Happy New Year!

How was your new year's eve? Did you have fun? Mine was awesome! I bought McDonald's and watched Pride and Prejudice for the hundred and first time.

It was one of those times I wonder what the heck I was doing here, living on this strange land, speaking this bird language, thinking I was having the bloody time of my life. Sometimes I feel I miss home so much that it almost makes me physically sick. I am not sure what I really miss. It is something abstract, the land, the people, the language that I speak out of my heart not just out of my mouth. I miss the feeling that when I walk on roads I feel I own this goddamn place. I miss that I can find a Tang dynasty poem for every feeling I feel and everyone knows exactly what I mean. I miss the feeling of belonging to something, like a drop of water in the ocean, that nothing can separate you from the rest.

My favorites line from the Tang Dynasty poem is 白日放歌须纵酒 青春作伴好还乡 by Du Fu, who might just be the best poet that China has ever produced. The story behind the poem is people received the good news that their army won the battle. The enemies were driven out and they could go home finally. To translate it literally it is 'Drink until we are drunk and sing out loud because we are going home on a bright sunny Spring day'. I had a beautiful misunderstanding the first time I read it. 青春 means the bright sunny Spring day, but it could also mean youth. So to me it become 'Drink until we are drunk and sing out loud, and we are going home when are still young'. Now I am no longer young and I am far far away from home.

Chinese has a strong bond with their land, their birth place. Leaving the birth place is like lifting a tree from the ground. All the roots are broken, a bloody procedure without anesthesia. You might not believe me since there are so many freaking Chinese outside of China. Who the hell would leave home if life was happy and easy? You think they are happy living in the fucking Chinatowns and trying to trick all the white people to eat chicken feet?! I freak out everything I think my children would not be able to speak and read Chinese and would only know Shakespeare not Du Fu. Chinese tradition says when we die we go back to our ancestors. I am afraid I would not know how to face them.

It is too late now. I used to believe traveling over the world was cool, but now I know it is only cool if you get to go home at the end. An old Chinese saying says although the tree is thousand feet tall, the leafs still fall back to the root when they die. People who get to die at their birth place are actually the lucky ones.