A close reading of an immigrant’s social media texts

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In September 2023, after completing my third master's degree, my life has entered a new stage, and I will once again become an immigrant in a new society. I did this once in Hong Kong ten years ago, and I will do it again now.

Over the past week, I have been re-reading posts that have been mostly posted on Douban over the past year.

For about half a year, I was unable to speak on any domestic platform except WeChat Moments, so it was a blank cyberspace for half a year. The void itself is also a cyber expression. What I didn't say was revealed by the blankness of scale.

As for those moments that I can talk about, in those posts, I saw my efforts to hold on and the unavoidable pain.

During this long period when the official account stopped updating, my mobile phone still received official reminders from time to time that so-and-so’s old articles were gone again.

When I was flipping through the remaining articles, I was somewhat ashamed of the youthful spirit I once had, but I could also feel the short-lived youth and beauty. I will not pretend that I can go back to the past, because these years of hard work, pain and struggle have left a deep mark on me. There are some things that haven’t changed. Those are the parts of my character that are violent, erratic, sad, indifferent, and decisive.

I will start sorting out my "current situation" and "future situation" from the afternoon I first arrived in the Czech Republic last September, and do a close reading of the social texts of an immigrant intellectual. For more systematic writing, I will write in the column for sandwiches.

2022.9.17

(I had just arrived in the Czech Republic and was finishing up the day in the afternoon.) I fell asleep for some reason and dreamed of a realm of nothingness. Suddenly I heard a voice saying, "White clouds are empty for thousands of years." I thought this sentence was so beautiful, and then I woke up. .

2022.9.23 Mark Books ★★★★☆ Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

A self-translated paragraph:

"As long as the world around me is new every time, it does not become my world; I grit my teeth and survive, resisting each attack of the strange... Only in an environment that you can understand will stimulation transform For experience, actions have purpose, a face appears familiar, and a person can be known. These patterns form the soil of meaning. But this is clearly the foundation of migration, exile, and 'extreme mobility' Dangerous, because you are uprooted from the soil of meaning."

(I translated this paragraph at the end of my article for Sandwich , "The Year I Left Europe .")

Mark books ★★★☆☆ "Eastern Europe Revisited"

The journey of reading this book was almost exactly the same as that of Hoffman’s visit to Poland. But let me laugh at myself. It has been very difficult for me to chat with ordinary people along the way. After Hoffmann returned to Poland, he was all about talking and laughing. And I have been in the loneliness that is carved into my bones.

2023.4.13

(My Douban account was banned for half a year, and my Weibo account was banned "indefinitely." After half a year.)

180 days later, I came out.

2023.4.13

"Those of us who were lucky enough to survive the concentration camps were actually not the real witnesses. Although this feeling is uncomfortable, it comes after I read the various writings written by many people who survived the suffering, including myself. After recording it, I slowly realized it.

Many years later, I re-read my notes and found that our group of remaining survivors were not only extremely small in number, but also outside the norm. Maybe it's luck, maybe it's skill. By hiding and escaping, we actually didn't end up in the bottom of hell. Those who really fell to the bottom, those who saw snakes, scorpions and demons with their own eyes, either did not survive or were left speechless. "

——Primo Levi

2023.4.26

I posted a paragraph from the last time I was in Shenzhen:

Two years later I returned to Göttingen, Germany. I wrote:

After two years of traveling around Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, I have now returned to Germany and am now in a language class. I learned German with a Japanese, a Ukrainian, an Indian, and a Pakistani, all four of them were women except me. The Japanese used to work as a "club member" in Tokyo. My boyfriend came to Munich to work three years ago and now goes to Göttingen to study. We met by chance on the train in Hannover on the weekend. My boyfriend looked like a young Shun Oguri. She quit her job, applied for a working holiday, came here, and started learning German. It doesn’t surprise me either, the Japanese passport is the most privileged passport in the world.

