Swimming

Each time I return, the landscape shakes me a little, there is no dust on the roads and streets, the buildings are neatly arranged, the trees are greener, the sky is bluer, everything a little brighter. This wake-up call makes me uncertain, it flings me back into a reality that I try to grasp everyday. The fluorescent lights and “Arrival” on the big grey signboards are grounded by an unblinking stability. They together remind me that the boundary between fiction and reality is clearly defined and after some unfinished reflection, it is time to return to a place where human beings and relationships exist beyond a couple of days, where socialization skills enter the picture again.

And the first person I meet and talk to, I feel like a blubbering baby who has lost herself and is finding the right words, the right conversation topics, the right expressions all over again. Not in a hypocritical fashion, but in a manner that makes living easier and the way it is for everyone else.

Spending five days in Bangkok shopping, binging, laughing to sleep every night left me so happy, so happy that it brings an emptiness. It feels as if parts of me have dissolved every night and a hollow shell is left after such intensive socializing with no time for quiet thought. I guess life is a constant, continuous tightrope balance between being with people, and being alone. And then, I am in China, in this almost incredible place called Zhang Jia Jie. There are only mountains, trees, water, temporary people I shall never see again, lots of time for uncontrolled thinking. When thoughts are almost spilling over, it is time to return, to re-adjust, I think of it as plunging into a deep chlorinated pool and the moment I surface, I am somewhat ready for the world again.

China has tweaked my worldview. I have always abhorred that country because everything is so, Chinese, for the lack of a better word. When I was younger, I went to Beijing, Shanghai, various other states and cities, and each time I begged that we never went back again. I ignorantly hated everything about the country and the people, the spitting, the stinking doorless toilets, the endless emperors and empresses tourist sites we visited. But this trip left me feeling that the pair of sunglasses I have been wearing all along has been (finally) taken off, and my tinted view of the place is removed, because I am afterall Chinese receiving an education so westernized that it teaches me to distant away from everything considered cheena, ching chong, whatever. I don’t know what exactly has changed my impression, perhaps an accumulation of everything. I have witnessed a culture so rich and yet diverse, it makes me clear about the Singapore identity, it is the state of having no identity.

There was one night when I immersed myself with the locals when I went to watch a performance in a theatre filled with thousands of other Chinese nationals. And I enjoyed myself tremendously, a nationalistic air filled the theatre, it made me so excited, I was eager to return and spend countless afternoons curled up reading up on the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao, the art of tea drinking, the tombs, everything. Also for the first time, I saw the beauty behind the Chinese language. Each time my tour guide spoke, it feels like poetry gliding from his mouth, I was so inspired to be like him, I bought a book, my first non-academic Mandarin book.

But I guess what moved me more than anything else, was all the nights I spent watching the news on the earthquake before falling asleep. The unity and strength of the country in the face of this disaster has drawn a certain level of respect in me.

I think about what Sen Min said, he tries not to watch the news on the earthquake too much, because it affects him and yet, there is nothing much he can do about it. I can completely identify with him, so I hang onto words. Words have a certain effect on me that is quite irreplaceable. When I read and I feel the same emotions the author has about something, when words reach into my heart and transform me, I am amazed by the power words have. Sometimes, I copy a quote and stare at it, I read the same verse and I hang onto it for maybe a week, maybe longer, it helps me get past. I don’t know, some people say it is for the weak, and I think maybe they are right. But I am just glad I am hanging onto something, in plunging in and out of the pool, going between places, in all internal conflicts, there are these words that bring comfort.