Have you ever experienced the intensity of China ?

Ok, you might wonder what does she mean by “the intensity” ? You have never felt like everything is more intense in everyway in China than anywhere else ? Well, speaking for myself, I will say at least : “than in France”. Everything attempted to be disproportionate : success and failure, emotions, relationships, time.

Success and failure : You feel like you lost everything, you have nothing and won’t figure out how to deal with life and issues. When suddenly you have this opportunity coming to you and open a small window. Then, you have an other opportunity, and an other and this window becomes a door, then a gate. then… Well you might feel like you “succeed”. But be careful, you might lose everything overnight, as fast as you had it. Keep always aware in Beijing, nothing is never granted.

Relationships : You meet new people almost everyday in Beijing. Some stay contacts on wechat, or can become your “best friends” for couple weeks, months. In that case, the relationships are so intense, overnight you start to spend all your time together, do pretty much everything together until this stop as suddenly as it started. You don’t even know how or why. But you are ok with that, it was then and this is now. New people will come into your life, and few (rare) will even stay.

You also have the kind of person that you don’t see that often but who you really appreciate and know that anytime you will see them, you will have a good moment together.

(You will notice that I didn’t speak about love, because I think love relationships are really personal and depends on each of us.)

Emotions : You can feel a bit overwhelmed emotionally, in every way I mean. When you are happy because you experience something that you would never experience in an other situations, when you are angry or frustrated because the cultural differences created big misunderstanding, when you are sad because you feel more lonely than usual (during this long winter), you really feel happy, angry, frustrated and sad. Even when you feel tired, you feel tired like you never were before (although the crowded city and pollution might not help). But at least it’s good to feel alive, right ?

Time : Based on the three parts above, you feel like time is going faster than anywhere else. Well, as I speak for myself, I’d say “than in France”. Everything you’d live in two or three years in your own country, you live it in about six months here. It seems like a day is never enough to do everything you have to do. You surprise yourself thinking about something that seemed to happen one or two weeks ago when that was actually two days ago. And at the end of the week, you did so many things, that it seems like three weeks already passed. Time in Beijing is really crazy.

My dad told me “Beijing is the new farwest because everything is meant to be and is possible”. I totally agree, China is actually living a such big changement that make everything going really fast and make people live an such intense experience as well. Yes, difficult moments might be harder but the good moments totally worth it. And sometimes you can also find yourself taking a deep breath and thinking “I am doing it, I am living it, and this is my choice, no matter what it takes”

Always yours,
Aby(-LiveIcanFly)