The Ukrainian mathematician came to Göttingen before the war and worked in a university research institute. She said that she wanted to learn both English and German. She knows whether to use der, die or das in front of all nouns. This talent is amazing. I asked her if it was because Ukrainian nouns have basically the same parts of speech as German. She told me in English with a sonorous accent that we don’t say this at all in Ukrainian. Then I think this is the pure talent of mathematicians who are good at classifying.

The Indian is from Mumbai, and her husband is from Delhi. He has been working in Germany for two years. They got married in India a few years ago and she has been here for just two months. She is not a Muslim and is very secular. She can ride a bicycle very quickly. Speak English very well. What she has to do now is find a job in Germany. Although Göttingen is an academic city, German is more important when looking for a career outside of research.

The Pakistani woman is more interesting, she is a Muslim, the hijab is wrapped tightly, and her husband even gave it to her on the first day of class. But she was very active in class and often answered questions. When we practiced conversations, she also responded quickly. While we were trying to speak the German words we knew from A to Z, she knew all the words for supermarkets, food and daily necessities. When talking about her career, she said she was Hausfrau, and it’s no wonder.

On the other hand, I am somewhat out of touch. When it comes to career, I can’t speak words like Schriftsteller. The teacher said, can you tell me some normal occupations. And if you are a reporter or editor, don’t say that you are a writer. Writers write books. I replied slowly in German that my previous career was a reporter and editor, and now I am Schriftsteller.

We are all learning a language like young children, but we have all taught ourselves this language on various occasions, so we all have mastered a small corner of a huge map. And that corner is mostly related to the long years we have gone through. My vocabulary is filled with abnormal occupations and nouns spoken by teachers, and the vocabulary of Pakistani women is all the vegetables, meat, fruits and vegetables in the supermarket. washing powder.

So I searched for this piece of content from two years ago about imagining myself in a language class. I don’t feel like a refugee at all now—in fact, in the past two years, I have made many friends who were refugees (now granted citizenship), and they are all so amazing and inspiring to me.

By the way, when I say their English is good, I don't mean they have a Cockney/American accent. I think my English is pretty good, but I am a non-native English speaker using this language. This was once a colonial language, but now that it is used all over the world, it must have a new post-colonial tradition. They write you, you write back.

In 2018, I studied postcolonial literature in Hong Kong. In the past two years, I have taken or audited many postcolonial English writing courses in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Speaking an authentic xx accent is the least important thing. I have to do it. The only thing is write back.

Now German is related to my survival. Although it is very brain-burning, after learning a little Polish in Poland, I feel that German is at least very friendly.

I would say that being an immigrant/refugee must mean that you are an optimist - this is not what I said, this is what Arendt said. You have strong self-confidence and believe that after uprooting yourself, you can still pursue a happier life in this world than what you have. I am not starting over, but all the self-choices I have made have contributed to more self-choices.

I don’t need to envy the friends in this post, because obviously, I believe that I have a more thoughtful and powerful vitality.

2023.4.29

I’m going to the Balkans tomorrow to keep the appointment I made in 2019.

2023.5.13

A lot of things have been intertwined in the past few months.

Finally, after the pandemic in our country ended, I went to exchange for a return permit. The Hong Kong village I visited ten years ago was finally over.

In Germany, I endured great embarrassment and used Google real-time translation to complete the Erste Hilfe Kurs (first aid course) that I couldn't understand at all. It took me 7 hours to get the certificate, because this is the only way to get a German driver's license. road.

Daily German lessons. Contact a real estate agent in Berlin. Doing fieldwork, reading literature, writing papers, and completing my third master's degree (I felt it was quite embarrassing at first, but now I feel quite embarrassed, because each degree has completely changed my abilities and destiny...). And that stuff about publishing. There is also the right of residence in a foreign country afterwards.

A white German friend said this is Shenzhen speed because he and his ex-girlfriend went to Shenzhen in 2019 and climbed to the top of Ping An Building. He lamented that the slogan "Time is money, efficiency is life" is both magical and crazy. He told me to slow down and enjoy life. But actually, on the one hand, I feel that my immigrant friends here, the Bangladeshis and Indonesians, are even faster than me and enjoy life even less. There is nothing we can do about it. For us, holding on is everything.

