Foreign Land Notes | Please let me remember the survival, resistance, and love at this moment

About loneliness

After I moved to Virginia last December, loneliness has been with me every day. In a small town of less than 50,000 people, I couldn't recognize any faces, hadn't heard any place names, and couldn't respond to my colleagues' jokes skillfully. Before I was freed from the joy of finding a job, loneliness had occupied most of my life.

My agency began to dissolve until I lost control of time and desire. It was the end of autumn when I left New York. The days were getting shorter and shorter, and the feeling of helplessness in the darkness was getting longer and longer. I bought a big TV that I had promised myself for a long time, but soon got tired of the self-comfort of playing games and watching TV shows alone. Away from my sofa, I couldn't fit in most conversations, and I couldn't understand most facial expressions and body language. After each wave of loneliness, I didn't know whether I should be shattered in hope or nod and leave in numbness when I met the next person and made the next decision.

I try to get used to it. Sometimes you finally wait for a moment of peace, but you can't tell whether it is a gift or a punishment from age. I want to leave, but the cost of leaving your hometown traps you here, and the pressure of legal survival traps you here. You become timid and can only suppress all desires again and again, not daring to act rashly, until they explode in the deepest part of your heart, making a muffled sound.

The worst part is that my relationship with writing has become blurred. I never realized how painful it would be to lose my identity as a reporter. It used to be a bridge between you and the world, to forgive yourself when you understand every interviewee and see the inevitability behind every life story. But now I have knocked it down to the bottom with my own hands.

Everyone is ultimately a lonely self, and I have long known this. But every time I fall asleep and wake up, I still see a fog. The expectation and joy of leaving did not come as expected. The pain of cutting, breaking, rebuilding, and "integrating! Integrating!" increases every day. What punishes me is not only loneliness, but also self-blame and regret.

I began to recall those still vivid experiences of loneliness. For example, the year you left Beijing, when you finally got tired of the lies of that land and began to prepare for an escape with an unknown outcome, your partner at the time was dreaming about how his wealth and success would remain intact in the same land. You longed to breathe in freedom, while he longed for a life where everything seemed good, where he could only win and not lose. When you asked if we could still walk side by side, he avoided and remained silent. Although he did not lie, he had already confessed everything.

Ironically, he still put the symbol of eternal commitment in front of you. Later he said that it was a ceremony, a "gift" that he felt was very sincere. You finally understand that marriage is just a reward for women for some men. The freedom you want is just the size of a box for him.

During the loneliest days when I stayed in New York after graduation, I had no job. I would ride my bike to the rock climbing gym during the day, and lie in bed late at night, listening to the F line whizzing past right below the window. I repeatedly read Mimiana's diary about the epidemic: trapped in the cold of Winnipeg for immigration, the suppressed needs were repeatedly unfulfilled, condensed into lonely endings in dreams. Then when I read the sentence "At my best age, the people I love are not around. What a failed life", my tears burst out.

But it was you who chose this experience, I said to myself. Isn't this the most unsolvable paradox in life: if there were no impulse to leave and unclassifiable life choices, I wouldn't be so lonely. But if I don't leave, I won't be myself, and that would be even more endless pain.

I remember that 5 months after graduation, I finally signed a job offer, so I went hiking in the suburbs of New York with S, a senior who I met during job hunting. S used to be a teacher for overseas examinations. She also came to the United States when she was nearly 30 years old. After graduating with a master's degree, she switched to investment. We had a lot of common topics. When we reached the top of the mountain, I told her that my ex wrote a short essay not long ago saying that he needed a partner who could "go up and down", and that he wanted to have a son and a daughter, at least two, born in the United States and raised in Asia, just like ordering food to design his future. I felt fortunate but also didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I was just drifting alone, and I couldn't even muster the courage to laugh.

S asked me if I regretted it. I said it was hard to regret because I knew I didn't need others to create experiences for me. I had to choose my own life. After leaving, graduating and becoming independent, I loved my life even more because the experience was mine, not given to me by someone else to cater to my ideas.

