10.26: Beida's International Festival, one booth for every country

恩姐 mentioned that so many people have been or are going to be moving this year. I have seen this same ineffable transience and life-shifting on this side of the world as well. If you want to get superficially mystical about it, you can chalk it up to this being the year of the rat, the start of the lunar calendar's cycle and a mark of new beginnings.

昨天我们去了鸟巢, 奥运的体育场。正坐巴士时, 我跟高雅的朋友讲。他说, 对我们美国人， 他的感觉是: 我们都很活页。啊， 我以为他说 "火业"。 真的不同。他的话真的不错。我也记得苏晨一次告诉我: "When I think of Americans, three words come to my mind: freedom, creative, and crazy." 也不错。比照, 两个国家分开非常远。我那儿的家人, 我这儿的家人， 真的不能说。只有自己的心里。到时, 我也要分开, 跟我找到的道走。

To be indoors
while the wind
and the sound of wind
spin the world
like an autumn's lantern,
yes,
but one last day
is one lost day,
can you hear
the birds heading home
already, crying:
too soon, too soon

As a break from the paper I'm writing, I bought a green teapot with a filter coming through the top like a reverse chimney, for 18 kuai. I took it to the fourth-floor laundry room, washed it in some boiled water, and made some tea. The spigot is super rusted; I'm to the point now where I don't see it as beneath me as an American, or before my time as a Chinese, but rather simply as functional, and beautiful in that functionality.

Later, I walked across the shadows of campus to get some late-night 串儿, a spiced slab of 猪肉 on a stick. At the fruit stand next to it, the woman sat blocking her television softly playing late-night dramas. I ate as I walked, my shoulders high, hood over my head, breathing mist. Bicycles squeaked past, none of that old-brake screch of the daytime, no sound but footsteps on leaves and solitary conversations on cell phones. This is the urban quietude of which I always draw. At last now I feel like a student here, in this place.