The second thing is that I have long been accustomed to this kind of life of struggling to pursue freedom, because it is enough for myself, enough for "Hyrule", and enough for rewriting my own destiny.

2023.5.16

"Between 1934 and 1938, Germany published a large number of childhood memories, novels with family backgrounds, landscape albums, lyrical works on nature, and many tender trinkets. This was an unprecedented phenomenon. With the exception of stereotypical Nazi propaganda literature, the books that Germany is allowed to publish almost exclusively come from those categories. Starting about two years ago, this trend has been declining. The reason is obviously that no matter how hard you try, more and more books are published. The less it can create that painless atmosphere.

But what preceded it was nothing but a sigh of relief: all literature was devoted to alabasters and daisies, the joys of childish vacations, first loves, fairy tales, baked apples and Christmas trees. This kind of literature is full of innocence and lacks the background of the times. It is as if it has been promised in advance, and it is produced one after another surrounded by parades, concentration camps, arms factories and "stormtroopers" fundraising cans.

If anyone has ever been like the author of this book and had to read a large number of such books by chance, he will gradually find that behind their well-behaved, calm and gentle narratives, they are constantly shouting between the lines: "Have you not noticed? , are we not affected by time and return to our inner world? Haven't you noticed that nothing harms us? Haven't you noticed that we haven't noticed anything? Please remember this , please remember this, we plead with you!”

I know some of those writers. For each of them, or at least most of them, the end was now reached. Many incidents have occurred that they can no longer turn a blind eye or hear. For example, some of their relatives and friends have been arrested, or similar incidents have occurred. Memories of childhood no longer provide a protective shield. Many people collapsed because of this, and staged one tragedy after another. I will find time to recount some of these stories in the future.

These were the contradictions the Germans faced in the summer of 1933. It would seem as if one had to choose from several different ways of dying one's soul. We can say that people who are used to living in a normal environment will feel like they are either in a lunatic asylum or in a psychiatric institute. But what can be done? That's what it is, and there's nothing I can do about it. Besides, it was a relatively harmless stage at that time, and something completely different would follow.

My attempt to hide in the private sphere, to settle down in a little sheltered corner, quickly failed. The reason is: such a place simply does not exist. The storm hit my "private" life from all sides and immediately blew it to pieces. For example, a small group that could be called my "circle of friends" disappeared without a trace in the autumn of 1933. "

——"Memoirs of Hafner: A German Story".

2023.5.25

Moving to a new country and adapting to it can destroy relationships.

(This is a sentence from my Russian senior thesis. After Russia invaded Ukraine, she decided to write about this topic: how immigrant women from the former Soviet Union survived in Sweden. She wrote ethnography. This sentence was from an interview she conducted in Sweden. A woman from the former Soviet Union - a non-Russian's memories in Russian. When they first moved to Sweden, they were a couple. Years later, she and her husband divorced. My Russian senior asked her why, and the above was her 's answer, translated from Russian to English.)

2023.6.7

YouTubers have recently started pushing 432Hz pure sounds to me for some unknown reason, saying they will release bad subconscious energy. One night I woke up, turned on this sound, which seemed like music but not music, and then fell asleep sweetly. I just remember being in a cloud and mist, with many people coming and going. I began to feel aggrieved and sad for some reason, and then I started crying, half asleep and half awake. The crying in this dream was like a leaf. In the water, I don't know why, but I'm swinging back and forth.

2023.6.16

(While I was doing fieldwork in Berlin for my graduation thesis, I took a look at some old houses in Berlin and made plans for moving there in the future.)

In Berlin Neukölln, I took a friend who knows real estate to look at two houses to practice my skills. I was a little depressed after reading it. She consoled her by saying that buying a house after viewing it for the first time was as unrealistic as marrying her first love. I was relieved.

