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| The girl in red. |
Four years ago I was living in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province. I was going to school at the well-respected Shandong University studying Mandarin, and I was falling to pieces. Coming to the end of my first term I was fully aware that I would be failing my classes. I had for the past four months tried to convince myself that this was the dream. Sure, I was in school, living in a dorm with a meal plan and a million resources at my disposal, but that was OK as long as I was in China wasn’t it? Wasn’t being here the whole goal all along?
My body has always taken over in the presence of self-deception, and soon I started getting sick constantly. Little by little each day I crumbled emotionally, going on long walks that would last all day, banging my head on the wall when I was alone in my dorm. The inner desires that I was denying for fear they were impossible or impractical itched to be let out and the more I held them in confinement the more they drove me mad.
The truth was that I had not come half way across the world simply to go to school, simply to do the same things I’d always done. I had long dreamed of China as the place where I would make myself the person I wanted to be. When I was young this was the place where I planned to become a Buddhist monk and study martial arts. As I grew older the particulars had changed, but China still always represented that drive to create my own life in the face of huge odds. I was here searching for that heart of darkness that would go beyond even what I could imagine. I wanted to find my life as separate from the life that had been handed to me. I wanted a life I had earned.
When I told my mom that I thought I needed to leave school to travel aimlessly through the country she suggested that instead I just come home. This was the exact opposite of what every cell in my body was yearning for and I told her it wasn’t an option.
When I told my mom that I thought I needed to leave school to travel aimlessly through the country she suggested that instead I just come home. This was the exact opposite of what every cell in my body was yearning for and I told her it wasn’t an option.
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| Ian at night. |
“Well maybe we’ll stop sending you money then!” she threatened, and in the back of my head I was thinking perfect, one more safety net gone, one step closer that chaotic real experience. When that idea didn’t scare me at all, she dropped her bluff.
While in my mind I was distressed because I was being held back from my life, in her mind she heard the emotional storm I was experiencing and assumed I was suicidal. “I was just days away from coming to China to get you!” she still says whenever we talk about that time. I can only imagine how I would have reacted had my mommy shown up to rescue me.
Finally when the salt on my back became too much to bare I crawled from my skin. I dropped out of school and moved west to Chengdu. I lived there for a few weeks with a local girl that I’d met online, before finding a series of places to stay in on my own. In that time I went on some of the greatest adventures of my life. I fell in love with the Chengdu girl named Rye. I felt independence for the first time, and accomplished something that, until that point, I never knew I could do—surviving in a foreign country without anything familiar around me for support.
My body had known exactly what I needed and it didn’t give up the fight until I complied. It was through that sudden catapult west, and the years that followed—living through ego-smashing heartbreak and recovery—that I became in so many ways the person I am today.
So it is fitting that I find myself back in Chengdu experiencing the same emotional turmoil that brought me here that first time. I have not felt so clearly that I was doing the wrong thing in my life since those days punching walls and swearing at strangers on the streets in Jinan. This time though, the tables are turned. I find myself on an adventure traveling at will where ever I want and being utterly depressed.
If you ask Tryg why he is going on this trip, he will say that he is trying to discover what he wants to do when he grows up. For him this is a journey of self-discovery. He is a year and a half out from one of those major breakups that change who you are. One of those moments where everything you thought was going to happen in your future is replaced by a big black mysterious void and you feel like you have to start reconstructing yourself from the very beginning. For him this trip is, I think, as much about that as anything. It is a quest to find some steady orientation from which he can take the next step in his life.
The problem is I am not in the same place. What has become clear to me over the last month is that I no longer need to search. I have a strong sense of who I am. Not that who I am couldn’t use a little (or a lot) of work, and not that I will stay this way forever. People tend to go back and forth through their entire lives from periods of stability and periods of searching: when your kids move out, when your loved one dies, when you retire, when you lose your job. I’m sure I’ll come across plenty of times in my life where some inner itch will tell me it’s time to wander once again, but that time is not now.
Not only do I know who I am right now, but I also know exactly what I want to do. The one thing that I am profoundly passionate about above all other passions is seeing other people develop and grow beyond what they thought they could be.
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| Kung fu is practiced at a very young age. |
I am going to become a psychotherapist. And the idea that I know that now, but I am not pursuing it, above all else, is what is causing me to so viscerally reject this trip in its current form. I’ve been trying to figure myself out for as long as I’ve been alive, and now that I know what I want I am compelled to get to work.
With such a clear goal it makes the steps in the process easy to see. The very first thing to do is to make money. I refuse to go to graduate school until I can actually afford it. So many people I know are so deep in debt they have no agency in their own lives. I’m willing to delay gratification for a few years if that means that when I finally get a higher degree I will still retain my soul.