"Then celebrate your success. Even if he wants to have ten children now, it has nothing to do with you," said S. We clinked our kettles together at the top of the mountain and laughed. That was the most liberating and self-accepting moment I had last year.

One of my favorite movies last year was Past Lives. In it, the Korean boy said to the female lead before leaving New York: "I liked you for who you are; and who you are is a person who leaves."

The heroine Nora has achieved herself in more than ten years of leaving. The childhood friend Hae Sung just watched silently from a distance. A certain courage in her hit some fragility in his heart, so he came all the way to New York, but found that the two were not fellow travelers after all. Later, the hosts of the podcast "Tired Girl" said that this reminded them of many women who were able to "leave" like Nora, and they had attracted some Hae Suungs in their lives. These Hae Suungs would think of certain propositions about their own growth because of Nora's departure, but these propositions have nothing to do with Nora after all. A woman who knows how to leave will always be observed as a coordinate by Hae Suungs, but Nora is just herself, and she just needs to be herself. I agree with this.

If I can't regret leaving, I can't complain about loneliness and loss. With loss, my life script finally seems clearer. This may be one of the essences of the absurdity of life.

Being a woman

Earlier this year, Chen Lang, a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University, wrote a eulogy for her late husband Xu Xiaohong, who was also a scholar. This caused a strong response among her friends. When a woman with extraordinary knowledge stepped over the plaque that read "The dead are the greatest" and took down the silk banner that praised the loyalty of love and the integrity of marriage, the structural dilemma faced by women in intimate relationships was exposed to the public. She used her real love and real grievances to tell us that economic independence and ideological independence are not enough to constitute the entire premise of women's freedom, and the so-called equality between men and women in love and marriage is still more aspiration than reality.

In the nearly three years since I came to the United States, my sense of identity as a woman has never been stronger. Most of the new friends I made were also women, and the moment of confirming friendship was inseparable from the anxiety of childbirth, anxiety in the workplace, and anxiety about not being able to trust male partners. Distrust of heterosexual relationships and the constant tug-of-war between the care and childbearing obligations imposed on women by patriarchal society have deepened my traumatic experience as a woman under patriarchal discipline, which I had never felt in my twenties.

For example, my friend M, who works overseas, lamented that society requires independent women to have careers, so I worked hard to build my career when I was young. But why is it that when I am in my thirties, all the decent men around me are married, and career women still want to work hard and see the world, but then they worry about not being able to have children at the best age, as if there is no way out.

Most women face a dilemma far greater than the trade-off between career and childbearing. Modern marriage is a losing proposition for women, and I have long seen this in my mother. My mother grew up in a small town and studied her way to Beijing, to China's top university. This was the highlight of her life in the 1980s when college students were so scarce. At the end of the 1980s, a movement gave her the idea of ​​leaving her homeland. But just because she was a woman and a mother, she persuaded herself to quit, hoping that my father, her partner, who was still studying for a doctorate, could take the scholarship and go far away with her.

However, marriage did not bring her to see the "bigger world". When her partner decided to "follow the times" and move to a coastal city with a developing economy, she had no choice but to follow him for the sake of her children. She also had no choice but to cover for his decision to start a business, choosing a stable job within the system and becoming the main caregiver of the family by default. For the so-called "internal and external perfection" that men desire, a diligent and thoughtful woman was eventually trapped in a boring job and taking care of the elderly and children.

When I was fifteen, her marriage finally broke down, my relatives advised me to "be considerate of the fact that it is not easy for men at this age to get divorced and divide property" and "only your father can help you in the future". At that time, I seemed to have figured out the nature of patriarchal society that allows men to reap all the benefits without paying any cost.

I later understood that what could not be bridged in my mother's 20-year marriage was not only a relationship, but also the completely different perceptions and experiences of the powerless and the powerful on each other's values ​​and situations in an unfair system. In order to maintain the integrity of the marriage, my mother did not choose a job that matched her intelligence, nor did she like the city where I grew up from the bottom of her heart, but her invisible labor did not receive due respect. When I was growing up, my mother occasionally joked: "If I had to choose again, I would never have children." And when I was thirty, I realized that behind these jokes was her reluctance to live for herself. But on the other hand, she experienced a broken marriage and always felt guilty for not being a "qualified" mother, so she worked harder to devote herself to her children, which aggravated this reluctance and dissatisfaction. The hidden pain of my mother's failure to live completely for herself and accompanying her throughout her life has a profound impact on me, constantly reminding me that I must make choices for myself in life.

