Preface
This is a record and reflection of my life from 2023-01-16 to 2023-01-22.
This week, my time was equally divided between Beijing, Hangzhou, and my hometown in Jiangsu, traveling back and forth. For someone who hasn’t left home for almost three months, the journey brought some fatigue, but I found that I’m not actually averse to such a long-standing change in my life rhythm, and even feel some novelty and anticipation.
I sent Nini to a colleague’s house for fostering, which worried me; returned to Hangzhou, accompanied my parents and sister, met some friends; then hurriedly returned to my hometown in Jiangsu for the Spring Festival. Perhaps due to an improvement in my mental state, I’ve become more positive about the New Year and Spring Festival this year, sent some New Year’s greetings to friends, and regained some sense of ritual. I also discovered that my friends have quite interesting ways of speaking, and I’ve been posting more of these daily occurrences on Twitter recently, which is probably the recovery of the desire to share that I mentioned before. There were many other interesting things as well.
What Makes a Home
A sunset I accidentally captured on my first day back home. After taking it, I felt that the sky over the fields has a unique feeling. This scene reminds me a bit of the cover image of “Flipped”.
When it comes to going home or returning to one’s hometown, there are always complex emotions involved. Or to put it more abstractly, I’ve gone through a lot of thinking and changes regarding the sense of belonging to “home” and “family”.
Although I was born in Hangzhou, I spent most of my childhood in my hometown in Jiangsu. My parents were developing their careers in Hangzhou, which was probably a reasonable choice for young people of that era. In my somewhat faded childhood memories, the image of my parents is not very clear. It wasn’t until I was in second grade, at the age of 9, that I came to live with my parents in Hangzhou.
Perhaps due to the influence of some sense of closeness, I’ve always lived quite independently. From around junior high school, whether it was choosing middle school entrance exam preferences, high school independent recruitment, college entrance exam preferences, city choices at these important decision points, or daily trivial matters, it seemed that I always had to make decisions independently. My parents rarely gave me advice, let alone make decisions for me. Of course, the advantage was that they also wouldn’t interfere with things like my grades or puppy love (they even covered for me).
The clearest memory I have is from my senior year of high school. My grades ranking just qualified me for the opportunity of independent recruitment to “Southern University of Science and Technology”, an interesting school that had just been established at that time. I was quite tempted, but for someone who had rarely left Jiangsu and Zhejiang at that time, it was difficult to make a decisive decision to go to such an unfamiliar city for an interview under the considerable pressure of senior year coursework. So I still dialed my dad’s number, briefly stated the situation to him, wanting to ask for his advice. The response I got was just a “You decide for yourself”, then he hung up.
It would be a lie to say there wasn’t a hint of sadness and resentment, especially seeing classmates around the phone booth enthusiastically discussing and weighing the opportunities of several candidate schools with their parents. I seemed to feel so helpless for the first time. After returning to the candidate classroom, I didn’t say another word and signed to give up all opportunities.
It was the same with the college entrance exam preferences after the exam. At that time, I avoided all options in Zhejiang and Shanghai due to some emotional issues, probably only spent two or three hours in the afternoon choosing several out-of-province schools I had never known about but had scores that roughly matched from that pink book of previous years’ admissions handbook. My parents knew the reason but also didn’t intervene much. Maybe there was still some element of spite, I was quite immature at that time.
It wasn’t until my junior year of college, when I was busy with entrepreneurship and some internship travel, that I happened to be on a business trip to Hangzhou and rushed home to stay for one night. It was almost one o’clock, and when I got home, I found my mom still waiting for me, while my dad had just gotten drunk from some social engagements and went to bed first. At that time, for some reason, sitting on the edge of the bed, I started talking with my mom about various things from the past, and only then did I realize that I had never really tried to understand my parents’ inner thoughts or tried to communicate.
My parents are both born after 1975, which is considered quite young compared to the parents of my peers. Mom said it was their first time being parents, and they had no experience. They felt guilty for not being able to accompany me through my childhood due to their work. When I came to Hangzhou, they were also at a loss as to how to face this familiar yet somewhat strange individual. In the end, they chose “respect”, and also talked about many details of our interactions over the years.
To be honest, when I first heard this, I was a bit surprised. I had made many self-centered guesses before, always feeling that perhaps because I didn’t grow up by their side from a young age, the feelings weren’t as deep, and thus seemed to lack some of the emotional bonds between parents and children, which might be difficult to make up for.
I also had some realizations. In fact, my parents have given me a lot imperceptibly. In the dozen or so years since I can remember, I have never seen my parents argue, and even now their love has not diminished with the years, leaving me with many beautiful fantasies about family. My father is very tolerant, he has never beaten or scolded me from childhood to adulthood, but he is particularly strict about time consciousness and promises. When I violate these, he always repeatedly emphasizes them until they become ingrained in me. Although my mother leaves most decisions to my father, her kindness and gentleness in character have greatly influenced me, making me at least prioritize good and evil when facing various choices, and treat others with sincerity. As for the aspect I used to resent about always having to make decisions independently, it actually allowed me to move forward firmly on my own in many life choices after my junior and senior years of college. It can be said that my later entrepreneurship, cross-major application, going to Hong Kong for graduate studies, coming to Beijing to work, and various decisions that might be called brave that I will make later, all stem from this.
