To Shanghai from Shenzhen. Immediate change.
Beijing was a mature adult, quietly gazing at the horizon. Shenzhen is a busy-bee, running fast, running heavy, running sure, and running with a purpose, like a mother of two children.
Still, despite my touristy observations, I feel at home.
It seems to me that one really should come to feel home in a city, before one experiences the love for a woman. First-time Shanghai was confident, strutting its stuff. Now it feels like I am looking for it everywhere, still not finding it, and then suddenly finding it. Like how you come home, looking everywhere for your wife, and suddenly finding her behind a door, fixing something, didn’t hear you, laughing nervously, and unable to wait any longer starts telling you she experienced three very minor earthquakes, very very minor, she didn’t even feel it, and the rental for the business space was too high…until you can’t stand the separation any longer and kiss her 31 times until she hits you on the head asking, “Why 31 and not 41, not 51…?”
And it occurred to you then that you didn’t deserve that much happiness.
Note: Soulstealer in the title refers to Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip A. Kuhn, a remarkable book.
Featured image: Li CHEVALIER, Voice of silence (2006) – Wikiart.org
