Death - The Last Days of Beijing

“When we meet in 5 years, I will be a fat, ugly woman with bad teeth working in a local shop as a cashier,” I was saying it with tears in my eyes, wildly imagining my future self. The image of a woman with bad-quality makeup and black teeth appeared in my mind, wearing an old sweatshirt with drops of oil on it.

Mat looked at me with pity and hugged me.

“You know it’s just a movie in your head, and movies are never reality, whether they are on screen or in your mind.”

“But this one will be real. This is exactly what will happen,” I continued sobbing, burying myself in his chest.

I was full of fear. Leaving the life that I spent living in Beijing and going back to my country, and even worse — to my city, felt like suicide.

It was scary to leave a city and a country where I never belonged, where I felt and was literally a foreigner, without any chance to be “local” — China. Funny enough, just in China, non-Asian people are called “foreigners.”

Being a foreigner becomes a stamp on your forehead but also in your mind. It’s a mindset that stays forever, giving you the illusion of being special, of being different just by your basic existence, as you are just born in another place with another skin color or just another culture.

“You know, I won’t be special anymore. Here in Beijing, my worst-case scenario is to be an English teacher or shoot in shitty movies, but at home, I will be like everyone else, so I can be poor like everyone else. The fear is real!” I was trying to convince myself and Mat of my sanity, that my fear was not an illusion but a well-thought-out reasonable explanation of my future failure.

Mat looked at me, trying not to pity me, or maybe he just felt useless as he couldn’t help me. He went to the kitchen, brought a bottle of red wine, and we sat on the sofa facing a big wall window with a view of the city. I lived on the 21st floor — technically the 18th, as in China there are no 4, 13, or 14 numbers in the elevator — but the view was still good.

Beijing was my home for the past 12 years; I basically grew up here, coming at the age of 20. My life here directed my professional development and mental direction toward what kind of person I wanted to become and who I finally am. But after some time, I recognized that I didn’t want to be here anymore. Beijing felt like a toxic parent — it helped me grow, but it was too much. When I finally felt stable and independent, I needed to leave it forever.

“Maybe you want to find a way to stay? You don’t need to go back, and the situation in your country doesn’t look very stable. It may be better for you to stay.”

“I can’t say, but I was thinking about it. You know I never lived in my country as an adult. I want to experience that feeling when I can go for a weekend to see my parents, when I can visit my cousins anytime, when I can meet someone from my school on the street. Beijing feels lonely; everyone is leaving. We are foreigners here for a reason, and we will never be local. Staying is so hard, and leaving is so hard. Plus, I don’t feel happy here.”

Mat poured wine and looked at me. “You know, as they say, wherever you go, you always take yourself. Do you think you will be happy there if you couldn’t find happiness here?”

“I know, I know… I gave you all these books to read, and how fast you’ve become so wise… You are right, but I feel like the city doesn’t make me happy. They also say that the surroundings influence us — the people we talk to, the people who surround us. So maybe if I surround myself with tasty food, and people who enjoy eating that tasty food, good wine, beautiful architecture, and a handsome man, then I will be happy. I could walk on the street and enjoy just being there — not like walking in Beijing, around these compounds and people who fart in front of you, who I secretly love as they are so local and simple. These ghetto streets, the ugliest ones, are my favorite ones — but even they are disappearing, replaced by soulless concrete buildings surrounded by… just nothing, I couldn’t find the right word… you know what I mean. Here there is so much pretentiousness but zero joy. You know it, you also complain about it.”

“Yes, of course, it’s different than walking around Europe, but you know, I make my trip once in a while and earn my money to be able to retire fast and leave as well.”

“Or you will leave even earlier with a stroke.”

“Possible.”

Beijing is full of addiction — to toxicity, to working hard to earn this money, dealing with people no one likes, drinking, breathing pollution, and dating the wrong people — and no one could leave. Leaving it felt like going nowhere, to another planet, without a plan, with completely different rules, and without the possibility of going back.

