Any Les Mis fans may or may not get the reference in my title. I've now got that song stuck in my head, I'm thinking of writing some lyrics to go with my current situation, but that takes more motivation than I've got right now. This post is probably a bit out of the usual travel/life in China post that I usually put up here, but my LJ lifeline has been cut again so blog here it is!
I guess now that it's a real countdown/race to the end of my time here, I think I'm appreciating my time here a little more. Or maybe it's because I just came back from travelling around other unfamiliar parts of China and Shanghai seems familiar and home-like now. I've toyed with the idea, on-and-off, of staying here for longer instead of going back home and working, but it keeps coming down to the same thing. It'd just be financially crazy/unviable not to take the job I've got lined up waiting for me and instead living here with no income (I suppose I could find some teaching position in the interim before finding a likely low-paid job here in Shanghai) likely having to keep on living with the G'parents. And all the pro/con lists that I can make in my head don't help. In the end I should ask whether I want to stay or go, but the answer is that I don't really know. I want to stay, I want to go.
Part of me longs for the independence I'll get when I go back. Then I think of having responsibilities, paying bills, working full time. But then I switch back and think it'd be the same here, I'd have to work, but I'd be paid much less in a (most likely) less intellectually satisfying job (and with fewer work perks like flex time and leave days). But then there's family here, and learning Chinese, and all the novelty that comes from living in a new, big city. Versus the friends living in Canberra that I've got and all the usual, cosy haunts that I've got around the 'Berra.
Sometimes in life you get these forks in the road and I know I'm the type of person who, no matter how happy/satisfied I am along my other path, will always wonder what would have happened if only I'd gone the other way. But that's what keeps life interesting, is it not? The endless possibilities, the what might have beens, the what will bes?
I know I'm going back, but it's interesting to speculate on what it could be if I didn't.
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In other news-worthy items (or not, depending on your perspective) I just got back from travelling in southern China - Guilin, Yangshuo and Guangzhou. While I don't think I got out of the actual travel what most gushing tourists get (various over-awed and excited exclamations of "oh wow isn't the view BREATHTAKING?" and "aren't Chinese minority cultures SOOO fascinating?" Or as one American guy sitting at a table in a small, but touristy restaurant in a village near the Dragon's backbone terraces "this chicken is the best chicken I've ever tasted... it's ruined all chicken for me for LIFE!") it was good to see other parts of China, besides Shanghai and Beijing. I was dragged to a few smaller Chinese towns near Shanghai when I was younger, but I didn't really appreciate them at the time.
In some ways Chinese cities are all the same. Lots of tall buildings, all in that kind of ugly Chinese modern architectural style (i.e. with haste overtaking taste as the final say in how it all looks); a bit of foggy smoggy-ness in the skies; the centre of the city having big, wide roads with stores and restaurants and hair dressing salons galore; and the scads of Chinese people busily roaming the streets. But if you look a little closer I think you can see some of the differences too. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think it helped me realise that I'm a bit of a city gal. Nature is nice when it's sunny and beautiful and the birds are chirping (not too loudly, that's just annoying) and you can wear t-shirts and shorts outside, but when it's cold and rainy and you're miserable and gloomy, it's not all it's cracked up to be. I'd rather be inside next to a fire or a heater with a hot drink and a good book than outside roaming the moors to see some foggy greenery and getting all rosy cheeked and red-nosed.
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