The China Chapter: A Lesson from the Middle Kingdom

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”- Maya Angelou

Colin Colas
Jul 27, 2017 · 4 min read

Where do I begin?

The bewildering culture shocks that displaced my emotions upon my setting footing in China? Too easy.

My bittersweet assortment of warm memories confused with my hesitations returning to a country dissimilar to that from which I departed two years ago? Too obvious.

A lecture on China’s economic miracles and rise to the top? Too repetitive.

As I sit here in my dormitory room, the once-colourless four walls that bore witness to the greatest and darkest moments of my life over the past 24 months, it’s approximately nine hours until I board the British Airways flight that promises my return from the Kingdom of the East back to the Kingdom of the West.

Like many of you whom have experienced a relocation, a trip down memory lane in the countdown to one’s departure is as inevitable as it is bittersweet. Hidden among my reflections of the countless jokes, conversations, challenges, success stories and disappointments that I’ve experienced over the past two years, I can’t help but ask myself the following question:

“What was the single most profound moment that I experienced during my tenure in the PRC?”

Having initially anticipated the difficulty of crowning a single moment as victor among an abundance of signature experiences, the answer to the question became clear some few minutes later.

It was June, 2016. Summer was on the horizon — and as all students and graduates across the globe will fondly recall — summer brings with it its own catch-22: exams.

Nonchalantly putting aside our preparation for our Chinese final exams, my friends and I set off for China’s pot of gold located in the north-eastern corner of Guanxi Province: Guilin.

Some moments after reaching the heart of the astounding Longji Rice Terraces, a pleasant combination of gentle humming and soft singing accompanied the emergence of an elderly Chinese gentleman.

Our old friend — June, 2016, Guilin, Guanxi Province, China.

Planting himself in the semi-circle formed by my friends and I, the 86-year old man, so full of enthusiasm, vigour and life, proceeded with intrigue to ask questions about his new foreign friends in a bid to learn more about our life journeys and backgrounds.

Before I knew it, our old friend blessed us with a two-minute exclusive solo of a song clearly held so dear to him that no exchange was needed to appreciate the level of freedom, happiness and life that both the song and the act of singing granted this man with.

…and then it hit me. There I was, 22 years old, with my entire future laying ahead of me; blessed with more opportunities, freedoms and liberties than my brothers and sisters that hail from different corners of the world; and yet, my mind was occupied, over-analysing the problems of yesterday, today and tomorrow, before the life-defining lesson slapped me across the face: life is to be lived for today.

With unprecedented access to so much opportunity in life, many of us that live in Country A or hold Passport B are recurrently guilty of placing undue significance on the few things that don’t go to plan in life at the expense of appreciating the simple, joyful things that life kindly offers us.

Throughout life, problems and challenges will come — sometimes all at once and other times few and far between. In-between these instances, we have the opportunity to live. To overthink the problems of yesterday or to anticipate the problems of tomorrow, therefore, would be to rob ourselves of the rare windows of opportunities that we have to live happily, making the most of the blessings of the day.

Whilst my encounter with my old friend was short of sixty minutes, I learnt a tenet that now inadvertently guides my life: happiness is a choice and it comes from within.

This journey that we call ‘life’ is clouded with uncertainty and obstacles that each hold the potential to minimise our happiness. Accompanying these challenges, though, are fresh opportunities to lead a happy life with positive impacts both to oneself and to wider society. How one responds to these opportunities comes down solely to the individual.

Having learnt from my old friend, though, I now realise that the secret to happiness lies in appreciating that inherent in each morning we rise, we have been blessed with another opportunity to enjoy what life has to offer us; to share positive energy with those around us; and to help those in need.

As I now reach the end of my time in the Middle Kingdom, I write to say thank you to the single person that never left my side since my China journey began. The one person who lived his life to the maximum every single day, my dearest cousin, Said Mohamed Chande Othman. You will always be that guy to me — thank you for everything, my dude. Greatness never dies.

“一笑解千愁 — A smile can erase a thousand worries.”
Last few hours in Shanghai — July, 2017

Colin Colas

Written by

Feet on the ground, eyes to the sky.

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