New Breath

The weekend of September 21st was similar to most of my previous Beijing weekends.  I got up absurdly early on a Saturday morning to go into town do things for my new apartment.  The next day, I trucked out of Shunyi once again on public transportation to meet a friend and go on a bicycle tour of Lido.  So, waking up at an ungodly hour on a weekend:  check.  Running errands from Shunyi to Sanlitun:  check.  Energy-demanding social engagement:  check.  Same as it ever was.

But I noticed something new when I walked home from the bus that Sunday.

I wasn't exhausted.

And not only had the bike ride not exhausted me, it had invigorated me.  Pedaling after my friend as she led me swoopingly through traffic, breezily educating me on the etiquette of biking in Beijing from over her shoulder (don't look the drivers in the eye, assume you have the right of way, just GO, and swear a lot at people who honk at you), I felt alert and happy.  I felt the way you feel when you walk down the streets of a new city for the first time.  I could breathe.

Then I realized that the day before hadn't exhausted me either.  I'd gotten up at four a.m. to talk to teenagers, moved bags down to my new apartment, gotten my air purifier, and changed my locks, but somehow I wasn't destroyed at the end of it.  What? 

Maybe, I thought, this was because I spent the entirety of the previous Thursday (the mid-autumn festival and therefore a non-school day) in bed reading.  But I hoped it wasn't.  I hoped this was me acclimatizing, growing used to the grind of the city, because I really enjoyed the version of Beijing I saw when I wasn't exhausted.

My newfound energy was challenged the following week.  During that week (the last before break), I taught lessons, went to meetings, and spent almost every day after school in Sanlitun, entangled in what seemed like hideously infinite moving exercises.

"When do you move?" an unsuspecting colleague would enquire.

"Always," I would moan, "Forever.  I am always moving.  I have always been moving.  I will always be moving.  There will never be a point in my life at which I will have not been moving.  I am a tiny, moving SPECK in a VAST, UNCARING UNIVERSE."

At which point they would look at me with a combination of horror and worry and I would add, "But, um, Saturday."

So on the Saturday in question, when I moved into my apartment, I was delighted that I wasn't quite exhausted.  I was tired, sure, and maybe even weary, but I still had energy!  This clearly meant that I had conquered Beijing.  Here I was, living on an actual tree-lined city street with actual sidewalks and noise and a plethora of noodle shops.

Hm.  This called, I thought, for Victory Noodles.

I walked into a noodle shop filled with lots of Chinese people eating delicious-looking noodles.  Good start, I thought, Nicely done, self.  I went up to the man behind the register and asked for noodles in my mangled Chinese.  Just in case he hadn't understood me, I pointed to the word in the Chinese-English Dictionary app on my phone and smiled hopefully.  He rolled his eyes and charged me eight kuai.

Five minutes later, he deposited a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce in front of me.

I nearly cried.

Because that's how it works here.  You think you've done it.  You think you've conquered the city, or at least you've figured it out, and that hey, even though you're clearly never going to fit in, maybe at least you can relax a little and eat some noodles.

And then, BAM!  China smacks you in the face.  You are Other, it mocks.  No use pretending otherwise.  Same as it ever was.

I recovered from the spaghetti with tomato sauce incident and spent the ensuing October break exploring the city.  I sat and graded in cafés, I enjoyed the daily street drama of Beijing, and I ate half a duck.  I found a grocery store, a routine, and my favorite sushi place.  I had some strong feelings about public education and wrote a blog post.

I began to relax.  And I thought to myself, hey, maybe I'll try another one of the noodle places nearby.

Ordering blindly produced a disgustingly peppery noodle soup with anonymous meat bits floating in it, and then the owner's toddler vomited profusely all over the floor.

BAM!  China.

Same as it ever was.
                                                       ________________________

Today was a brilliantly beautiful day.  Fall's first chill was in the air and the sky burned blue.  I shivered in my leather jacket and my scarf and loved every second of it.  After school, I noticed that the leaves are beginning to turn.

I thought:  I'm not tired all the time anymore.  Sure, teaching is exhausting as ever, and waking up early in the morning is clearly the work of the devil, but I don't drag myself through every day and I can stay up until ten o'clock at night without feeling close to death.  The crispness of the air stings me awake and the blue of the sky holds me there.  I feel alert and happy.

I feel like I can breathe.

I thought:  Tonight I'll write a blog post.  I'll curl up on my beige Ikea couch and read my book.  

I thought:  Maybe I'll try another noodle place for dinner.

I am feeling a little bit of noodle shop PTSD right now, so I spent a little while psyching myself up. In the end, though, I picked a new shop near my apartment and I went in.  I asked for noodles and tried to explain to the waitress that I didn't want them in soup.  She nodded.  Two minutes later, she brought me a large bowl of noodle soup with unidentifiable meat bits floating on top.

Inwardly, I groaned, but I picked up my chopsticks to give the noodles a try anyway, bracing myself for the inevitable China smackdown. 

They weren't terrible.  It tasted like triumph.