2023.7.4 About a dozen years ago, there was a group of people who worked in independent campus media. Before graduation, they quoted the phrase "If you never forget it, there will be repercussions" from "The Grandmaster". I thought it was cool and gave me a sense of satisfaction that good and evil will eventually be rewarded. Then I went to Hong Kong, and this was the point of no return. Most of the things I do that I think have social value and meaning, whether it is news reports, interviews, research, or social protests, have no repercussions, not even a trace. Then I am tortured, full of trauma, and live in punishment, surveillance, and nightmares.

When I went to Europe more than two years ago when the country was completely closed, I lamented that in the past ten years, I had to re-forge myself over and over again. I often think of the seemingly high-spirited "Life is an Exodus" written in my twenties. But the real Exodus does not have the magnificence of parting the Red Sea, nor does it expect any repercussions. It is used to building a small community in a new loneliness, and only wants to live the kind of life that the power does not want you to live.

Last month, the daily movie recommended by Mubi happened to be "The Grandmaster", and by accident, it turned on. I locked myself in the room, closed the curtains, turned on the projector, and watched it all afternoon. Then I remembered that there were eight words before "If you never forget it, there will be echoes." Those eight words were not very eye-catching and were not easily remembered by my mind more than ten years ago. Because those eight words have no purpose at all, do not ask for anything in return, and do not expect any response:

With one breath, light a lamp.

2023.7.30

come to an end

The academic requirements for master's degrees in Europe are still very high.

Recalling that I took five courses in the first six months after arriving in this German city, the term paper for each course required 15-20 pages, excluding bibliography. The two schools in Poland and the Czech Republic have lower requirements than Göttingen, but not by much. This graduation thesis thesis is 30,000 words.

My first master's degree was in the Department of Journalism at the University of Hong Kong, and I graduated with the goal of writing an in-depth report in English of 3,000-5,000 words. For my second master's degree, I studied English studies (literature track) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Hong Kong. My graduation thesis was to write a capstone project of about 5,000 words (it's strange that the faculty didn't call it a thesis).

When I was studying, both of them were very difficult. The first one was studying full-time, and the second one was studying while working. In addition to my poor ability at the time, a huge problem was that the time was short and I couldn't fully immerse myself in it. For example, in the journalism department, when I have just adapted to English classes, I have to start looking for internships in the winter. When writing my graduation report, I also had to think about how to stay in Hong Kong and find a journalism job. All happened in less than 12 months.

The literature department is better, and the curriculum is very, very avant-garde, especially postcolonial literature. However, because Hong Kong universities follow the British education industry and separate MA and MPhil, MA still lacks enough time to digest what has been learned and read. I was working in a factory, fighting lawsuits, and studying this major at the same time, and it was very difficult. So I printed out all the information at that time and brought it directly to Germany, and reviewed it from time to time.

The two years of training and immersion in Continental have been the best I have ever experienced. From theory and methodology to actually doing field work and doing research, I have enough time to work with different mentors, or professors who are not mentors. comminicate.

I personally feel that, first, my English skills and my ability to survive in all aspects have improved qualitatively. This is largely due to my second master's degree. As an immigrant, I received post-colonial education in advance. .

Second, Germany’s political and economic system is really far away from Hong Kong’s extreme neoliberal system. Small cities are especially cheaper in places like this. I will not be forced to learn those neoliberal skills by the overwhelming pressure of finance, wealth, and rent all day long, such as opening a securities account with a securities broker at the subway station, which is very silly but very Hong Kong. real story.

Now I have found the reasons why I want to study for three master’s degrees:

The first one is because I don’t want to be a journalist in China.

The second reason is because I want to prepare language and thoughts for Run in advance.

The third reason is because I want to leave. Of course, leaving is just a means. I want to resume public writing.

Execution is now complete. Whether you want to study for a Ph.D. or not, you may have a little more confidence now, but what research topic does it take five years to do? Have to think again.

Survival and identity are always the first priority. Simply put, paying taxes is the first priority. If you have a German degree and pay taxes for two years, you can apply for permanent residence.

Secondly, even in Germany, you are an immigrant living in a neoliberal environment.