“This is exactly the behavior I’m so tired of here — working and hating it, waiting for a better future that might never arrive. Don’t you want to enjoy your life now? Don’t you want to be happy?” I was getting emotional and looking at Mat, asking, “Don’t you?” Just admit that my need to be happy is not that illusory and we all want it…”

Fucking happiness — what is it? Chasing it is hard and we never arrive at it.

Mat looked at me a little bit sadly, he sipped his wine and looked out of the window. The sun was still up and slowly heading down; it was the beginning of autumn, the trees were still green, and the air was perfectly warm.

I met Mat a year ago. We dated for a little bit and understood that we are better as friends. He called himself European due to his complex life story and background — having parents from different countries and living in England and Germany — he was just perfectly “European.” He had lived in China for a long time already, established his business and life in general, and was able to cut his feelings and just do his job. Maybe that’s why we became good friends — I had plenty of feelings for both of us.

“I love what I do, you know it, even if it’s not so easy — dealing with not-so-intelligent teams and shitty clients — I have a goal and I’m moving towards it.”

“I wish I could cut my feelings as you do, I truly do. Do my job, just be an English teacher or any kind of office worker, and not care about what I truly want, how I feel, if I’m tired or not, what I want to do, and what I care about.”

“You should’ve been born in China or as a man, then it would have been part of your life from day one.”

“True. You know I was once teaching in high school and met these kids who were so sad, they needed so much love. I felt they had never experienced the love of parents. Their parents were cold. I always felt sad for them. I remember one girl told me how her parents never had time for her.”

“But you still can do all sorts of jobs, be the teacher, be the office worker, be whatever you want. What job will make you happy?”

I was thinking about my happiness and life, and what I wanted to do when I grow up.

“Maybe I don’t need to wait 5 years to feel like a loser — I feel like a loser now. Thank you for reminding me that in my almost mid-30s I didn’t even arrive at the career I want to do.”

“Don’t dramatize, you are already doing so many things.”

“Okay, true.” He poured the wine and passed me the glass. “I feel like I had so many lives in so many professions. Once I met a guy who told me he wanted to try as many professions as possible, including being a taxi driver and cleaning streets, as he wanted to experience different lives. I feel lucky to have had these lives.”

“Like what?”

“I was a model, acted in movies, artist, entrepreneur, waiter, and Buddhist — if it counts.”

“It counts. Sounds fun. I always do one job, but I’m different nationalities, which also sometimes feels like different lives. One day you wake up English, another day you are German, or even Spanish. Now I’m Chinese.”

“No Chinese person would agree with you, as you can’t be white and Chinese at the same time.”

“But sometimes I behave more Chinese than actually Chinese. I love to drink hot water and advise people to drink more water.” We were laughing, as hot water in China is the cure for every disease and is highly advised in all scenarios of your life.

“Maybe that’s a new reality — we are just everything at the same time. Like Buddha, he is everything and nothing, he is in everything and nowhere. And this is the frustrating part — because I feel like I have to decide, I have to focus. Otherwise, I won’t be serious. I won’t be stably happy, I won’t be able to achieve something and earn lots of money if I don’t decide and choose something. Being local in where I live and in what I do…” I looked out of the window and the sun was slowly going down, creating a bright shadow on the wall. Somebody was shouting on the street, like selling something. Mat and I both got quiet for a second, trying to grasp the sound and what it meant, but it was Chinese with a specific accent that neither of us could understand.

“What I love and hate about China is the sun… it always goes down very early. Like now, it is still 5 pm, and the sun is already on its way to the sunset. But I love how, with the polluted air, it becomes red — like on postcards. You never see such a sun in any other country.”

Mat ignored my comment about the sun. Pollution is never an easy discussion.

“Too late to be local, my dear. It’s like you want to be a virgin after a few marriages, and… I know you are not. Ha. Look at you — you already lived in a few countries, and China is the experience you won’t be able to erase not just from your memory but from your identity.” Mat looked seriously at me. Living in China as a foreigner often feels like the movie Lost in Translation, where you are also feeling foreign, but at the same time, many people who come across your path become much closer to you as you are both lonely “foreigners” here and trying to figure out how to live in this reality.

