Shanghai is a city I can never get close to. Essay
Shanghai is a city I can never get close to. Essay
I have been in Shanghai for 7 years.
"Going to Shanghai" always seems like it happened yesterday - even though I have spent almost my entire twenties here.
When I arrived in Shanghai in 2008 at the age of 22 with all my luggage, I only knew one classmate in the whole city.
I was shocked by its glitz and modernity when I first saw it many years ago.
——It was an evening when we were driving to the Bund. As a passenger, I saw the neon lights on both sides of the Yan'an Elevated Expressway flashing little by little, and the dots of lights gradually connected into a large area. It has been spreading out, stretching into the winding distance, and the lights in the distance are even more magnificent - you can't help but be attracted by it, eager to speed up and drive to the brightest place to take a look...
If you describe Shanghai as a woman, she would be arrogant.
The first time I approached her, I had doubts about myself. I am new to the world and doubt whether I have the qualifications to be close to her: talent, taste, attitude, temperament, etc. I have to re-evaluate myself in various dimensions.
Looking at the clothes I am wearing, I am so inconspicuous;
Looking at my resume, I am so penniless;
Looking at myself living alone The residence is so old, I don’t know when it will be able to rush to the distant and proud future.
When I lived alone, it was like "digging a hole." With endless energy, I just want to dig the hole as big as possible and dig it to the center of the city.
I have never experienced the so-called "bitterness and loneliness of living alone." On the contrary, I feel that freedom finally manifests itself the way it should - a one-room house for my husband in Shanghai, a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, a TV, a set of sofas, the most basic configuration, I have always been like Traveling alone and staying in a hotel room.
You can sleep as long as you want on weekends. You can watch as many movies as you want on weeknights. If you have friends over, you can mop the floor and the whole group can lie down and fall asleep. chat.
When night comes, I sit on the bed and watch people on TV speaking Shanghainese, and I follow every sentence. Sometimes I forget to turn off the remote control, and when I wake up, it’s the seven or eight o’clock news.
There is no time when you are sick. If your body is strong, you will not feel the pain of no one taking care of you.
I clean the house by myself, pay the water, electricity and gas by myself, settle the rent with the landlord by myself, and make new friends little by little.
But there are also inconveniences. Things in the refrigerator often go bad. Once you go to the supermarket or market on a whim, the extra food will be put away and become moldy if you can't eat it. ——So I stocked up on a lot of canned vegetables, olives, Laoganma, beef sauce, shacha sauce, sesame sauce, etc. Whenever I’m lazy and it’s hard to take care of things, I can take out a bottle of sauce, and the noodles or porridge will taste delicious.
The road where I first lived was called Maotai Road. It's quite long, long and thin. When I get off work at 5 o'clock, I will walk through one street after another with nothing to do.
I took a lot of photos along the way, but there was no iPhone at that time. The mobile phone with low pixels showed very thick particles, and the appearance of the long clothes drying rack sticking out on the road always stayed in my mind.
——Every night, I am also the one who hangs the washed clothes above the street; I hear the sounds of "Hello" and "Goodbye" from the facade downstairs, and appreciate the urban life in this city . When late at night comes, if I haven't fallen asleep, the trucks passing by on Maotai Road will shake my house several times. So I am never afraid to go out at night, because this city will never be truly peaceful. It is noisy 24 hours a day.
What’s strange is that even after two years of living in a shared apartment, it still seems like I’m living alone. Loneliness is no different.
I moved to an older house. That winter, there was a big family of mice who liked to stay at home. ——I couldn’t find the reason for neglecting cleaning. Later I found out that the walnuts brought by my parents had been left in the cupboard. I forgot to eat them, which attracted mice.
But the story is not as romantic as Walt Disney and Mickey. I am especially afraid of mice. I was so frightened that I didn’t dare to go to the living room for a few days. One day, the smallest mouse in the family slept in my high heels worth more than 200 yuan (the best pair at the time) - it was fragrant and sweet, but I was filled with fear.
The older the house, the more patience is needed. Like the aging organs of the human body, the water pipes in the house are often blocked by blood clots - the water heater in winter cannot produce water, and it is either scalding hot or ice cold. Taking a shower on a wet and cold night always requires a lot of courage.
When I think about it, "living alone" finally feels a little sad.
