Four days ago, I was quite dissatisfied with Shanghai and with living abroad in general. I wanted to go home to Canada, to go live in the forest and bake bread and raise goats and make really awesome goat cheese and to say, quite pleasantly, fuck it to this whole expat/travel lifestyle. I was fried. I’d had enough of being an outsider far from my family, far from my own language and far from my own past. I wanted to remember who I was again. I wanted to feel like I was fully inhabiting my own skin, not just trying on a million others for size.
I’ve been doing this (living/travelling abroad) for nearly 17 years now so it’s not something I just jumped into and found to be not up to hyped expectations. I’ve been in Shanghai for over two years now as well. Again, no newbie culture shock to be found there. I mean, it’s not even China that was shocking me. Objectively, I quite like the place, heavily censored internet, heavy metal rice and toxic water excepted. It’s a really easy place to live, to be perfectly honest. I have a good job with remarkably affable students who make me guffaw with snorty laughter at regular intervals. I live in a lovely flat in a building with non-abusive neighbours. I have unlimited access to really good cilantro and hand-pulled noodles. It’s a good life, objectively.
Yes, a poke in the ear
Unfortunately, I’m not really an objective person. I’m crap at it. I can see the objective aspects quite clearly but that’s as good as it gets. The objectivity is skin deep, penetrating about as deeply as a finger poke in the ear. I could be surrounded by stacks of gold bullion (all mine!), adoring fans, an infinity pool with a Balinese view, and ten weeks of paid holiday per year and I’d still have a small nervous breakdown every Saturday morning like clock work, expressing my deep dissatisfaction with the way I’ve sculpted my life.
I mean, I don’t want gold bullion! It’s meaningless! And the fans are depriving me of my calming solitude whilst affording me no real companionship. And an infinity pool? Nice, but I miss trees and the ocean and I don’t want to be yet another pampered foreigner in a delusional paradise (at least, not all the time). And the paid holidays? Actually, those can stay. I like paid holidays.
The thing is, unfortunately, things can be perfectly marvellous in an objective way but if they aren’t what the inside voice is craving, then, well, they’re just wrong. And things have been quite frequently wrong here for the past two years. And before that, for 6 years in Turkey, on and off wrong (but with great, unbridled optimism!), and before that… pretty much more of the same. I’ve been on the move since 1994 trying to find that elusive combination of feeling like I belong, mixed with a lovely sense of surprise, challenge and mystery.
And what could be wrong with living in shiny, modern, international Shanghai, really?
