I have been wanting to make this blog for a long time but due to moving around very frequently and lack of internet I never really found the time.
I'm in Taipei at the moment at the DongWu Hotel; we flew in on Tuesday from Hong Kong and before that I spent 2 days at my grandparents' apartment in Guangzhou.
I used to visit Guangzhou with my family every 2 years or so and I used to think it was an overurbanised, overly-grey concrete wasteland. However, as I grew up, I somehow started learning things and becoming inspired whenever I go back to visit. There is just something irreplaceable about a hometown, albeit one that I can barely remember. The important thing is the tiny snippets of memories that flood back to me when I stand at the physical locations of my childhood -- the shop where I bought small mantou snacks next to our house, the paved courtyard of the kindergarten where I would wave goodbye to my grandmother every morning and make her promise that my grandfather would pick me up in the afternoon on his bike (very important, I would be deeply saddened if he showed up without a bike), the commercial sector of town where I would go shopping with my grandmother and politely go with her choices of clothing which would always end up making me look like unicorn's vomit.
It is a wonderful coalescence of the past and present.
I found my uncle's old diaries lined up neatly on his shelf. I picked a blue one up -- 1986. 7 years before I was born. It was so menial -- date, weather, temperature, recount of the day's events. Twice a week, consistently, for a year. The writing reached just halfway through the notebook; the rest of it was blank. And then 1987 began -- a green notebook. It's amazing to think that at the time it was written, there was no such thing as internet or personal, affordable computers. The everyday events in that notebook were so ordinary and yet, from the perspective of our society, so extraordinary. Nobody would lead such a boring life! This is why I find it amazing. Although at that time it was just a way for him to write down and record events in his life and to spend time on when bored, its sheer age makes it so precious today; I felt as if the paper could disintegrate in my hands and cherished history crumble forever.
The room where the diaries sit is a record of my uncle's life. Outside of the shelf, there is a large stack of WoW giftcards. A large frame containing his wedding photo hangs above the bed and a gigantic teddy bear sits before the pillows. There are many shelves in this old apartment room, as he has since moved out. The older ones contain his old bug collection and holiday photos with his friends -- I see my twenty-year-old aunt in a group photo in Tibet; the first time they met. The newer cupboards had the inescapable essence of woman -- my aunt's jewellery, her perfumes, her makeup. It's amazing to see how life can change.
This time, since I was only staying for a short time, my uncle took half days off work to show me around the city. I always found it so interesting how my uncles are always so friendly and familiar with me even though I barely talk to them normally. But as I flipped through the old photo albums, I saw myself a small-potato-sack-sized baby in my uncle's arms. The date read September 1993. I was 2 months old -- my uncle looks almost identical to how he is today, minus a few white hairs. It's interesting how quickly things can change. I flipped another page and saw a family photo with all my cousins. 2002. In just 10 years between 1992 and 2002, my family grew by 4 children, all of whom the adults loved dearly. I was the first, though perhaps not necessarily the first to realise how amazing the potential of the present is; what we do now will certainly determine where we end up later. And it is this unknown that is so beautiful.
More travel updates soon maybe. I felt inspired at some point but no time/energy to turn inspiration into words ):
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