Not with a bang...

Do I even know why I’m here anymore?

Next week I’ll go home. I can’t wait. I look forward to Western food. I look forward to Canadian manners, streets which don’t smell like rotting animal guts, houses with fixtures which are much more likely to work than not, an absence of cavalier animal cruelty, an absence of vast general ignorance, and people who are accustomed to personal choice and individual thought.

I don’t even remember what I came here to gain—-I think it was pretty nebulous even at the time. Guessing, I’d say it was some form of self-assurance, confidence, knowledge. Or maybe that’s just what I’ve barely begun to learn about, and I feel like assigning it to my pre-China ambitions.

I knew that it was something I had to do. I don’t really know why I picked China. A hundred people have asked me that since I decided to go, and I’ve given different answers. Usually some mumbly version of “want to learn Chinese, find the culture interesting” and sometimes if people were still paying attention “need to explore...things, self-discovery etc.”

Today I met a friend who makes me untense a bit, certain muscles I hadn’t realized I was holding tense. He’s American, and all the brash, direct and challenging that you would associate with that. Even as I make an effort to not be shocked by him, being in his presence is a relief to me. Today I feel an actual, palpable relief, like cool air on my sweaty skin in the muggy street.

His pet defense mechanisms are ones I haven’t dared adopt for fear of furthering the “rude/weird/intolerant foreigner” stereotype (is there even one?? Do they know us enough to have stereotypes about us? Are these the ones they have?). But there's something about being with him when he says random English words to passers-by, argues back at belligerent merchants (never minding that he speaks no Chinese), sits in a café we’ve previously patronized and flat-out refuses a menu because we’re only there to weather a brief storm, and teaches classes in which he bluntly and aggressively challenges his adult students’ ideas regarding current events in China (a huge no-no, stated many times over to us as new teachers) (but also so, so important, and honestly something I should have done/should be doing more of).

Even as it gives me the “shouldn’t be doing this!” thrill/shiver, almost unnoticeably it makes something inside me unclench.