I am already extremely lucky. My mother's vitality did not end with the betrayal of marriage. Between continuing to endure and leaving an unhealthy relationship, she chose to leave. In the past fifteen years, she has supported me to study abroad, travel, and do what I want, even though our lives are overlapping less and less. At the same time, she seemed to pay more attention to her own needs because of my departure. She is still working and getting promoted at the age of nearly 60, so that her children can live in peace abroad. But I occasionally think of her often telling me at her lowest point that "it is still more difficult for men to survive in this society" and "women who are too strong will suffer losses" as a reminder and warning to me. The patriarchal society deprives women of their subjectivity to such a deep extent that their self-affirmation does not even require the exploiters to do it themselves.

After I turned 30, I suddenly found that the number of women around me who felt lost in their identities as wives and mothers increased. Friends who were looking forward to marriage no longer wanted to have children because they did not trust their partners, and some married friends with children suddenly complained about their disappointment in their husbands during dinner and drinks. Just like in "The Blink of an Eye", the heroine Evelyn played by Michelle Yeoh had to take care of the laundry business, tax filing and other household chores, and deal with her mediocre husband and rebellious daughter. When all the problems in life were mixed together, the question of "If I am not someone's wife, someone's mother, who am I?" became overwhelming, leaving people with no escape.

If I face my heart honestly, I admit that since I left home, grew up alone, and even experienced love, I have never seriously yearned to become a mother. Traditional motherhood means that if you promise to pay lifelong compulsory labor for the care of children and family, you have to sacrifice the freedom to "leave". Refusing to pay this kind of labor will bear the moral condemnation of "I am not a good mother or a good wife", which is really hard to convince someone like me who wants to see everything and try everything.

Another realization I had in the past year was that I began to reflect on the division and erosion of feminism by elite thought. When Chen Lang's eulogy caused controversy, there was no shortage of women on my social media who brought out the banner of "economic independence overrides everything" to teach young girls a lesson. For example, an elite mother who came from a consulting background and later worked in a large technology company in my circle of friends said seriously that women should pursue careers when they are young and let men compromise, "there will always be poverty lines in the Bay Area", and they can choose secularism or independence when they have the confidence, but they did not mention that their income is already in the top 1% of the American workplace, and they are able to transfer and outsource many female responsibilities that they are unwilling to take on. In life, I have also seen many women with very superior education and family backgrounds. On the one hand, they experience the anxiety of getting married and having children, but on the other hand, they claim to be "unsecular and different from ordinary women." They are unwilling to admit their institutional weaknesses, and deny their class advantages. They attribute individual tragedies to independent choices that have nothing to do with the system, and invisibly alienate those lower-class women who cannot escape the traditional choices of marriage and motherhood, and do not have the capital to entrust and transfer motherhood and wife obligations.

I agree with Mimiana's description of these women being trapped in an elite dilemma of "wanting everything and not being able to lose anything". They consciously and proactively place their spirits outside the institutional barriers faced by women, turning feminism into a "take-it-or-leave-it" doctrine of "equality when you want it". When it hurts, they are victims, and when it goes well, they are independent strong women. They attribute the good or bad fate of women to their own faults, which is equivalent to requiring ordinary women to "take every step right" before they are qualified to seek independence, which caters to the logic of patriarchy. Chizuko Ueno's judgment on this is also very accurate: the more the subject insists on "self-determination" as an individual, the more the structure can be exempted from responsibility. Not willing to admit weakness and not acknowledging the influence of the system on one's own destiny is itself a split in feminism and women's alliances.

Becoming a woman has allowed me to truly forgive myself, understand women, and forgive women in the past year. I hope to be wary of elitism's coercion of women's consciousness and consciously restore my own experiences to the broader feelings and experiences of women under the system in the future.

