Not long ago, I went on a date with someone I met online here in Kunming. The date was a flop. I found him too keen - keen to talk, keen to impress, and above all, keen for something (anything?) to happen between us. My not entirely voluntary reaction was to freeze him out, countering his verbal flights with silences, his boasts with indifference, and his overtures with coldness.
Perhaps to pique me, or just to make conversation, this became a topic of analysis for him. He commented on how I reminded him of German people in my need to set up barriers. When I smiled at one point, he observed that this was my non-German side, and that perhaps there was a secret, second self underneath the surface ice. I rejoined with a look that could have given frostbite at fifty paces.
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I have been in Kunming for 2 weeks. It's the capital of the south-westernmost province in China, which borders Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as Tibet to the north. It's a familiar place for me, because I have visited a handful of times for work, and also passed through on my travels. This is the first time I have "lived" here though.
The community where I live is slightly outside the centre. It's a cosy, bustling residential area that has somehow managed to hold onto its narrow, tree-lined streets and two-storey buildings, while the surrounding area is torn up for skyscrapers. This gives it an orphan feeling. Walk for less than ten minutes in any direction and you are engulfed in traffic and dust.
In spite of looking like a typical residential area, I haven't come across the community spaces that tend to exist in Chinese cities. I haven't found a park (where old people get together to talk and play musical instruments), or a square (where they might dance together in the evening). Maybe these spaces exist, but are hidden away. Still, this apparent lack makes it hard for me to connect with this district - it offers no points of contact.
During the day I go to the drug rehabilitation centre where my research is based. There, I pester my two Chinese colleagues, who bear my requests with amazing good grace, and take it in turns to take the piss out of each other for my benefit. I think they like having an audience. There is also an even subtler pleasure to be had in trying to push the teasing to the point where I might actually feel uncomfortable or complicit. Time passes quickly with them.
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The two weeks here so far have blurred. During the day I work on my thesis, either in my plush hotel room, or at the more spartan drug rehabilitation centre.
In the evening, I might go for a jog, or watch some episodes of this Spanish Civil War soap opera that I have got into ("Amar en Tiempos Revueltos" for those who are curious - I strongly recommend it for its easy-to-follow plot lines and good-looking cast), or watch a film, or do some more work on my thesis.
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To return to the beginning and that bad date, although I don't necessarily see myself as "German", I think he might have put his finger on something.
I have noticed a change in how I interact with my environment here compared with previous spells in China. In my first years, my curiosity was restless, and driven by a need to make connections. I inveigled myself into the lives of cake-shop owners, body-builders, waiters, souvenir-sellers, doctors, teachers, mobile phone salesmen, teashop owners, taxi-drivers and horsemen. My friends were men, women, Han, Uighur, Kazakh, Tibetan…practically anyone who would spare me the time of day. This is how I came to know China…through speaking to people...and I was lucky enough to encounter the kind of unguarded warmth and trust that rewarded my efforts, and which I suspect is still possible even now.
But this time, at least so far, there has been something holding me back from diving in. There are still things I love here, and that connect me with my past: I still have a tremendous, profound fondness for Chinese taxi-drivers, who were my earliest teachers, and still possess that unique ability to make five minute conversations that mix friendliness, opinionated discussion and bouts of lunacy. I still love being part of a group of Chinese people, and hearing them talk all around me, and feeling included, yet not forced to participate. This is especially so when they slip into dialect, and for a moment I am just on the periphery, a welcome observer. Finally, I still love the infrequent surreal episodes that occur and remind me of my liminal presence here - not an insider, but not entirely foreign either. Like when the hotel receptionist called me down to the reception to translate for two young, bewildered Danish tourists who had inadvertently booked a room for 3 hours rather than 3 nights…and then, when the receptionist caught up with me later, her confiding, half-whispered question: "Do you think those two men were…gay? It's really easy to tell with Chinese gay men, but I can't tell with foreigners."
For this and the fact that I can never completely dissociate myself from China, I still half-jokingly identify myself as a Chinese woman. Perhaps this is the submerged, secret, second self lurking under the Germanic exterior?
And I am aware of the way in which China is pullulating with a billion untold stories. On the way back from a boozy dinner with my colleagues last night, my friend started to reminisce about his youth in Kunming in the early 1990s. He pointed to the spot where one of his best friends from secondary school had been stabbed to death, and reflected that this event belonged to a unique period in Kunming's history…somehow young people could commit violence with impunity, and young people knew this, and strutted around like little gangsters, unmolested by police, fiercely free. Then, after a few years, the moment passed, order was restored. Yet how did this period come about in the first place? Who has recorded that time and can tell the story?
Something is holding me back from diving in. On the surface the water is smooth and mirror-like, but there are currents underneath. And perhaps it is this: in the beginning, I was so willing to be carried somewhere, anywhere by those currents, and now I want to know where they will take me.
