“Beijing … God, I just can’t stop missing it.”
Only after leaving my hometown, Beijing, China, for college in the U.S. have I started to cherish the beauty of this city. While I was adjusting to a place 6,400 miles away from home, imageries of Beijing in my mind gradually became more captivating and unique—especially when I started to think of the local food, historic sites I used to visit as a child, memories attached to specific places in the city, and the distinctive Beijing accent that has always been extremely pleasing to me. I’ve truly learned how nostalgia feels and how I desire to spend as much time as possible with Beijing simply because it’s so big, well-rounded, and deeply evocative of my identity. However, as it turns out, the experience of returning home has been somewhat disappointing due to an extreme sense of disconnect which I’ve found puzzling.
My first extended return home, this summer seemed like it would be a perfect, aspirational time for me to devote time and energy to returning to familiar places and exploring new ones. Unfortunately, things didn’t pan out the way I intended. I had a knee surgery that required a huge chunk of time in recovery and rehabilitation, and it consumed the majority of my summer. Despite the fact that I knew how limited my time and physical ability were in fulfilling my desire to know this place more intimately, I was still so frustrated. I only felt more cut off by forces I had no control over.
At one point, the pain in my knee literally held me back from moving forward and seeing more hidden gems in the hutongs (small alleys in the older part of the city) ahead. If I kept going I might have run into some mystical cozy bar, a closing used book stall, or a spooky little vintage store—which are regarded as the authentically fun core of the city. At about 9 pm on the last day of summer in Beijing, I stopped at the halfway point of Fangjia Hutong and started to grapple with the feelings that had originated from the last bit of my surroundings. Look at this peaceful alley, the gently swinging locust trees murmuring the tiny neighborhood to sleep. The tree leaves scrambled with the old cables, improvising a series of monochrome line shadow-art under the dim street light. The alley stretched out into the distance quietly and softly under the tranquil dark-blue sky. At that moment, I felt a tender hold that was about to settle me into some sort of entity that contains peace and contentment. Sadly, I was the one breaking out of the hold, and I was the one about to depart the next day!
All of a sudden, for the first time, I felt a real tension. The moment I start to crave a deeper connection to Beijing, I decide to step closer to it, or I am about to approach its real contents, it seems to retreat from me. When I think back to this moment, I recognize that my knee surgery was not the only factor restraining me from re-immersing myself in the city since I have left. The other part of it could be my schedules while studying, on vacation, or fulfilling dozens of other obligations. And they only tend to become more dominant, and I am never able to catch up with the city’s nuances that I search for.
Beijing is a metropolis that evolves rapidly and nonstop. Siqi, a friend of mine from Beijing and also a Colorado College alum, sadly confessed that “Beijing rarely feels like a hometown to me now, except for the community I grew up in. Nothing changed in that area: the catkins from cottonwood trees, rusted fitness equipments in the park, and the scents of purple lilac flowers—the sign of summer when my grandma would buy me popsicles after school. But, as you know, Beijing’s been changing robustly—as soon as I step out of my old community the sense of home vanishes right away.” Apart from what I experienced at Fangjia, I did witness what Siqi described as I traveled back to my favorite parks, historical sites, and other meaningful places. Along with all the changes taking place at an ever-accelerating rate, we as overseas students are ultimately rendered without strings attaching us to the places we call home. But, realizing this notion or crisis of disconnect, how do we resolve or address the increasingly complex and vague relationship we have with our hometown?
The end of my summer left me with this confusion, which I imagined to be a matter of both reconciliation and navigation. Frank, a friend of mine at CC who is also from Beijing, once told me that his summer highlight this year were the nights he spent aimlessly wandering the streets back in Beijing, contemplating the things that had happened to him and how he had changed now and then, here and there, and perceiving his surroundings, which used to be how he usually spent his leisure time when he was younger. Some inherent bonds were deepened between him and the city through this kind of exposure he enjoys.
After Frank began his life at CC, he started to take the same kind of walks here in Colorado Springs, recollecting and recombining the previous thoughts linked to Beijing with his perceptions of this new place. “I found the old version of myself again,” he told me. Through his words, and Siqi’s, I was able to understand the mentality through which they constantly channel their nostalgic sentiments. After all, by regularly traveling back to the old, unchanged community with which they each maintain the truest connections, by repeating their own personal approaches to exploring their connections to places, Siqi and Frank both end up with the most vital hometown traces they each may hold on to. These static things embody their own understandings of and pride in their hometown.
What does it mean to change? Despite the changes that happen to people or streets, what—regardless of the form it takes—stays consistent to you? You could have missed out on the new developments within your hometown, but you could also have retained the most valuable characteristics, or traces, and been continuously picking them up as your weapons to confront strangeness, indifference, and insecurity. Perhaps it’s time to ruminate and collect the particular clues of hometown that are only significant to me. I believe they could inform me, through spatial and temporal scales, the ways in which I feel safe and when I am with Beijing.
Mommy Issue | December 2019