Writing: Seeing Each Other

As someone who once made a living by writing, my relationship with writing has changed repeatedly since coming to the United States, which made me doubt the meaning of writing to me.

At first, leaving the media and losing my identity as a journalist meant that my writing had to shift from focusing on public affairs and current events to focusing on private affairs and looking for non-news topics. I am not opposed to writing about non-public topics, but for me, who mainly writes in Chinese, the censorship and prying of power in my mother tongue made it difficult for me to speak freely and my desire to express myself was restricted everywhere.

After last year's White Paper Movement, this pain reached its peak, so I began to try to change my main writing language to English. In terms of genre, I tried to express myself in the form of novels and fiction. I signed up for the school's fiction workshop, submitted an English novel for the first time, and exchanged feedback on my work with American undergraduates in the class. Many American universities or private writing courses have specific rules and agenda settings for workshops. For example, the author cannot speak or refute while the work is being reviewed, and the feedback provider needs to provide evaluations from theoretical perspectives such as language, structure, characters, and plot settings, and cannot make overly subjective and completely negative comments. During those three months, I not only used fictional characters to tell the identity dilemma of my immigration process, but also used the genre of novels to tell a sexual harassment experience that filled me with humiliation.

The students' reactions to the work were mixed. When I saw that the female students instantly empathized with the shame and powerlessness of the sexual harassment experience, the male students thought that the work "lacked drama", which was an interesting observation in itself. In terms of content, my protagonists are all Asian immigrants, and texts about political depression, male voyeurism, and identity dilemmas are interspersed in the story. I received a lot of encouragement. Many classmates told me that there is no need to deliberately obscure political topics. It is more powerful to point out the conflicts. This has relieved my self-censorship a lot and given me more courage to share the story with non-Chinese readers. All these responses have injected a magical power like a soul-resurrection pill into me, who was full of fear of expression after the White Paper Movement.

In general, this experiment dispelled my natural fear of writing in English, especially fiction, as a non-native English speaker. “Exchanging homework” with classmates from different cultures also helped me eliminate many inherent assumptions about non-Chinese readers and put down many burdens of expression.

I remember when I was a kid, I loved writing stories because of my interest, but the eight-part essay and the examination system always distorted my expression, and I never thought of turning writing into a job. Later, when I became a journalist, I realized that writing can eliminate the physical distance between people, which made me feel less displaced. I no longer regard emotionality as a flaw, but acknowledge that the expression is fragile, and the autonomy of telling pain itself has a strong appeal. At a certain stage in my life, I approached others as a writer, talked to others, and finally saw myself in the process of constructing a narrative, which made me feel like I was walking into a hidden electric field and experiencing a kind of peace in resonance with others. And every time I leave, settle down, and leave again, I am no longer afraid of the fatalism of loneliness, but try to weave myself into new stories. It reminds me that every experience in life is brand new, and so am I when I participate in it.

Now, without the privilege of a journalist to see through and deconstruct others, I try to put myself back under the microscope to observe and analyze, with anticipation and fear. The loss of trust in my mother tongue has become part of my memory of exile, and will eventually change me and my writing forever. When the sense of subjectivity of language is deprived, I increasingly accept that writing may be just a thin dream that will never blossom. All I can do is promise to always work hard to create the vitality of expression.

It has been a year since the end of my first writing class. After leaving New York, I attended another three-month novel writing class remotely. Because I had to work from 9 to 5, I could only do my best, but it was still a very pleasant absorption and learning experience. Nowadays, whenever I lose motivation in writing, or lose confidence because I can't write a satisfactory chapter, I often reread the feedback an American classmate gave me when I submitted my first novel:

“It asks a lot of big questions that it doesn't necessarily answer, but it makes the reader think and dive deeper, while thrusting them into such a vivid and colorful, and complicated world of this very relatable protagonist. I especially like how nothing completely resolves, but everything unravels. We understand why things happen, but we don't necessarily get a happy ending.”

