From my journal:
---Thoughts today about environmental ethics, individualism, capitalism, schizophrenia and how awkward I look in the new leather shoes I've got to wear to work. People grinding together, a friction and a heat and a noticeable smoke hanging above them all. The shopkeepers at 7 am ready with breakfast, to sell you cigarettes or grind down an awkward screw on your custom-fit electric scooter. Machine parts, wires, bean curds and rice. Laundry looming above form apartment windows like flags.
Camaraderie at the little tables placed outside shops, old men laughing and pouring tea- there's something inspiring about an old person laughing.
Sure it feels strange to have so many eyes on me when I walk down the street; sure I haven't seen or heard anything but Chinese since I landed; sure its smoggy, crowded, loud, dirty and unintelligible but I am having the time of my life. Its sort of fun trying to leaf through my Survival Chinese book and trying to interact with the people around me.
There's a firewall imposed on all internet access by the PRC and it makes it terribly difficult to access my email and impossible to access Facebook. Media suppression- a creative way to control a population- very Orwellian. I wonder if 1984 is available at the bookstore- I doubt it.
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