is known as the Silicon Valley of China. The place is the hub of WeChat, China’s most popular all-in-one messaging, social media, and e-pay service on just about everyone’s phones and the Huawei phone mega-brand. It’s also probably where your phone was assembled and the place where you can go and design your own phone from scratch. Forty years ago, Shenzhen was just a rural fishing village near the border of Hong Kong. Today, Shenzhen’s population of 12 million surpasses Hong Kong’s 7 million. Those that come to work in the city are from all over China. The city is diverse, considered a “melting pot” of sorts and the workers are the young seeking possibility. The average age of the Shenzhen resident is 32.
Opportunities, they go from me when I leave a city, and they present themselves to me again in evolved forms, in new places. Five years ago, I left “home,” New York City, in order to receive my first shell-shock in Bombay, India. Two years later, I then made the decision of travel for a year to fill my cup again after some very difficult experiences. From 3 to 30, the country count grew. Finally, I arrived in Shanghai, back to China, the China that I left 10 years ago as a study abroad student. In a very roundabout way, I arrived, thinking it would be the place that I might be able to call home in the coming years.
What Shanghai taught me is that what you think you want, what you thought was important to you, is so malleable. Shanghai taught me that the expectations that you have of yourself, of your life in a city, and of your job, don’t always align, and that being frustrated by the situation of China, certainly doesn’t help. I’ll say less here, many people love this city and stay for a long time, but I… I didn’t. I remember repeating over and over again last year, “This place does not resonate with me. This place does not resonate with me.” I felt like the crazy person in the corner rocking back-and-forth when I said it. I learned that what other people think is cool or trendy, or liveable, doesn’t have to be how you relate with a space. One day, I think I’ll for sure write about all the laowai peacock-parading themselves out in front of the Funkadeli restaurant corner. They call the space in front a terrace, but I think that’s called, “sidewalk.”
Throughout my time here, even after I found my footing, I always felt something pulling at me, the desire for green spaces to run in, oceans to jump in, the lull of board games to get lost in, a place where I could make local friends that didn’t just go home every day after work, obligations for the sake of obligations, status for the sake of status. I wanted to build or start something exciting, creative communities, and at one point, I think I joined or participated in nearly every solidified and/or bourgeoning community, trying to carve some space, and when I finally did find the ones that fit me and made the decision to stay, the universe had other opportunities in mind for me.
It’s been no secret [at least to me], that mental health has been something I’ve struggled with nearly my whole life. Transient life has its ups and downs, tight-roping dual identities, and pushing, pressing, knocking down walls that trapped, that was forever, always my thing. I say to people that I should have been a statistic. It comes off rather lightly, but there’s a lot of struggle in there, and in that struggle, I’ve always strived to live the fullest life possible for me. Nothing is easy, but I’m blessed, and each day, I finally move closer towards touching meaning in deeper and more powerful ways. I know that the gifts I have been given simultaneously come from the traumas and misfortunes that I've sprung from.
This September, I start my Master’s in Marriage, Family, and Child Health Counseling. I also move out of the classroom into a new role as a Student Support Specialist at a new school, counseling and working with kids with social-emotional learning needs, their families, and their teachers. I get to problem-solve, to put into action my learnings from a dual-culture life. I get to be a bridge, to listen deeply, and that, I love. While I'll miss building a mini-culture inside my classroom, I’ll also embrace the new challenges of building a culture and a community at a startup with a cohort of super-talented, experienced colleagues, and I’m so grateful for the coming opportunity that I will have to reflect and to be able to consolidate my experiences in education over the last 8 years. At the same time, I will humbly accept all the learnings that I know are coming.
This time, I have some expectations, but not so much of the place or the job. My expectations are around me. I have faith that I will rise to the occasions, I believe that I am positioned in the right place to make as much of an impact as I can, and that I have the tools now to take better care in loving both myself and others in this journey called life. I have faith, and my new tattoo on my left side, the broken side, reminds me of that. I have a good feeling about Shenzhen. I have a feeling I will love being under palm trees as much as the phoenix trees and that camping out near the ocean on a weekend whim might do me some good.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I should land in Guangdong province, a 3-hour drive from Taishan, my mom’s birthplace and childhood home, or a 30-minute train ride away from Hong Kong, the city where my grandmother worked as a powerhouse of a businesswoman to get all seven of her children to America. I’ll be in between the places of these two important matriarchs of my life. The in-between? Yeah, that’s always been my thing.
