In the loneliness and tranquility of "Run", this is exile rather than rebirth

On an ordinary Friday night, I took the bus back to my rented house from school with my roommate, holding a cardboard box. The carton contained the ingots I had folded—not gold ingots, and I couldn’t get gold foil—just ingots. When I was tired from working on campus, I folded ingots while listening to podcasts. The most free, radical and reactionary voices came from my headphones, but my hands mechanically repeated the most traditional, superstitious and feudal craftsmanship.

In the last half year of college, most of my friends were international students. After meeting someone and chatting for a few words, they will always ask me where I am from, and I will always answer that I am a local student. My more familiar international student friends would tell me that I would be at home in the United States. This made me even more excited, as I was already full of expectations, as if that transoceanic plane would wake me up from a nightmare of more than twenty years, and I could finally have my own life, no longer captured by fear, and be able to live like a Like ordinary young people, they repost memes on social media, get excited about celebrities and dramas, and party until dawn, instead of sending 24-hour self-destructing messages on encrypted software and drowning themselves in tears for the victims of the ban. Protesting and negotiating in the bone-chilling fear of winter nights.

I picked up a branch, skillfully drew a circle on the ground, and poured the ingot into it. Three-dimensional ingots have a larger air contact surface and are easier to burn than stacks of paper money. The smell of burning paper rushed into my nose, and I realized that the smell of New Year is really a smell, the smell of burning paper and the smell of gunpowder. But I can fold ingots myself, but I can’t make firecrackers.

I once thought that I could be a new person in the new world, wash away my sins and pain, and gain a new life. But after arriving in the United States, I gradually discovered that China has been engraved in my destiny, from the taste buds to the national destiny. I used to bake croissants in China, but when I came here, I restarted the skills I learned from the old people when I was young. I started cutting noodles and steaming steamed buns again. I bought pen, ink, paper and inkstone, and started writing with poor soft pen calligraphy. As for my studies, my studies, I found that when discussing agricultural transformation, social movements, and feminism, I couldn't leave China. I still cry often - I save a series of videos and watch them every once in a while and cry again and again. "The Voice of April", "We Are the Last Generation", "The Voice of Protest" and "Urumqi East" are just crying once a day instead of crying once a week.

The sparks slowly dimmed, and the hundred ingots folded by hand quickly burned out. I lit a cigarette, just as my father had done countless times after burning the paper. Do I really believe that my loved ones will receive money in the afterlife? How can it be. But I don’t know if it’s the familiar smell or the power of the ritual, but I feel like I’m no longer alone. Although I am in a foreign country, my deceased relatives seem to be standing behind me. My departure cannot be an abandonment, but to have more room for action. Benevolent people are also human beings - if you see suffering and are indifferent, then you are ashamed to be a human being, at least ashamed to be a Chinese, or grandma will say, "I owe it to my ancestors."

A good friend in China is getting married, which also means that I will return to China in the summer. The joy of being happy for my friend was quickly swallowed up by fear - what if I get tea again? Is it possible to be detained, is it possible to be subject to border control? Even if you know that you are a nobody, the black box of power is terrifying because you don’t know where the boundaries are—behavior that is tolerated today can land you in jail tomorrow. After the blank paper, I took three steps and looked back to see if the plain clothes were following me again. However, I had forgotten the phone numbers of the lawyers that I had memorized. When I said I couldn't leave China, I was certainly not blind enough to equate my current life with that time. There is no doubt that my life now is calmer, freer and more secure. Despair comes from realizing that as long as I am alive, that fear, that pain, that uneasiness can only be alleviated, but never eliminated. I found that the background color of my life is Chinese red - not only the red of couplets and cotton-padded jackets, but also the red of red horror.

In fact, the school has a Chinese student union and organized a Spring Festival party. This time, I was hoping to celebrate the Spring Festival with my compatriots, but suddenly I found out that their Spring Festival party would be attended by people from the consulate. The possibility of connection and the risk of victimization are twins, always equally close at hand and equally out of reach. So I cowardly chose to shrink back into my turtle shell. I choose not to associate with my fellow citizens. Facing the groups of Chinese students studying abroad, I chose to keep a straight face and move on. I knew I was giving up the possibility of finding a connection, but I was also avoiding the risk of exposing myself. Amid the crowds of people, I chose to be alone. I chose to be alone until Urumqi Middle Road was flooded with people again. On the night of New Year’s Eve, I took the bus back to my rented house with my roommate from India.

In the loneliness and tranquility of "Run", this is exile rather than rebirth.