Good Morning Bei Jing

Every day can be full of excitement when you wake up in this busy and noisy city. I mean a real city in terms of both population and size, not the NZ standard “city”. In the community I live in within about the size of the area inside Massey ring road, there are about 100,000 people, more than the population of the entire Palmerston North city. I like the feeling of being an outsider here. What I mean by that is I am not functionally involved in this city right now (make a living here). As an outsider, I like walking on the street and watching people walking, shopping or talking. Thinking that each of them has a unique story, personality and life style but when people passing by, no one caresabout who he really is and what he means to you. Everyone is a piece, in total, all pieces construct a game on the game board. I feel lost when I am alone on the street. It

is like a scene in a movie, a little girl holding an umbrella standing at the traffic crossing. Then the camera rolled onto the top, in the movie screen, you see many colorful umbrellas and car roofs moving around expect one little static red umbrella.

Yes, at here, you play the game by following game rules. In my grandma’s place, I met my cousin who is in her last year of high school, 2 months before the most important exam of her life—the university entrance exam. She said she does not forsee anything in front of her and don’t know what to study when she enters university. She is a little bit depressed but is strong and optimistic. Based on what she has achieved, she is good enough to go to the first class Universities in China. To survive well, you job is to play the game, not to make rules. She is a good player even though not so happy. Pragmatic is one of the principles of life here and it is a neutral word. I have told my aunt that New Zealand just opened working holiday scheme to China by allowing 1000 Chinese citizens aged between 18 and 30 to come to NZ for work and travel. As I believe, this is a good opportunity for my cousin to see the world and she will gain experiences which are valuable to the rest of her life. But unsurprisingly, my aunt and her husband are not that interested at all. To them, the best way for my cousin is to follow what most people do, get into a good university and then find a good job. They believe this one year working holiday will bring nothing more valuable to my cousin than following the standard life, at least not what they can see. Being pragmatic, following the rules and playing the game -- that is the principle, hard to shake.

Yes, Miss Tomo is right for two things, one, black and white; and two, Jordan type. She knows me well enough to guess that I bought a pair of Nike basketball shoes. The power of PhD in psychology remains even at a distance of the ocean and for sure this is nothing to do with science. Jordan XI, the year he lead Chicago Bulls breaking the NBA record by winning 72 games in a season, he was wearing this pair. They are my favorite basketball shoes by all time and they were the pair that I was dreamed of when I was 17. Yes, I have grown up but sometime I just want to be childish to fulfill my childhood dream even though I don’t get the same excitement as I was 17. When you start losing hair but gaining weight, you want to “smell like a teen spirit”, at least once a year.



It is a new day and you will never be able to return to yesterday, so why not put a smile and say “Good morning BeiJing”.