As I write this it is September 29th, which means that tomorrow is the day when I will register at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) for a one-year MSc program.
It's the start of term. During the past month, I have done all the things that someone is supposed to do to prepare for the start of term. I have searched for and found accommodation in London. I have moved into my room, and decorated it.
I have done food-shopping and stocked my cupboards in the house with useful foodstuffs, the kind that you use for cooking rather than idle snacking. I have joined new Facebook groups and met new people from my university at social events organized by the university. I have arranged a student loan. I have had a haircut. I have polished my shoes.
The one thing I am waiting for is the beginning, when something new will start, and perhaps lead me to somewhere unexpected. This is all that I am waiting for.
I am living in London for the first time. I grew up always thinking of London as the big city, which is odd, as there were big cities that were much closer to my hometown, but for some reason they never counted. Only London excited my imagination at that age, and I remember traveling up here, either with school trips or with my family, and feeling an exquisite combination of fear and pleasure. The fear came from London's size - what if I got lost? And the pleasure came from the foreknowledge that each trip would deepen my familiarity with the city. I would uncover new, undreamt of things, become a little more worldly…perhaps contact with London would make me into a different person. These were the thoughts that used to fill my head, and I used to take great pride in the pieces of London-lore that I had gathered during earlier trips, taking every opportunity to flourish them in the face of my (as I then saw them) more provincial classmates.
If anything, London provokes me more now than when I was little. It's a city of extremes that do not resemble any of the Chinese cities I know. LSHTM lies in Bloomsbury, an area which reinforces my sense of the UK as a country still steeped in, and in love with, its feudal past. Apparently, large chunks of Bloomsbury still belong to the Duke of Bedford, and many of the road-names testify to this ownership - Bedford Square, Russell Square (the surname of the Duke of Bedford), Keppel Street (maiden-name of the mother of the 5th and 6th Duke), Tavistock Place (the Duke of Bedford also had the courtesy title of the Marquess of Tavistock), Tavistock Square. There is something despotic about the image this conjures up of some aristocrat arbitrarily naming things after his kith and kin. Of course, these roads would have been named many years ago, and these are hence historic, rather than modern privileges that are being represented, but it's nevertheless interesting to compare with hutong names in Beijing, which for the most part reflect their popular origins - "Sheep Market Hutong"; "Red Gate Hutong"; "Willow Tree Well Hutong"; "Money Market Hutong". "Colour Glaze Factory Hutong".
Still in Bloomsbury, but a few steps down the social order, you see traces of an elite intelligentsia, whose members would have included the Bloomsbury Set. These were the people who actually lived in the gorgeous townhouses, and often came from minor branches of the aristocracy themselves. Many of them made unique contributions to science, or culture, or politics, and so they are remembered with statues, and small, blue, round plaques.
And then, right at the bottom of the social pile, were the people who were in Bloomsbury on sufferance. Tradesmen and poor people. In some cases, institutions were set up to address a social problem among these groups, for example, Thomas Coram's hospital for foundlings, but looking around Bloomsbury, you see few places where poor people would have been welcome.
For me, the garden squares in central London symbolize this exclusion perfectly - these are little, landscaped gardens in the heart of the city, surrounded by railings. Originally, only key-holders could get in, and to be a key-holder, you had to be a local resident, and therefore rich. In spite of being "public" spaces, they were not open to the public. Most have since had their railings removed, but some still remain as they were.
I don't know if Bloomsbury is still a quasi-feudal district, but it still retains its aura of glamour and money. And the sense of Britain's aristocratic, hierarchical history is so overpowering that it is easy to imagine that nothing has changed in Britain's social order in the past 300 years.
Going north to where my house is in Manor House, things are very different. Green Lanes, which is the main high street, is a continuum of Turkish grocer's, Turkish cafes, Greek restaurants, and small shops selling discounted goods. The shops do not seem to operate on the same opening hours as much of the rest of the country. You go for a haircut, and quite naturally fall into conversation in Spanish with people waiting in the queue, as if that is one of the official local languages. Or perhaps there is no official language, since you are just as likely to hear Turkish or perhaps an Indian dialect. You sit in a cafe, nibbling baklava, and a 10 year-old boy begins wailing at the door, clutching one hand in pain, while an old man standing next to him in a faded suit takes the boy's other hand in his hand, and pats it sympathetically. The situation is mysteriously resolved by the appearance of another man from the kitchen, whom the boy seems to have an unholy fear of. The scene plays out in a language you don't understand, according to rules that don't make sense, and you realize you may as well be in a foreign country. Meanwhile, the owner smiles at you indulgently, as if to acknowledge your incomprehension, and to let you know that it's OK.
I wonder if this is a modern manifestation of the eighteenth century divide - the rich in their squares in Bloomsbury, and the poor living undocumented lives elsewhere, both sides practically unaware of the other. Or is it that the people in both places are leading precisely the lives they want to lead?