Experience the pain and imperfection of every moment in the journey, and accumulate the courage to express it until we see each other. This is the life of writing, and also my own life.

Cherish your ability to create opportunities and build relationships

Although I don’t love small town life, the experience of changing careers after graduating last May was still a huge encouragement to myself.

When I first came to the United States, I didn’t have a clear idea of ​​what I wanted to do after leaving China. I just knew that climate and energy were related to my reporting field and that this was where I could start. During school, I still had a passion for journalism, and I traveled a lot to report on international climate conferences and publish articles. But when I graduated, I realized that dealing with money was a blind spot in my past experience, and school gave me the motivation and tools to learn new areas and fill in the blind spots. So after graduation, I shifted my job search focus to investment and financing of renewable energy.

For someone who has had a complete career experience, changing careers and finding a job in the United States is like walking into a blizzard alone. Emotionally, I still love journalism and the unique experience that public writing brings me, but I also urgently need to temporarily escape from the daily life of fear and limited expression. As a non-professional practitioner, news is just a tool of expression for me, not the purpose of expression. The pleasure that news brings me is to popularize public issues, to understand the logic of social and economic operations, and to give voice to people from different social classes and representing the interests of different groups. In this sense, using financial models as tools and concepts such as yield and cash flow as language to communicate value and achieve the common goals of different stakeholders in society and business is also a professional pleasure.

In practice, my struggle came from the fact that most of my classmates in the master's school were young and few people could resonate with me. The advice of American schools that was dominated by big data and aimed at linear career development was not applicable to me. As someone without a financial background, I had to find a team that was willing to trust my abilities, appreciate my unique experience and skills, and provide me with visa support and reasonable compensation. This was not an easy task for me who had no American undergraduate alumni resources.

As expected, in the early stages of my job search, I followed the advice of my school’s job search consultant and put all my finance-related courses and a bunch of AI screening words on my resume, and “obediently” reduced my journalist experience to just two lines. In the two months after graduation, I applied for more than 100 jobs, but received very few responses.

For graduates who need an H1B visa to stay in the United States long-term, the job search process is like opening a blind box. Job seekers often don’t know whether they are rejected because of their background and skills or because of identity issues. Without feedback, it is more difficult to optimize strategies.

By the end of July, I realized that I needed to completely change my strategy. In particular, I needed a more sincere story that I could believe in to convince myself and the employer to accept this career change, otherwise it would be difficult for me to gain motivation to move forward. First, through a lot of conversations, I understood the daily tasks of the job I wanted to apply for, the needs of the employer and the industry, and the technical and experience barriers that newcomers need to overcome. I would ask myself, what have I done before that is related to the daily life of the new job?

The answer is that both financial analysts and journalists need to pay attention to details and information. If the information is wrong, business losses will occur. Both financial analysts and journalists need to have a strong ability to extract and understand information, because investment decisions rely on judgment, not formulas. In addition, infrastructure financing requires coordination with multiple departments such as project development, engineering technology, and legal affairs, and also faces banks, contractors and other investors. Understanding the needs of different stakeholders and coordinating with them is also a strength of journalists. Finally, every news work needs to be well presented, just as the output of financial models needs to have core information and readability to be meaningful, which is also the strength of storytellers.

Once these things were clear, all I had to do was convince the other party that my career change was well thought out and to provide credible evidence that I had the skills to quickly overcome industry and technical barriers.

I restructured my resume to highlight my energy and finance-related experiences; I used specific examples in my cover letter to explain how my journalistic skills could be applied to a finance position. I also refined the soft skills required for the job, noting in my resume how my past reporting experience had honed my communication and adaptability skills. Finally, I reworked a wind farm financing model from my master's coursework and sent it directly to the employer's email address along with my resume.

One of the things I learned during this process was that I realized that my career as a journalist has given me more valuable skills and experience than I thought. Journalism requires a person to quickly become familiar with unfamiliar topics and to use all possible channels to understand the context of a matter when public information is scarce. When I was at my wits' end, I would go to 3-4 professional social events a week, treat practitioners as my free interviewees, record their views on the industry, and ask questions that interested me. This is the most cost-free way to learn, and these conversations have helped me sort out many professional questions that may be asked in interviews. During this process, I also realized that even the most experienced people have blind spots in their knowledge, especially in the fast-growing industry of renewable energy, where being sensitive to information can help me do better than others.