A few days ago I counted the five jobs I’ve had in the past ten years. Two reporters edited YZZK. DUAN. All in Hong Kong, free media. A venture capital institution FENGRUIZIBEN. A copy of the academic institution GANGDAZHENGZHIXUEXI. A factory worker GUANGDONGOUBOKEJI. I don’t have any career plan to become a leader. My only plan is to live freely. If reporters are not allowed to do so, they can go and eat shit for a while just to make money. It's all part of the plan.

Life is very simple, clear goals, stay calm in the face of emergencies everywhere, execute step by step, and achieve success step by step. Do not make peace or compromise with power.

2023.7.31 movie "Morning Light is Just Right" ★★★★☆

"I have forgotten how." It's really like my foreign life. I suddenly realized that immigrant life, at least in some time and space, is also a kind of widowhood experience.

2023.08.04

Becoming a diaspora/diaspora/immigrant, being a minority in a country, being a first-generation immigrant, whether to still write in the mother tongue, how to speak a second or third language, how to prepare all the information to go to the foreigners office, how Let the bank card have an amount recognized by officials, under what circumstances can you apply for medical insurance, under what circumstances can you apply for what kind of residence, to what extent do you intervene in the political and cultural life of your home country, and how hard do you try not to let yourself be in the society of the receiving country. Completely absent, how should you conduct transnational public participation, and how should you face the systemic injustice of a liberal democratic system? These are all things that first-generation immigrants really need to face, act and even fight against...

If I were in the immigration business, I would start by teaching middle-class white-collar workers to read more about postcolonialism. In the domestic context, postcolonialism is often used by the Chinese New Left to prove the importance of confronting the West. This is of course a reverse practice out of context.

But if you are a Chinese liberal right middle class and have no understanding of post-colonialism, you will easily fall into aphasia after immigrating, because as an immigrant you will definitely encounter a systematic discriminatory environment, especially if you hold a copy of my country At the time of passport. But you are now caught in an extreme intersectionality, facing many problems, and out of context, you often don’t know how to describe your pain. A simple question is, how can a liberal democratic society still have so many things that make me uncomfortable? Isn’t it the same as Little Pink if I criticize it? It must be my own problem.

No, it is a problem of this free and democratic society.

2023.08.28Movie "Past Life"★★★★☆

There are so many types of immigrants. and I? When I was twenty-two years old, I thought that would be the end of it when I arrived in Hong Kong. Thirty years old again. During the pandemic lockdown. Say goodbye to your lover, keep saying goodbye to your lover. Not the same life situation, not running away together, interrupted reunion, longing, hatred, pain, helplessness, let it go. It turns out that the country we visited is not an English-speaking country. babbling. My dream is not in Chinese, my dream has no sound. Tell her that you understand her choice. Tell her there is no turning back. What fate awaits me? I don’t want the awards that Nora wants to win. I just wonder how old I can live to be.

2023.09.05

The job in Germany is almost ready, but don't be too stubborn, anything can happen. See what it would be like to try to be a connector. I cherish this opportunity because it can really help people. I don’t have to work, but I have to live in Berlin. I have time to write my overdue manuscript, time to take German classes, and time to look for longer-term projects by myself. I will work on them one by one silently, and find a way that will not harm my personal well-being, have a sustainable future, and not do it for love. Generating electricity, living with daily threats and ways to contribute. This is the lifestyle I dreamed of when I first started working as a Hong Kong media reporter ten years ago.

In the past ten years, I have never been able to find such a model in Hong Kong, Shenzhen or Beijing. I became a marginalized person in a country very early on. But five jobs and three master’s degrees over the past decade have given me a neoliberal transnational skill set, which is a privilege. I think many people have their own Privilege and Marginality. The important thing is to recognize and understand these, know where your body is in the social structure, and then do something useful. Of course, don’t make life too difficult for yourself. This is also what my experiences in the past ten years have taught me. You have to understand that no matter where you are, you still live in a neoliberal world.

