Ah, yes, it's been ages since my last post. But Shanghai really is keeping me busy. Between studying and shopping and vegetarian restaurants, I can hardly keep my head on straight.
So I was talking to my language partner James today, who was telling me that during the cultural revolution his parents were displaced from Shanghai to a rural area in the Northeast. He said that after their "work study" people had difficulty returning to the city for much the same reason that Vietnam vets had trouble returning home: they simply weren't the same people.
So it makes me wonder if I didn't kind of catch the same bug after my last trip to China. Not that I have the unbearable audacity to compare myself to people who have experienced that level of suffering, but there is an element of feeling out of sorts in my own skin when I'm in the states now. And I've had nary a pang of homesickness since I've been here. I think my brain swelled in Beijing, and it wasn't until I got here to Shanghai that I found new clothes to fit it. Is it possible to have reverse-homesickness? I've heard that for people who live abroad for a year or two the process of returning home is infinitely more difficult than is the process of leaving in the first place, but I don't think I understood it until now.
I other less philosophical news, I've posted some of the pictures I've been taking. If you're interested, you can look at them at www.flickr.com/photos/chinabecca/. I'll continue to blog, but flickr is easier and doesn't take up as much space on my blog. Besides, now you can look at my pictures without having to read all my random miscellaneous ponderings.
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