Returning.

The hardest bit's always the coming back. Of course, if you know this, and you're dreading the coming back before you're actually properly back, it makes things even harder: you start dealing with the OH NO IT'LL ALL BE DIFFERENT WOEEEE WOEEE DON'T MAKE ME GO! a week or so in advance, grabbing at the doorframe and seat back and bus railing while at the same time propelling yourself methodically towards home, settling plane tickets, making airport plans, buying last-minute dongxi.

It's been a week now, for me, since I began my leaving. I've been home for two days.
Last Monday, Monday evening, I left the apartment in Kunming in which I'd been squatting for the past week with; the day had involved helping bundle someone else's bumbling parents into a taxi, saying goodbye to 徐岚, arguing with the camera guy to no avail (and losing my camera to the iron grip of Kunming), getting rained on, eating my last 石过拌饭 at the Korean place, mopingly mopping floors, and frantically packing and ditching stuff that refused to fit in my backpack. It was a slightly hysterical day, punctuated by moments of horror of leaving, leaving my Kunming that had somehow, 不知不觉得 become my home.

I got to the train station just in time, pushed my way through to the front of the line in the correct fashion, found my car, my seat, was helped to put my bags up on the rack by a Chinese lady in a garish synthetic outfit. Sat. Hyperventilated. How could I be leaving China? For the next hour I wrote feverishly and ridiculously in my notebook, until a little girl with a standing seat came over and I pulled her braid and drew her portrait in my notebook, cutting off a rambling and hysterical and emo narrative.

She refused to draw me, and instead called her brother, the resident artist apparent, over; we spent the next three hours going over every possible animal and its Chinese name that the 11 year old kid could think of, and the two of them solemnly quizzed me on the names and shoved each other's hands away to write the characters that I blanked on. I now know all about the Tibetan gazelle (and own a grinning depiction of one), as well as more common creatures like the gorilla and shark that nevertheless had to be (gigglingly) mimed out for me.

For the remaining 30 hours of my train ride, I dozed, read, ate, and talked about nothing with the rather uninteresting people that sat around me. There weren't any more cool kids in the car, unfortunately, so I was treated to a textbook lecture on China's long and colorful history, and multi-faceted culture, that any professor of Chinese-to-foreigners would have recognized from their training. My teacher was a Hunanese employee of China Mobile (who received free phone calls, and may you not forget it!) but it was all the same crap, really, except that he also put extra emphasis on Chairman Mao's Hunanese origins.

In Beijing, I staggered off my train with swollen feet straining at their Chaco tethers, got accosted by an old Chinese man who leered at me for a few minutes in line and then asked, in English, while I was fumingly fumbling in my wallet for my hiding ticket, "Where are you going? May I help you?" The leering was bad enough, but the offer of help pushed me over the line and I growled, "你有什么事？", a sort of “What's up with you?", and got out of line to find the stupid ticket.
He continued leering.
Ticket unearthed, I got back in line far, far away from him.

I was late to meet Alina at 语言大, the university where she's doing a summer course in Business Chinese and other such exciting things, but once I got out of the cab I couldn't stop talking. The past few days - it was already Wednesday afternoon - were so jumbled in my head, and home home home America where am I going Kunming Chinese ahhh! home? was pretty much my thought process. I still had to figure out the guzheng, mail stuff home, pay for my ticket, and there were some things I had to buy, some things I had to pick up... it was overwhelming, and fell out of my twitchy brain in a torrent of probably extremely annoying monologue. (Sorry, Alina).

My two days in Beijing really were packed and overwhelming. There was a morning foray to Dongzhimen, to the Beijing "Twin Towers", an extremely fancy office building where I was horrendously dirty and underdressed, to pay the change fees for my ticket; there was a schlep back in the thunderstorm with a heavy canvas bag of books that my roommate had kept for me, and the two offers (in English and Russian) of help that I proudly refused; there was lots of flashing an unopened Beida ID and lugging heavy things in and out of campus; mailing of clothing; lugging of guzheng; wandering of campus; eating of 凉皮; DDR in the street; my last Qingdao for a year; a last Wumei run to get Red Cliff for Lucie...

Friday morning I got up at 4:36 because Qiuhong texted me that she was setting out. The plan was to catch the 5:30am train at Wudaokou in hopes that it would be empty and there would be no problem getting the guzheng in and out. Of course, this meant none of the buses were running yet, so I had to carry the guzheng to Wudaokou in my arms, as well as my other two bags that were ridiculously heavy thanks to the 5 fat TCM books and 6 or so other slim Chinese books that I had amassed and couldn't bear to part with.
This also meant that I had to get past the fuwuyuan at the front desk, since I would be leaving conspicuously early and with a full complect of stuff. I'd never signed in as staying there, and I didn't want to get Alina in trouble. They never stopped me going in and out - although they stopped Qiuhong - because, of course, I'm white. (I love China! HA.)
Anyway, the conversation went as such, but in Chinese:

Fuwuyuan (a guy): Where are you going? Are you going back to your country?
Me: Nope! I'm going to take part in a guzheng competition.
Fuwuyuan: So you're not going home yet? Not checking out?
Me: Nope! Just a competition and I'll be back.
Fuwuyuan: Where's the competition?
Me: Nanjing.
Fuwuyuan: Oh. So you're not going home?
Me: Nope!
Fuwuyuan: Ah okay. Oh wait! What room are you in?
Me: Um... 306. [Alina's in 403]
Fuwuyuan: Okay thanks. Good luck!

