In my fourth year in Milan, I decided to become a land partner

Goodbye Milan

When I went to Milan in the fall of 2016, there were four subway lines: red, yellow, green, and purple. It was said that a blue line was about to be opened. Chinese people were thinking about buying houses along the lines. This confidence came from the Milan World Expo held the previous year. A circle of construction projects was built, and the booming momentum allowed the local Chinese to make money. People who work overseas are always fearless and flexible. They start buying houses as soon as they have more money. Whether it is a court auction house with a bargain price or an affordable housing with a low threshold, they all put it into their pocket. After they get it, they divide it into several houses. Rooms start to be rented out, often without a housing contract. This is a way to make money that ordinary Italians don't dare to think about.

Adhering to Italian efficiency, the Blue Line has not yet been completed, and it is said that it will take another two years to build. On the Purple Line subway, which only passes through Chinatown, there are more and more young Chinese faces, many of whom rent Chinese houses like me. International students have a carefree air. Before the outbreak in Italy, their social media feeds were about the afterglow of Milan Cathedral, cocktails in Piazza Garibaldi, and the Internet celebrity exhibition at MUDEC Art Museum. After the epidemic, they turned into screenshots of online classes, posting takeout orders, and daily pets. Investors' confidence is surprisingly strong. In the face of the epidemic, rents in Milan have risen instead of falling. Occasionally, some cheaper housing transfer information comes across in the WeChat group. It is all international students who can't bear it and cut their losses.

Before the sudden lockdown, I was considering moving out of the room I had lived in for almost three years because my new job is in the suburbs, which is more than an hour's commute away, and my new roommates have cats. Keeping a dog will cause gray hairballs to accumulate in public areas. Adon and I browsed Immobiliare (a property viewing app) on our mobile phones and browsed the rental posts on Facebook. We spent several weekends to view properties at the end of the yellow line where "two blacks" are infested. We were almost ready to settle on a one-bedroom apartment. I didn't take the advice of my enthusiastic colleagues to "go out less" to heart, nor did I think carefully about why the Italian landlord suddenly said "no more rentals". These signals were like birds screaming and scattering before a hurricane, but I optimistically thought they were just accidental. It's just dust.

On March 8, Milan was placed under lockdown, and two days later, Italy was placed under lockdown. This lockdown lasted nearly two months. At first, Adon and I remained optimistic, and Adon's happiness even improved, because working from home gave him more free time, and I had just received my diploma and still had savings to eat. Making money in the face of the epidemic seemed to have changed. It doesn’t matter, my boss who watches me every day is stubbornly resisting: This gray-haired overseas Chinese just made a personal short film two years ago, fondly reviewing his entrepreneurial history of three failures and three failures, and is co-authoring two films about the financial crisis and SARS. At this point in time, we still don’t know whether the new epidemic will bring another blow.

In May, I went to the company for the last time. I saw my boss with a resigned look on his face. His gray hair was cut into a round shape by the hair clippers his wife bought online. He was lying on a black armchair and chatted with me for half an hour, complaining. Italy's corporate rescue has been delayed, and it is an outsider on both sides when it comes to doing its own cross-border business. This moment of true feelings made me a little touched, and even a little sympathetic to him, but my six-month contract has expired, and the contract between Adon and his agency is about to expire, so it is time to consider leaving Italy.

decision to get married

The idea of ​​​​getting married emerged at that time, but rather than saying that this was a decision made when Adon and I were in love, it was more about the instinct of "two people are worse than one" in this crisis with no end in sight. choose. During the lockdown period, we got along day and night, but we didn't dislike each other and actually enjoyed our lives together. This gave us confidence in living together further. Although we all understand that getting married means giving up some freedoms, as the oldest and most universal partnership, it makes it easier to realize more rights and quickly brings two marginalized people back to the mainstream - crisis fueled us The triumph of conservatism in the mind.

At first we planned to register our marriage in Italy, which seemed the easiest way at the time. After the lockdown was lifted, the Milan City Hall quickly resumed marriage registration appointments, and we also went through a lot of trouble to entrust our parents to prepare certification documents in China. But everything is ready, I only need my Nulla Osta (marriage approval document), which needs to be issued by the Chinese Embassy in Milan, and the original reply there is "The marriage application is not in our embassy for the time being" Emergency relocation notarized by Chinese citizens Regarding the scope of business, please come back after the epidemic." - OK.

Although we were mentally prepared that it would be very difficult for two foreigners to get married in Italy where the epidemic broke out, we were still a little frustrated when we received this reply. A "Yesheng" guest with experience in Taiwan heard about our situation and immediately gave me a vaccination. He said that the matter of "mainland marriage" has always been heard to be complicated and that I need to be more patient.

The only way for us to get married was to return to the mainland, but the "Five Ones" policy implemented in March has made air tickets more expensive, and nucleic acid testing has been required since June, and the migration path has been continuously narrowed. Lufthansa resumed booking at the end of June, and there was a ticket from Milan to Vienna to Shanghai. I immediately placed the order. Half a month later, I received a notice from the airline that the first leg of the ticket was cancelled. It was recommended to change the booking to the end of September and transfer to Nanjing. This delayed our departure by more than a month, but compared to the subsequent increase in the requirement for a double-negative certificate and the embassy's move to stop issuing health codes to passengers returning to China for connecting flights, we were already lucky.

Next stop...?

At the end of September, Adon and I entered Nanjing and underwent a two-week local quarantine; twelve days later, Adon’s parents flew to Shanghai from Taiwan and underwent the “3+11” quarantine; at the end of October, Adon and I stayed in Suzhou The registration was completed; in early December, we held our wedding in our hometown in Hong Kong City. We are enveloped in warm human kindness, like layers of chocolate syrup poured on fruit skewers in the cafeteria. This is in contrast to Milan: in Milan, no one cares about what you are going to do, but in my hometown, Everyone cares about what you are trying to do and is willing to guide you. "Stay in the mainland and make a lot of money" is the view of most people. After all, the WHO praised the country's effective epidemic prevention in September, and domestic media reported that foreign countries are in dire straits. Even Adon's Italian colleagues are looking forward to going to Shanghai to pan for gold.

If the days of isolation at home in Milan were like "doing a monastery in a snail shell", returning to the mainland is like a world away: the expansion of the free shipping area is faster than when I left, and the wasteland where my friend bought a house two years ago in Hangzhou has now been renovated. It has become the new CBD; the epidemic has spawned more takeaways, and various shopping apps encourage you to bring pictures and video reviews, and secretly promote credit when you place an order; medical beauty has become commonplace, following micro-plastic surgery After dental surgery ads, hair transplant ads began to peddle new anxieties; "feminist rights" changed from a stigma to a traffic label, boxers and dick cancer were both on the rise, and the ranking of the gender gap report was still declining year by year... everything that happened before our eyes It was so fast that it made me dizzy. It reminded me of the rap sung by teacher Zhao Lirong in the skit "Packaged Like This": "I can't open my mouth, I can't keep up with the walk. Do you think I feel uncomfortable or not? Do you think I feel uncomfortable?"

Three months after I left Milan, I can still remember looking at my own shadow suspended in the dark bowels of the city through the large glass window at the front of the subway, and I feel no less alienated now than I did then. In the last year in Milan, the epidemic shattered many things that were taken for granted and also brought many unexpected things. In our unpredictable life game, this year is destined to be a meaningful archive point.