In addition, journalists know how to put the interviewee in the main position and understand their perspective and position in a popular way, rather than emphasizing their own feelings and needs. For a while, I frequently chatted with industry seniors on LinkedIn. During the chat, I did not ask them to introduce any contacts or job opportunities. I just asked them what they did on a daily basis, what they would value if they were hiring, and what the industry trends were. Trying to understand the problems they need to solve on a daily basis from the perspective of employers, focusing energy on the basic logic of the industry and work rather than my own immigration status and career change difficulties, helped me understand every acceptance and rejection more rationally and objectively, and not continue to be entangled in negative emotions.

In August, interview opportunities came one after another. At the most frequent time, I interviewed five companies in one week. It turns out that when I fully understand and accept my career history, skills and matching degree with the new job, the interaction between me and the employer is a more efficient two-way selection. The employers who are impressed by my speech are often the ones who can best understand my background and value. This is also the result I originally desired.

In September and October, I received two verbal offers respectively. After some consideration, I finally decided to work as a financial analyst for a newly established solar power plant developer. Although I had to start from scratch, everything is difficult at the beginning. With time, we can build mutual trust and many difficulties will be solved.

Even when I had to compromise my immigration status and the prospects of career change were uncertain, I never doubted that I could find a breakthrough. This confidence comes from my experience of cherishing the opportunities I created for myself: eight years ago, I got my first job in Kenya by knocking on doors with my resume. Later, I accidentally entered the news industry. From appearing on camera to writing, I did not have the opportunity to meet editorial colleagues face to face every day in the newsroom. Everything depended on my own exploration and learning. From China to the UK, to Kenya, and then back to China, I will constantly review every experience of opening up new fields and use them as my motivation to move forward. These experiences have given me the basic confidence in the face of uncertainty, as well as the judgment and response to self-initiative and uncontrollable factors. I do not regard this resilience and confidence as a default ability, but something I consciously learn and protect. Building this initiative and control, and using them at the right time, is itself a unique wealth.

After this job search, I also understand that people are the connection point of everything, even though the complicated experience made me feel more lonely and more difficult in the journey of finding like-minded people. During the five months of job search, I met many people who were willing to help me with a little effort. I was also lucky to meet several women who were at the same stage of life as me, who were also in a foreign country and seeking career changes, although this opportunity was like looking for a needle in a haystack. In addition to helping with job search, we also had dinner and drinks together, and talked about our career bottlenecks and emotional difficulties. Friend C, who I met through networking, wanted to leave a stable financial job to start his own business. We went from strangers to friends. Every time we chatted, she reminded me: going from zero to one is the most difficult, you have done it, and everything will get better and better.

My friend S also left China’s overseas education industry and went to the United States when she was almost 30 years old and switched to investment. When I complained about the unsuccessful interviews, she would pat me on the shoulder and say: Don’t be discouraged, don’t give in, everything is possible. These resonances gave me great support, helped me find the meaning of being on the road, and made me cherish my identity as a woman and a foreigner.

I remember the five months of job hunting, when I often sat on the windowsill of my New York apartment, watching the sunset over Prospect Park, and the joggers and cyclists slowly gathering together. At that time, I was beginning to get used to the streets of Brooklyn, the farmers market in the park, and the family picnics, and I would soon leave again. I remember stumbling around in a foreign country for a few more years, and the moment of smiling and welcoming the true meaning of life did not come. Life constantly set challenges for me, and many tears and disappointments were buried in some imperfect memories.

But along the way, the stumbles were mine, and the creation from nothing was mine. I felt how alive I was in every loss and gain. Even more fortunately, I knew that there were people in different corners of the world who cared about me. I could also provide spiritual companionship for some people's journeys, and I was fortunate to see myself again in their history and marks. I did not live up to the meaning of travel.