But fortunately I am not a picky person. It is also suitable for "wandering people" who are not particular about food.
I don’t feel too embarrassed if I eat porridge with soy sauce or steamed buns for three meals a day. Even when I rented my second house for a whole year, I loved going downstairs to have a bowl of Changsha rice noodles. Friends from Hunan always say that it is not authentic at first glance, but I think it is filling and delicious.
But every time when the Chinese New Year is approaching, my parents come and we squeeze into a small house, and my mother makes me a refrigerator full of dumplings. I felt like it finally had a "taste".
Such a rare taste became commonplace after a few years of marriage. After living a life with a family, looking back at the years of living alone, it feels like I am acting out Naoko Takagi's "Going to Tokyo Alone" and "The Fifth Year of Living Alone". Once when I was reading it again on the subway, I burst into tears.
When you live alone, and when you go to the city alone, you never feel that "it's different now" - but when you look back, the scene after scene actually makes people cry. Don't know why.
I have worked and lived with Shanghainese, and even I cannot define whether my child is a "Shanghaiese", even though it is written that way in her household registration book.
I learned Shanghainese, starting from the simplest word "Goodbye, good-bye". This has even become the language I have learned best. My proficiency in it is much higher than that of English and Cantonese. Korean.
But recently, I gave up using it. If it is not absolutely necessary, I choose to use Mandarin.
Over the years, it has been difficult to describe what I like or dislike about Shanghai—it probably means “I don’t like it very much”—but since I “don’t like it very much”, why do I want to live here?
Perhaps because I am ready to leave at any time.
During the years when I was working, I was always full of doubts about myself. Although he abides by his duties and is strict with himself, his performance in the workplace is acceptable, and his future seems bright. But I always feel that this is not quite right.
I have a small dream, not to get a position in the company, but to see the manuscript I wrote on the weekend turned into type in the magazine at the newsstand at the intersection of the company, and to have a whole years of excitement.
But those times are too rare. Most of the time, I am just a blog holder writing random thoughts, talking about what happens to me every day, how ordinary and insignificant it is.
I was depressed for a while. Is this all? Is this how I will sit in the office in my life?
When I was pregnant with my child, I squeezed through the door of the subway every day with my big belly. I always thought that there are tens of millions of people in this city like me, with very small dreams, but they have passed. Living such a mediocre life day after day. We walked hurriedly from the zebra crossing into the office building, not knowing where we were going or where we came from.
Before I arrived in Shanghai, I thought "urban white-collar worker" was a shining term. But after I truly held such an identity, I felt that my life was completely blank and "Fight Club" was being staged every day.
What is even more confusing is that we have lost our belonging in the city. When people ask where you are from, it's just a polite greeting. What people really care about is what you already have in Shanghai, not your past.
So once this year I wrote "Why is the Shengxiao silent" in Zhihu's advertising column? It was a real self-deprecation - when I still had nothing after 7 years and watched the glamor in the movie. , I always feel that none of this is real, maybe I am wasting my time.
Every year, I have to apply for something called a "residence permit", which proves that I still have some status in this city, but I cannot truly become a "Shanghai native".
Compared with my parents’ worries about household registration, I don’t care about the status that seems to be a reward.
——This city will never be very friendly. It's like a lantern hung high, twinkling with light, but the light isn't bright enough. You want to move forward by its light, but you will never be able to hold the lamp.
Although more and more people live here, not many people say, "I am from Shanghai."
We always keep a certain distance from it.
But the strange thing is that when you go to a new place, people will naturally say, oh, you are from Shanghai.
When I first came to Shanghai to work, I took an English course for foreign teachers. A group of people were chatting in English in a cafe. The foreigner asked where you were from, and there was a word that was used a lot: Shanghainese.
Imagine I lived here with my daughter for the rest of my life, and I probably wouldn’t use this word. ——This is really strange.
And NewYorker is NewYorker.
Cantonese also expresses the people in a certain place in China, but this word covers a wide range. It not only refers to Cantonese, but also includes Hong Kong people, Macau people, and even all overseas people with Cantonese blood. people.
But "Shanghainese", there are only so many people. A native of Shanghai.
Perhaps I should stop discussing the meaning of words.
What I want to say is that this city will always have a sense of "alienation". If you like it, it is a world where "loneliness has its own qualities", and there is a proper sense of proportion between people. If you don't like it, it's cold and emotionless.