Naturally, there is the endless path of discriminatory licensing documents. I have walked this road once, for seven years. The world of immigration is full of words like: skills, language, immigration, wall, race, gender, class, aliens administration, ministry of labor, nationality law... these words make you a master of exile, official mail room, self-observation Master, hard-working professional actor, forced polyglot. (The words in bold are plagiarized from Dubravka Ugresic’s novel “The Art of Balance” from the book “The Fox”)

2023.09.14

In February of this year, I returned to China after two years. I had to apply for a return permit that had been delayed for several years due to the blockade, and I went to the police station in my hometown to cancel my household registration. There were a lot of deaths during that time, and dozens of people died every day at the County People's Hospital across from my home. Many young people come to the police station to help other deceased relatives cancel their household registrations.

I didn't think much about it and asked the eldest sister at the police station who was wrapped in a thick dark blue cotton-padded jacket: "I'm here to cancel my household registration."

The eldest sister looked at me and said directly: Where is your death certificate?

After she finished speaking, we stared at each other for a few seconds. She didn't feel embarrassed and I didn't feel offended. We just looked at each other in silence. After that, I thought about that silent and sad scene repeatedly. I didn’t know if she had lost someone, but she looked at me as if she was seeing through an inexplicable ghost.

Was she just a clerk who followed the rules at that moment, or was she delusional about the possibility of talking to ghosts for a moment?

2023.09.18

I remember a lot of pain about this day and last year.

2023.10.11

Summer is over, and there are so many sad things in life.

2023.10.20

Back to commuting by public transportation. But it’s just taking the subway, not crowded. I sent my work contract to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. I forgot the gloves she gave me during lunch, so I'm going to look for them now. I went to see "Killers of the Flower Moon" alone again, and I was twenty minutes late, but the commercials were still playing.

2023.10.23

I went to Berlin on a business trip today and looked at the house again. I was disappointed again.

The location is very good, Kreuzbergstraße. The house is very well decorated, the heating is very modern, the electric meter is brand new, and the toilet is not on the floor but in the wall. These are the experiences I learned from the last time I visited the house. Although the orientation is north, it is not Never mind. The reason why the price was reduced by 20% is because the upstairs belonged to a housing construction company, and they were building an additional floor before the epidemic. Then during the epidemic, the housing construction company closed down, so the scaffolding on the facade and yard has been tied up. Outside.

The entire building has been tied up like a mummy for more than a year. The new property management company cannot contact the person in charge of the original housing company and does not know when the scaffolding will be lifted.

By the way, this apartment building was built in 1900. The earlier the construction date is, the worse it is because the houses built at that time had thick walls, solid materials, good sound insulation, and good warmth retention. Compared with the houses built in the years after 1945, they are actually better. I have lived in a house built in 1955, and there was no sound insulation.

But the year 1900 still surprises me. It was the long peace era when the major powers in Europe worked together, the long 19th century before the two wars, the era when national independence was about to start, the late period of imperial colonization, and the publication of Heart of Darkness. In the second year of the 19th century, it was the Second Empire and the late Qing Dynasty! I'm actually looking at a house like this. How many ghosts have lived in it?

When I returned to my small town, Deutsche Bahn canceled "on time" + alternative flights were also delayed "on time".

2023.10.30

Read Ocean Vuong's new novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

This reminds me of a friend from ABC who is a 1.5-generation Chinese immigrant. She has been working in mainstream foreign media. When Deng Fei and I were involved in a lawsuit, she interviewed me. We met again at a news fellowship in Sweden some time ago and talked about many literary topics, no longer about the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. After she left the United States, she has been living in various places in Asia, such as India, China, Thailand, etc. We have very opposite life trajectories, even studying. I studied Rushdie first and then Jhumpa Lahiri after entering the English department. She is the opposite. I liked a short essay she wrote that she emailed me.

I can understand the beauty and sadness of her native English speaking, just like reading this book. This beautiful sad book. We were briefly brilliant on this land.

(End. I had no idea that combining all these short paragraphs would turn out to be over nine thousand words.)

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