After this long talk, it seems I’ve gotten used to this way of interacting. Every time I go home, we always chat until late at night, whether about my experiences in various places or family matters, interacting like friends, and even teasing each other (for example, my mom always thinks I’m a playboy). I still wander in various cities living my own life as an individual, but home is no longer just a temporary resting place for me, but has become a kind of belonging to rely on, independent yet not estranged.
As for my hometown, it can be said that I was fortunate. Until early 2021, in the more than twenty years I had lived, I had not experienced any heart-wrenching farewells, and therefore thought this was a very natural thing. It wasn’t until I received a short but painful four words from my father one morning saying “Grandmother has passed away” that I truly felt a sense of spiritual and emotional tearing.
At that time, because I was studying for my master’s degree in Hong Kong, I couldn’t make it for the last farewell, and for the following year, I couldn’t return for various reasons. As it dragged on, it’s already been three years. As I got closer to going home, I felt more guilty and afraid. Having grown up by my grandmother’s side since childhood, my emotions need no elaboration, but it’s even harder to imagine the pain in my mother’s heart. Returning to my hometown thus took on a different meaning.
There’s a movie called “Capernaum”, the story itself doesn’t have much in common, but I was quite impressed by this title. Everyone’s home is different, but we always need to keep searching for such an existence, whether it’s called origin or belonging.
Personal Life Snippets
Nini’s Recent Situation
Nini is being fostered at the home of the small leader of my project. He was very thoughtful and drove over to pick her up on the 17th. I packed so many things, gave all sorts of instructions, completely reluctant to part, even though it’s just a short separation. However, she seems to be adapting quite well. Although she’s not very active during the day, she still comes out to explore at night, and her diet is normal, which has somewhat put my mind at ease.
It’s completely an old father’s mentality. I’m worried that she might suffer if she doesn’t adapt well, but also feel a bit lost if she adapts too well (she won’t be that heartless, right?). My friends say I’d better not raise a daughter in the future, I’d worry myself to death.
But it seems she’s taken a liking to the bird they keep in a cage at their house. He always thinks Nini wants to eat her, I spent a long time explaining that Nini is so cute and friendly, she probably just likes her and wants to play with her, I don’t know if he believed me.
I want to go back and pick her up.
Meeting Friends
On the first day back in Hangzhou, I met with a junior who’s doing a side project with me. We met around June or July because I posted my weekly review on Jike, and after chatting a bit, we surprisingly found out he’s a junior from my undergraduate university. I have to say the world is quite small. Later we talked about a lot of ideas, and he also deeply participated in a startup project as the main programmer. Actually, although I had some shallow experience in various positions before and had done some entrepreneurship, I was really tired of those tedious parts. He happens to be very good at these things, allowing me to focus only on the engineering implementation. Also, the earliest idea of the project came from some of my personal information management needs, which is a kind of unexpected fit. We finally met offline this time, exchanged some ideas, and have quite a few tasks and arrangements for the New Year, but we managed to slack off on New Year’s Eve and the first day of the New Year (mainly because it was too cold).
I finally met STRRL. When I first started playing with Twitter, I was just a small nobody. I met STRRL through exchanging blog links, and he brought me into a weekly review group created by Homura, where I had more interactions with everyone, gradually becoming an outlet for my desire to express.
As a deeply socially anxious person, although I had (and only had) the experience of meeting Homura face-to-face in Beijing before, I was still somewhat afraid before meeting. We arranged to have lunch at a small commercial area in Hangzhou. After meeting, I found him to be very cool and interesting. We talked about a lot of interesting experiences from before and some plans, without feeling too restrained. On the contrary, we found quite a few common points. It was a very successful face-to-face exchange! (I feel like I actually talk quite a lot when I really meet people)
Input
Books
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, still reading, but progress is slow.
- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, reading on the high-speed train on the way back. Haven’t read many chapters, but I’m attracted by this kind of interwoven narrative method and many of its descriptive methods. I’ll finish it in the next few days.
- Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, I actually rarely read books directly related to feminism. Somerset Maugham’s “The Painted Veil” is probably the most related one in my impression. This book was strongly recommended by a friend, and it’s in the form of letters. I read the beginning and found it quite good, so I’m reading it in parallel.
Anime
- Bungo Stray Dogs, following the series. I find the setting of using writers and literary works as tasks and skills quite interesting. I watch a few episodes at night.
- The Three-Body Problem Animated Version, I’m really watching the animated version casually.
TV Series
- The Three-Body Problem, the TV series version actually feels quite good. Maybe it’s mainly because I quite like Yu Hewei (I was deeply impressed by his portrayal of Chen Duxiu in “The Age of Awakening”), so I watch the updates in my spare time at night. But the pace is too slow. I hope it can at least maintain a stable performance, and not become incomprehensible like the animated version.
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