TeaforTwo
TeaforTwo

成为MOMO

Detachment

(编辑过)

I was on my way back to Brussels, and my plan was to write down something during the two-hour flight, but I didn't expect to have a Chinese guy sitting next to me. He held his iPad, and I noticed that he was reading some novel in simplified Chinese. That's a signal of danger, I think. I get pretty alert when I see Chinese, isn't it ironic?

I took my laptop out of my backpack and turned the screen brightness down to the lowest. They shouldn't see anything on my screen, however, what I would write down is a betrayal of my own identity. I am a coward, I am sorry but I really am, so I put my laptop back, took my phone out, and started to type in Notes. Nobody would see me typing, and that made me feel safe.

I don't want to be Chinese anymore, because it hurts, a lot. Maybe this idea has come to me countless times, but still, I feel guilty. Weeks ago, I heard Shijiazhuang canceled the covid test. I must say that I haven't felt so relaxed for a long time. Nothing else happened that morning, but the baseline of my feelings is way more positive than before. At that moment I realized everything happening in my country affects me, all the suffering is just like a giant hand with great forces, and it is squeezing my heart all the time. Of course the covid tests are still there, and again, I know my country is screwed, fucked up, but I am in my early twenties, and early twenties should be an age full of hope, not full of hopelessness.

I am so tired. Days ago I listened to the broadcast of Bomi, the host of Fanpaiyingping, now under the name Sijibangongshi, and that episode is about the Chinese film industry under censorship. He said our life is just like Titanic, the ship is about to sink. Normally everyone is panicking and escaping, but there are people, trying to pretend nothing has happened, they are still drinking red wine, and playing the violin.

I was confused, I don't know who I am in this scene. A person who has got off the ship, or a person who is pretending nothing has happened?

I am not on the Titanic anymore physically, but mentally I am still on board. I talk in Chinese and read Chinese, I love those squared characters. I am also obsessed with the land, all the cities I have been to last twenty years, the mountain, the sea, and the meadow. But why does it hurt so much, why does it cost so much to love your own country, why do I have to pretend that I am a fool without feelings to fit in the life in mainland China?

I Love the language, but witness the language gradually degenerate, and see countless words become the YOU-KNOW-WHAT. In 2020, when the censorship was not as crazy as today, I still felt free to post on Weibo, those are about dictatorship, politics, suffrage, about accountability. Not much, but at least I could still say things out loud by then.

I was very interested in the history of the cultural revolution when I was a kid. When I visited Nanning in the spring of 2021, I bought Feng Jicai's Ten Years of One Hundred People in a bookstore. It's about experiences of one hundred people during the cultural revolution. My assumptions about human nature and the Chinese government were not so negative back then, thus the stories sounded absurd, ridiculous, and horrifying. Today I know they are not absurd at all, because everything I read in the book is happening every day, every night in my country. There are innovations though, thanks to our great development of technology. But the people are the same, those who dare and don't dare to talk, those who are benefit from the disaster, and those who impose creepy control under the name of care and fatherhood. Everyone is performing so hard right before your eyes, sometimes it feels like a stage show as the scripts have already been written, and sometimes it feels like a nightmare that I wish I could wake up from.

People's indifference to politics and other people makes me feel so angry. I normally block these annoying feelings, trying my best to act like an indifferent person as well. Do I care? No, fuck no. You fucked up people, just go to hell in line, just like the way you wait for the covid test, go gentle into that good night. My family told me don't do anything, don't say anything, don't get involved in any movement. They told me to think about my future, think about my family. I would have to ask, where is my bright future, when can I see my family, are we protecting something that does not even exist? Fuck the government, fuck my life, fuck you all. YOU ALL.

A while ago, I had a feeling of exhaustion and death. I am not, at all, trying to commit suicide. I am just wondering if all of us are going to die, then what are we suffering for? There is a hole that cannot be filled in my body, an abyss, a black hole, a death instinct. I am aware that I am so small, timid, and conservative, I am standing here, watching the Titanic sinking. I am a part of it, and I am the sinner as well.

But I need to get rid of it, I need to grow a new me. I should not be worried about China, I should love the life that I have right now, get used to western food, speak in English more, have some vegan brunch, drink smoothies not bubble tea, care about the weather, energy consuming, and animal rights. Do not, do not think about the fire in Urumqi, the cities in silent mode, and the violence in Tangshan and Fengxian, do not think about the way more urgent human rights problems that happening in your home country. They chose it themselves, do you hear me, they chose it themselves.

I sincerely hope that the year in Europe represents a reborn. Just count like this, can we? As people are always subjective, and I am already in a new country, the only thing that I need to do is mentally detaching from China. It's not that hard for me, I was always wanting to leave China, and I always, till now, hate the city Shanghai where I spent six years. What I need to get rid of is my attachment to the language, to the land, to my self-identity.

I never expected that the cost of an ideal life is to give up all I got in my past. A total reorganization, and to fight for a route that doesn't have an end. But I am doing it for a reason, and I just cannot stand the hopelessness and I cannot bear with the guilty any more. Maybe things will not work, but I have to give it a try. After all, we got nothing to lose. I wrote this down in another language, because I don't feel comfortable to say these in my native language. However, all the feelings that stuck in my chest need their way out.

Let us be the audience, watching people crying and dying on the Titanic, crying for them, and also for ourselves. I know that's the end point of us all, and this is the show, the curse, the great, glorious years of China.

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