So, how am I, you asked. I am... very alive.

I came to China almost spontaneaously. My class began a few weeks earlier than expected, and I had to run from Berlin to be on time in Beijing. One could suggest to be prepared when it comes to China, but to me it seems: there is no sufficient preparation.

While I write this, I am sitting in a halo of a Hutong-cafe with two women. One dressed in Prada, working simultaneously on her phone and tablet, she also brought her laptop. The other one in a beautiful chinese traditional, pistacchio green dress, with weaved in images of peasants, hutongs and gardens from ancient China. She takes selfies, loads and loads of selfies.

It is a fair place to write a few lines to you.

 

To explore an unknown city is a wonderful thing to do. You do not need a thing but your feet and some guts. In Beijing that is a quite different story than in Lisbon, London or Bangkok. At a point, one has a sense for a place. You walked the hills, you saw the big plaza, you strided along the seaside, you got drunk in the hidden bars underneath, you climbed the highest church. And then, suddenly, you have a sense for the place. You breathe its colors and you outsmart its traps.

Beijing is heavy, old, huge and dense and it hides a billion secrets. I tried to overlook it, I tried to walk it, I tried to please it, I tried to own it. And now I feel rejected, and I accept that rejection. I can not grasp it yet, nor can I get a sense for it. I guess it would take a good quarter of a lifespan to make that happen.

Besides being a heavy city, just because of its proud enormity - its people are painfully battled by a totalitarian dictator, who wants to see and control, but won‘t allow to be seen or controlled. A cruel and merciless father, who keep us in a chokehold. It is a harsh reality we must not forget.

Since I don‘t like being taken hostage, I try to give up my phone and retreat to a less digital life. That comes with a lot of inconvenience, as Beijing‘s people are extremely dependent on their phones and to „their internet“. But it also comes with a feeling of flying under the radar and feeling also more confident being an outsider. There will come a time, when I have to switch back and make myself a part of the APP world again, but it‘s somewhat healing to step out of this digital reality and watch it from above.

 

I met a friend. I got to know her on the subway: she is from the countryside, from the Yellow River. A chinese myth says, it‘s the Han‘s people birthplace.

We had a talk about surveillance and the government. On a heated evening on a rooftop where they would serve chinese tradtional hot pot - a boiling spicy soup in which one cooks vegetables and meat. I told her about chinese prisons and the inhumanities that happen in there. At one point in our discussion about differences between China and „the West“, she claimed: „Human rights come with wealth.“

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Right now I live with an Austrian woman I got to know in a bar. She is a correspondent for Austrian ORF in Beijing, she does video-jockeying and gives german lessons via Zoom. She is typical Wiener-straight-forwardness: I bought flowers as a present to show my gratitude when I moved in. She said: „Only one rule here: No romance!“

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I‘ve been here for two months now. I read again, I deleted Instagram, because it appears to be nothing but a soulbreaker. I write a screenplay, I learn. And I make plans to stay longer. A few friends suggested Hong Kong as a better fit to me.
香港The Fragrant Harbor. That sounds like heaven to me.

Here in Beijing, sometimes I think about how you must have felt when we were in Berlin together. I was always impressed by your drive and hunger. I didn‘t have that drive back then, maybe because I get too comfortable and lazy when at home. And I don‘t want to come back to that laziness.

„Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.“Pascal, Pensees - cited from „The Songlines“ by Bruce Chatwin