“You know what’s funny? For the first few years, once every few days or weeks it appeared to me that I live in China. This knowledge was insane. How come I’m a white girl now living thousands of miles away, learning that weird language and being in this culture? And for the past several years, I don’t care — it became so normal, too basic. It’s not surprising anymore. Now I can’t believe that I’m leaving China. And I am so surprised that I’m so afraid of it.”

I remember my first days when I came to visit a friend in Beijing, and it felt just normal. That was the weirdest part of it — it didn’t feel like something very exotic but rather just normal. It was early spring, the weather was still cold, and the city was covered with pollution. We stayed in the part of Beijing where most of the students and universities are; later, it also became an IT hub with its companies and electronic markets. At that time, every area had little ghetto streets filled with poor people, street food where you could eat some kind of hot pot, barbecue, and other stuff that smelled so bad you didn’t even go close to look at what it was. The streets were filled with people eating on super small chairs with super tiny tables and drinking beer. We joined.

The street food may have been the best part of Beijing, and there was always someone who started to talk to you — especially after discovering that we could speak Chinese. Despite the poverty, it wasn’t rare to meet some super-rich people who were eating the same barbecue, drinking the same beer, and being curious about what these foreigners had forgotten here. But it felt normal. No judgment, no aggressiveness, nothing weird — just people with curious faces staring at us, which was funnier than disturbing. You could do anything, and go anywhere without fear of robbery or getting lost. Taxis were available on every corner of 25-million-populated Beijing.

Mat touched my leg that was crossed near him and looked at me with a little smile.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I am also not surprised anymore. China became very natural to us, and maybe, at the end of the day, even laowai (‘foreigner’ in Chinese) can adapt to China — and, to be fair, China adapted to us as well.”

“How is it so scary to leave a place where you never belonged and which doesn’t make you happy? The fear of uncertainty is so strong. Now I understand every person who is in a toxic relationship and can’t leave their partner. You have no idea how the other life might feel and you fear the worst — that the partner will be horrible, and you will be unlucky, and most importantly, and the worst part, that your toxic ex could be right… that no one else will want you. As I’m fearful that my country or another country won’t want me, won’t give me a job, friends, or love, and China was right when people said that it’s the second economy in the world, it is easier to have a job here, and you won’t find the same in other countries. And to take this responsibility and accept that fear and make that step forward is suicide.” Now I was staring out the window at the horizon of grey and orange buildings, thinking about the end of my life, sipping wine with the hope it could give me some relaxation.

“You know that you can always come back? The world is small, you can travel.”

“You — expat — can travel. I am a basic foreigner who can barely afford to travel abroad. I wish you were right, that this privileged life where you travel and make easy choices also applies to me. And honestly, I often lie to myself that it does, but the reality is — it doesn’t. Once I leave, I won’t be able to come back. I simply won’t have the money to invest, to travel here, to check it out and rent an apartment and all.”

“Yeah, it might feel like a trap.”

“I said… suicide.”

“That sounds a little bit too harsh.” Mat looked at me with a little fear in his eyes, like I was going to jump out of the window.

“I was reading a book about a Buddhist monk. He said that we are dying every day — sometimes our deaths are small, like when we go to sleep, and sometimes they are bigger when big events in our life happen. Because with the event, and even with the sleep at night, we wake up as another person and will never be as we were. When you have a kid, you also die as a person without kids, with your lifestyle and life, and you are kind of reborn as a new person with a kid, and you need to find a way to live in that new life.

I feel now it is the same. I have my life here — where I know so many streets and places, I have histories with people, friends, and colleagues, and more could come and happen. But this life in Beijing won’t happen to me anymore — it will be dead. And I won’t be anymore a girl who lives in Beijing, I will be a girl who lives somewhere else. It is a mental death, and I’m trying to say goodbye to it. As I know it is finishing and just a few weeks are left, I am looking at everything — at this sun, this apartment, my plants, you here, all my favorite and not-so-favorite places in Beijing, my neighbors — and mentally saying goodbye to it. But then there is hope for rebirth. Let’s see where my karma will bring me.

By the way — my neighbors! I wanted to go to my neighbor to give them some of my stuff, I will be back soon, I heard they came back.”

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