And I ran away before they realized 306 was all guys or something.

In the metro station, it took a good 20 minutes for the train to come, so I had time to stuff a lot of rubbish into the guy who accosted me with questions, to the effect of my strong dislike for rice affecting my opinion of China, and of being 36, and of having two children. On the ride to Dongzhimen, I quizzed Qiuhong with sample TOEFL speaking questions, timed with my cell phone, and then we lugged my stuff together to the airport express, and I got on with much difficulty, and then stood, hugging my vertical guzheng, until I got to the airport and realized that I could no longer move all my things at once because my hands were so blistered and my muscles so exhausted. A kind airport lady ran up to me with a cart and a sympathetic smile. I must have been a pathetic figure, alone on the airport express platform, lugging my 90ish pounds of stuff a few metres at a time...

Then I had to find the packing station, convince them to strap my guzheng, lift it up put it down navigate around the white tourists looking at me patronizingly as I bumped into their carts with my awkward load (but of course not actually bothering to move their carts to help me get around, no, I had to move the carts out of the way myself...) and then finally I wheeled it over to a quiet divider near my check-in counter and called Jon.
It was 7:30am. We talked for an hour and then his phone ran out of minutes.

Interlude over, the tide was upon me again, check in, oversize baggage, find the gate, carry the guzheng stands, drop the guzheng stands, thank nice English girl for holding guzheng stands for me, unpack laptop unpack books pack laptop pack books, talk to hungover English dude who didn't know what baijiu was (which was probably his downfall, when combined with KTV), airport shuttle here's my gate oh hey we're checking in, nihao seatmate oh you live in England and speak good English now that's boring SLEEP.

In the Hong Kong airport, I sleepily people watched for an hour or two (many of whom were wearing hospital-issue pale blue masks), stretched a little, then set my cell phone alarm for 20 minutes before boarding and curled up around my stuff on the floor to sleep for an hour and a half. I woke up to a middle aged Chinese man in a HIN1 mask watching me, ascertained that he couldn't see down my shirt from his vantage point, and concluded that he was just making sure nobody stole my Chacos or my guzheng stands. Smiled at him. He maybe smiled back, but the mask, yanno.

My plane was delayed for an hour, so I ended up befriending a young Chinese guy by the simple measure of asking him the time, entreating him to No, please don't go ask the guy over there, it's not a big deal, we'll board when we boar--, and of course getting told the exact time and then showered with praise for the extremely simple Chinese he actually allowed me to use. By the time we boarded the plane, we had come to the conclusion that we were both Biology majors, and both going to be in America, which meant that I absolutely had to go visit him. Hm. To his great disappointment we were two rows off from sitting together.
(When I was getting off the plane, he handed me a slip of paper that had his phone number, address, and msn screenname, and it was with great delight that he wrote down his QQ when I asked for it. Having a QQ gives you instant China legitimacy.)
(He also told me his mom makes amazing soup, and that I had to go to his lao jia - by which he meant Sacramento where he's never been before - and she would make said amazing soup for me. Tempting. I do like soup.)
(We finally parted ways when I managed to convince him that he had to go in the Visitor line, even though he was an immigrant, yes yes, and I got to go in the Resident line, and no, he could not go in the Resident line...)

And then I was there.
In San Francisco.
I'd managed to forget about the whole homecoming bit, except for a terrifying moment when I saw the hills all around me, the familiar yellow and brown, the blue sky and OH GOD I'M BACK -- and then I cried, just a bit, just the once, because it meant that China, with its grimy smog and repetitive buildings and glorious mountains was no more.
I'm back.

It's not the same, anything. I've been to Maxim market and to QCup, and I talked to Daniel in Chinese (although he wouldn't talk back), and it's not the same. It's easy, I greet people in English, I dajiaodao in English, I don't have to think... and yet I do. At the library yesterday, I had already prepared to shenqing for a library card, and then realized I just had to apply; I don't have to think of the tones for wanshang hao when I can just say good evening.
It's easy.
I slept on the floor for two nights. My last vestiges of China... but tonight my mom took the floor before I could go to sleep, gave me the bed, and now what? Now I really am home...

As long as I keep busy I don't think, I don't miss. If I start talking to people, looking at pictures, I miss it... if I just push it away, leave it in China, deal only with the present, then it's okay.
I can't figure out what's healthier though. Missing it or ignoring it? There has to be some mature healthy medium.

I really should end this on some sort of conclusive note, but there isn't one. I still don't know how to think about my last two months without falling into some extreme. My four months in Beijing I could have returned from... but my two months in Kunming, I still don't understand. I need to digest them, but if I digest them, I still get lost in the spiral of China. Perhaps I should wait until I have something heavy to keep me tied to America, to the present - such as music? orchestra? - and then I'll be able to think about China, and my charmed life there, without getting completely sucked in and lost to the present.