The big question, then, is do I come home? That answer is easy at the moment—of course not. Work is hard to find in the US. While working at REI, I was lucky if I made $800 in a month. That's not enough to live on in Portland, let alone enough to save anything for the future. Another contingency is that I don’t move back in with my parents, which would be a big possibility if I were to come home now with out a job. In China it is much easier to find work, and usually a job teaching English will include a free apartment. This means that even if I’m making less money, I will still be able to save more here. If I find myself in a situation where I could be saving more money at home then that might effect my plans, but for the moment staying put and finding a job makes the most sense.
Of course the other consideration is that I don’t want to abandon Tryg. He doesn’t speak the language and still depends on me a fair bit. Not that he couldn’t get by without me, but I’m trying to figure out the best way for us both to accomplish our goals. Also, traveling together we’ve been learning a lot about each other. There have been a few fights, but for the most part out relationship seems to be getting even stronger than it already was, which is quite a feat.
With such a clear goal it makes the steps in the process easy to see. The very first thing to do is to make money. I refuse to go to graduate school until I can actually afford it. So many people I know are so deep in debt they have no agency in their own lives. I’m willing to delay gratification for a few years if that means that when I finally get a higher degree I will still retain my soul.
The big question, then, is do I come home? That answer is easy at the moment—of course not. Work is hard to find in the US. While working at REI, I was lucky if I made $800 in a month. That's not enough to live on in Portland, let alone enough to save anything for the future. Another contingency is that I don’t move back in with my parents, which would be a big possibility if I were to come home now with out a job. In China it is much easier to find work, and usually a job teaching English will include a free apartment. This means that even if I’m making less money, I will still be able to save more here. If I find myself in a situation where I could be saving more money at home then that might effect my plans, but for the moment staying put and finding a job makes the most sense.
Of course the other consideration is that I don’t want to abandon Tryg. He doesn’t speak the language and still depends on me a fair bit. Not that he couldn’t get by without me, but I’m trying to figure out the best way for us both to accomplish our goals. Also, traveling together we’ve been learning a lot about each other. There have been a few fights, but for the most part out relationship seems to be getting even stronger than it already was, which is quite a feat.
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| A goldsmith in one of the back alleys of Chengdu. |
We are headed next to Yunnan Province, probably to Dali, though that’s not certain yet. I will start looking for work there. If I can’t find anything, then I’ll come back to Chengdu where I already have a job offer, though it would not pay that great. The plan is still developing though, and I still don't know what's going to happen next. I feel a great sense of relief at having admitted to myself what I need, and having identified the path I need to start walking. I’ve found my mission—not just for this trip, but for my life. This trip has done a great deal for me. I never would have been willing to say so loudly that I know what I want to do, and I never would have been so confident that I knew who I was unless I’d been here to experience my body’s revolt. “You should not be conducting this ritual,” it has told me. “There is no magic left in it for you.” And that in itself has been the biggest revelation.
I've decided to respond to comments in the blog that follows them. I really want to respond to the things you guys are posting, so here are my responses to the people who posted on last week’s blog.
Rich,
While we were there I met a guy from Holland who was writing an article on the major development going on in Chongqing. There is certainly a lot to consider and I of course was barely able to scratch the surface. Not that I really wanted to...
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Patrick,
The three gorges dam is one of the biggest projects the Chinese have yet taken on and it will make a difference for years. It's not that different from the falls dam flooding Celilo Falls as far as natural and cultural tragedies. But at the same time it is a major player in developing China's future. Very complex stuff.
Thanksgiving sounds great. And maybe we'll have a real nice pram for next year eh?
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Ryan,
Nope no topless ladies, that might have improved my opinion of the city a bit. We didn't see any monster fish in the water but one guy did catch a turtle with a huge net in a drainage pipe and I'm fairly certain it took it home to cook that night.
Congrats on the book release!
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| Father and son at the water jets. Central Square, Chengdu. |
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Dean,
OK, to be fair Chongqing is a pretty interesting place. If you have your own hotel, a guide, or a reason for being there, and if you don't get a stomach bug. You would enjoy it. Of course me and Tryg are traveling very cheap and generally couldn't afford the more pleasant tourist attractions.
Most travelers I meet in China had a point where everything crashed around them. China takes a while to adjust to. I don't think I'll ever go back to Chongqing. But if you went you'd likely have a totally different experience. Or maybe not then we commiserate about it later.
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Karen,
That story sounds very familiar. Part of it of course was Chongqing but most of it was that we'd been traveling for weeks and were just starting to realize that there was no end in sight for the foreseeable future. This would be our reality and that's so scary. I think anyone who has traveled understands this on some level.
Kazakhstan sounds like a pretty amazing adventure. I'm always happy to hear other people's stories about stuff like that.
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