If you have someone you like in this city, it is not difficult to meet them. There are trains everywhere. Although the geographical distance across the city is time-consuming; but if you don’t want to meet someone, even if you two It's right next door, five or ten meters away, and you never have to see it.
You can meet someone you haven’t seen for a long time on a crowded street one day; you can also pretend not to see the person around you every day.
Even good friends cannot meet frequently. Once a month is considered high frequency. And most people with whom we have a normal relationship may not see each other once a year. ——It’s hard to imagine that we live in the same place but never have time to see each other.
This is the magic of Shanghai.
There was a time when I liked Shanghai very much, probably when the parasol trees sprouted in spring, when the wind blew away the heat in summer, when the rain in autumn swayed, and when the prosperity in winter never withered at night.
I like its four distinct seasons, a certain humidity and temperature, neither too cold nor too hot.
The change of seasons reminds people that time is moving forward and you do not have everything. You still have jackets and shirts, vests and skirts, downs and scarves... As you change your clothes, you are busy saying goodbye to the past.
Saying goodbye can be quick. Many friends come to see you in a hurry. You say goodbye at the subway entrance. Maybe you don’t see each other for many years.
But the farewell at the subway station was so ordinary, like a summer night in a small town when people met each other on the street waving cattail fans, thinking they would meet tomorrow.
I cherish my encounter with everyone. Because in this city with a sense of distance, it is not easy for people to meet each other.
But there are too many people passing by, and everyone seems to be the same.
So I remembered the special stories. Every day, people tell "bizarre" stories - even me.
But these bizarre stories are not enough to resist mediocrity. When we, who had achieved a little bit, walked into the crowd, we still felt like we were walking into an ocean with no distinguishable colors, and all the coral reefs only flickered on the bottom of the sea.
In 2015, after leaving the family and workplace I had been accustomed to for 6 years, I quickly adapted to my new life.
One person works and one person takes care of himself.
No longer interact with many people every day, and no longer have family to accompany me for dinner.
Everything is back to how it was when I first came to Shanghai.
When I was writing alone at home for a long time, I was grateful for the indifference of the city.
Because for others, life is no different; but I have more time to focus.
If I want to meet friends, I just pack up and go out. I can still walk into a noisy small bar and listen to the bizarre new stories of this season.
But once I was listening to an African singing jazz in a bar, and he asked me where I was from, and I instinctively said: Nowhere.
One night I was at home and I sang the Beatles in bed for two hours. When I sang the song "Nowhere Man", I felt even more sad.
——Loneliness also has its own world.
I once wanted to go to many, many places, like a collector, drawing crosses all over the map.
I still think about it now...
But I realized that I can’t go to so many places, nor can I see so many mountains beyond the mountains and cities beyond the city.
During the 6 years of working, what I did the most was:
Every long afternoon, I stood up from my chair in the office, walked to the stairs alone, and looked across the street. The building - the sunlight shines on it differently every day, and different lights cast different shadows.
There is nothing new under the sun between me and the building.
It looks the same.
But we are all changing. Now, writing and accompanying my daughter to grow up have made me truly feel the power of time.
She lives in my hometown, and I live in her city.
We can tell each other the changes once we meet and talk on the phone.
I always hope that every time I see her, I can tell her happily,
My mother has grown up like you.
This city has the power of flowing water.
Some people were washed away, smoothed, struggled and lost their direction;
We were in it, holding hands, being driven forward by it.
My daughter is considered a "native Shanghainese", but as a foreigner, I always feel that there is a natural distance between us.
Despite this, she is also the person I am closest to in this city.
I don’t know if I will leave Shanghai forever one day, or if I will care about it.
When I came here in the past, I told myself to just take things as they come.
Now I am still here, and I still tell myself to be at ease.
Thank you for the ordinary stories it gave me, and I also try to understand its lack of care and indifference.
As Paul Graham said in "Cities and Ambition", every city has an ambition.
Perhaps Shanghai has already given it to me.
Biography of Splendid Painting
To myself
Different cities have different scenery
Different people have different ways of living
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Having been in this city for six years,
watching him go about in a feasting and bustling manner
But I can’t see the original self more and more clearly
Perhaps it’s time
Draw up a picture book for yourself to record the time without trace
It’s time to change the city
Change your way of life and hit the road again.
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