Wandering Secrets

I will never be able to describe what spending a year in China is like to someone who hasn’t been there no matter how precise, how alive the anecdotes might be. China is China and will be China, the giant powerful mystery of Asia. As the Great Wall, China stands in the world, cold, undefeatable, waiting for brave people to go for it. A Great Wall standing and resisting time, cold and wars, just as China is in the battle of Great powers. Both China and the Great Wall make anyone feel small, weak. You don’t conqueer China, China conqueers you. Just as you stand at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the Wall, feeling powerless, feeling little in all the wonder it brings out.

There is no use reminding anyone how exhausting this year has been, how difficult it is to lead an unstable life, one where anything can happen at anytime, one where one day I was full of life, being the traveler I am and the very next day regretting having left my home.

In the same year, I have worked ( my ass off) in a language school, I have backpaked China, Laos and Vietnam, I have studied Chinese and passed a masters degree. I have slept on benches, climbed mountains, slept on the tent in the middle of a junkie spot, I have been to (a) 5-star hotel, I have showered with a bucket of cold water and parked a stranger’s car.

Now that the year is ending, April is coming, my visa is expiring soon and our friends and family are waiting for us in France. Now that I can take a good look at my time spent in China, have I exaggerated about how I’ve felt? Is living in China that difficult? How was it, to live in the country that has built a 8,850 km wall visible from the moon?
How was it, to live where pastas come from, where emperors used palaces as tombs, where paesants would spend 36 years to model terracotta warriors just to bury them?
Was it impressive, to live among people who thousand of years ago knew that chrome would protect paint from time and erosion?

It was.

And it wasn’t.

As I go, sliding down the Great Wall, leaving the great, the powerful country behind me I contemplate China, bigger than anyone, and I feel somewhat sad knowing that I am probably never going to speak Chinese again, that I probably won’t eat Chinese again, or eat with chopsticks. I feel sad knowing leaving the Chinese population behind me, their curiosity, their child-like manners, their generosity. But I enjoy going down, and as I reach the bottom I look back and I’m happy to have lived China from the inside, and I’m happy to have been strong enough to do it, when a lot of people wouldn’t.

Stepping away from it, leaving it further and further behind, I feel an explosion in my heart, one that tells me: finally! Smiling people. Finally! A language I know.

Further and further away, I feel relieved, relaxed.
In France.

I look in front of me and the misty Chinese fog has turned into clear, grand mountains. Into pure air and puffy clouds. Cities are small, quiet.
I walk through a street and cars let me cross. I walk and no one is talking about me. I walk  as peacefully as I’ll ever feel, having my ears hurt because of the silence.
I walk through the countryside and I can smell rapes; I walk through a parc and I smell flowers, grass and I get a scent of grilled bread.
I look around me and I see coquette women, leaving a scented trail of perfume as they pass by me, they mesmerise me with their big, clear eyes and their long wild hair.
I feel as in a dream, I feel excited and I feel calm. The brutality of China is over, and I embrace the sweetness of the places I know.
I am standing here, feeling the wind messing up my hair, the sun on my skin, I can smell pine trees, cherry trees, I can hear bees, birds and a dog barking at a distance and I picture the Great Wall one last time.

I am so happy I’ve left that place, and yet I am so happy I’ve lived there.

I am happy the end was sweet, as sweet as a slide is when the stairs to climb up were hard.

Yes, we actually did it!