Spring fever

Part of the beautiful Xi'an delegation to the
Zhengzhou Toastmasters Conference

 People and places have crowded the month of May.  I'm ready to slow down a bit.  It goes without saying that the life of a foreigner in Xi'an has its challenges, but there are compensations if you slow down enough to appreciate them.

Tang Paradise - Xi'an

Getting ready for the Hash Run

I have been to Viet Nam, Zhengzhou and Tianjin all within the span of a month.  Its possible that the strain of all that movement is affecting me.
In the Tianjin Hotel I discovered I had left my computer in the Xi'an airport.  The resulting trauma of that caused the loss of my passport.  There's nothing more critical than your passport when you're in a foreign country - especially china.  Without my passport I can't even get on a train or a plane.  Turned out I'd left the passport in my jacket pocket and left my jacket on a chair in the hotel lobby.  So the hotel returned it to me in the morning.  But its a sign of stress - never lost rack of my passport before.
 

Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers.

 So this morning I took a trip back out to the airport and retrieved my computer.  The good part of that was a security officer named Ariel who spoke reasonable English and helped me to negotiate the shoals of airport security.  The Chinese sisterhood is still on the job I'm happy to say.
Taking part in the Hash Run was just another exercise in random occurrences.  The group below and to the right heads off along busy streets at a jog towards unknown destinations.  Every now and then we stop for beer, and to wait for whoever has become lost in the interim.  It was a lot of fun.  The finale is basically a party.  The participants spanned an impressive variety of nationalities: South Africa, USA, UK, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Canada and of course China.  I probably missed some.  Apparently they do this once a month.  Exercise for the liver?

Ex-pats in Xi'an are an interesting species.

Tianjin seems much more modern than Xi'an.  After our school visit we walked along the river and found an excellent coffee shop with a wide view and a cool breeze from the sea.  You can change your life completely by simply going to a new place.  To a far greater extent than we realize, we are a function of our environment.  All the sense impressions, the people we meet, the work we do... they all combine together to give us our identity.

Can't complain about Tianjin

I have consciously tried to disconnect from a rigid identity as much as possible so it is not surprising that the changes of the past month have induced a feeling of dislocation. Xi'an, Viet Nam, Zhengzhou, Tianjin - in each milieu I am someone different.  All the identities are sustainable and its all good; however I have no consistent relationship to anchor me, so that engenders a distinct vulnerability.  On a good day I am detached.  I am in the world, but not 'of the world'.  On a bad day, I am insecure.  I am battered by the world.  So may the winds of fortune blow as they please; let them do their wild work.  I'll set my sails and ride the waves until love and fame to nothingness do sink.