I suppose that I am getting to the stage where my mind can surrender to my heart I am not sure how many percentage of rational thinking actually had been involved to my every single decision, but clearly I know this time, right the moment when I was standing among rows of rows of book shelves in the library, my hands followed my unconstrained feelings of “let the heart say”…..

So I picked this book “A Season in Red”, leaving my favourite author Peter Myle’s two books about Provence behind, I brought this little book home. Didn’t know who is Kirsty Needham, didn’t know how much a foreigner’s point of view about new booming China would appeal to me, the only expectation I had was to know what sort of words a westerner would use to describe some Chinese dishes by the time I finished reading this book.

I was shocked, only after one third of the book that has been done, not by the depth that the author had touched, but the scope that she had covered. I still couldn’t believe this is something written by a foreigner who had only been Beijing for 3 months. I wondered why I couldn’t have that insight after five and half years’ time spent in this country exactly the same like her, as a foreigner. The same excitement, and the same thrill, the difficulties and the brand new cultural experience…..I have been like a stone, bloody dead like it has been a thousand years. Where are my eyes? Where are my ears and where are my thoughts?

The experience from both sides of these two countries seem having all faded away. I kind of lost my plot at both places. Now I don’t even know what’s the right definition of Qian Hai and Hou Hai. Should I make it come under the category of local bar culture or a new rising phenomenon of how modern Chinese embrace their lifestyle or kill their spare time in a posh way?

Well, back to this hemisphere, I suppose that I have never gotten to know what the posh way is to kill my time here, all I am concerned is kangaroos, trees full of flowers and the idyllic scenes of lake or mountain views. I am like a farmer enjoying his boring land but still keeps finding something new with big excitement every day. So how we used to call those people like me in China? tu lao mao? mei jian shi? or nong min?

The only difference is, I was deeply pleased and settled with my status quo, not a tiny bit of worry about what image that I am being seen by others right now. And Down under the skin, I know that I don’t have anything that can distinct me from those immigrant peasant workers, described by the book, who had left their hometowns and rushed into big cities like Beijing or Shanghai to make a better living.

Actually, I was surprised at my reaction towards the criticise from our harsh foreigners, who probably know nothing about what a long way we Chinese had travelled to come to today’s place. Funnily, rather than feeling offended, which I had assumed that I would have or I did have in the past, I found it really enjoyable to know how other people look at me and other Chinese, and I was amazed that I have become a person who starts to accept who I am.