背下去 — carry it forward

A longish story in three parts

Prologue: this was a long and hard one to get out. You could, if you want, read part 3 first, then part 1 and 2 in either order.

Part 1: the tragedy of the digital world

My laptop died yesterday. It was the worst timing possible. Sunday afternoon I came down with a cold, Monday I learned my coworker was out with Covid, Tuesday my new high school’s HR told me my documents were not clear enough and I needed to go find a place to get them “officially scanned” (whatever that means) and take new photos to get a digital file because paper photos are “not clear enough”, somehow.

Is real life too fuzzy for us? Do we need to see every pore on my face, every nanogram of plaque on my teeth? Every pixel of my signature? Are the security threats to a high school English teacher this real? Is it because I’m a foreigner?

This thought follows me wherever I go, and every foreigner here has had it. They wouldn’t let me come into the restaurant even though they let another person in, must be anti-foreigner discrimination (couldn’t be because they had a reservation already booked through the restaurant’s WeChat Miniapp and had just had their number called electronically to their phone). Anti-foreigner discrimination does exist here, but our bewilderment and lack of understanding of the incredible digital thrum that is the background of life in modern China amplifies it in our minds ten-fold.

I opened my laptop and saw a black screen with a white glowing Apple logo ( (does it count as product placement if I get nothing for it?). Huh, I thought, that’s new. Reboot. Nothing. Reboot again. Nothing. My stomach started to sink.

No amount of restarting, power cycling, or key combinations helped. I reluctantly made an appointment at the Apple Store for after work. Shenzhen is where Apple products are made, there’s bound to be a few Apple Stores to choose from. Conveniently, one was right in between work and home, just one subway stop away.

I walked in and was approached by a greeter speaking perhaps the most fluent English I’ve encountered this side of the Hong Kong — Mainland border. I noticed a foreigner working there, a shock in China where as a foreigner you can’t just get any old job in any sector, you have to prove you are doing a job a Chinese person can’t do to get a work visa. He stuck out like the sorest of thumbs. We all do.

I was led to a table to sit down and shortly thereafter my technician arrived. “中文？英语？” he asked. “我都行，中文吧”, I answered. We proceeded in Chinese. He pulled out my laptop, tried all the key combinations I had already Googled, and promptly took my laptop to the back for further inspection. When he came back, he was holding an iPad with a phot on it of my hard drive. The processing chip had exploded, literally melted off the hard drive. I could see the edges, bubbly and silver, like a miniature volcano had gone off inside my trusty digital companion of the last decade. I could buy a new hard drive, he said, but it would take time to come in and it was expensive.

“Is it worth it?” I asked. “No”, he said, a full sentence, brutal and honest. “那就换一台吧”, I sighed, accepting my expensive fate. Time to buy a new laptop. I pulled out my phone to check my account balance and did the rent and payday calculations. It would be half my month’s salary.

Look, I know I can get a cheaper computer. I’m not a total Apple fangirl, I’ve never had an iPhone (though who knows, I’m considering it). I’ve always been partial to Google. But goddamn it I like MacBooks. I like how light and sleek they are and I am very used to using them. I like how they last ten years. I like how they usually don’t have issues. I like how they look.

And, I’m an adult without children and my disposable income is mine to do with as I please, so, off to the display tables to pick out a new computer, the choosing and buying of which took all but a few minutes. I had even brought my backup hard drive to transfer my stuff over, albeit my last backup had been several months ago (this is your sign to backup your computers, people).

Then the problems started. There’s something about using Time Machine backup to migrate files from an older Intel chip computer to a new Silicone chip computer that doesn’t mesh well, and basically crashed the first computer I tried it on. Luckily I did this all at the Apple store. Luckily as well, I was able to be very open with them about the fact that my non-negotiable was having to have my VPN installed and working on my computer and a working connection to the internet before I left.

I broached this subject gingerly at first, before I even bought the new laptop. Word goes around the foreign and expat circles that you don’t buy computers or electronics on the Mainland. You must go to Hong Kong to “be safe”.

“Is there anything…different, let’s say, about buying a laptop in Mainland China versus let’s say Hong Kong?” “Different how? The prices are different”, she replied. “Uh no, um, are there any restrictions or things I can’t do if I have a Mainland model?” She reassured me they are all the same. I decided to go for it.

Let me cut to the chase. I was in the store for over four hours that night, no food, no water, AC on blast, cortisol levels high. It took two computers, twelve Genius Bar technicians, a thumb drive, an external hard drive, and Airdrop before we finally figured it out. My mood got progressively worse over time. At one point one of the technicians pulled out his customer service training and said “I can understand you’re angry, I’d be angry too if I was you”. It didn’t help in the moment, but looking back now I have to laugh.

Finally, I got myself and the laptop home, ate a very late 10pm dinner, and after an hour of struggling to relax and a quarter bit off of a Tylenol PM, I went to sleep.

Part 2: The comedy of the physical world

I’ve lost my voice. Ever since I became a teacher (I struggled not to put the word “teacher” in quotes), every cold I’ve gotten has led to the partial or complete loss of my voice. One time I lost it for nearly a week. Now the moment I feel the hoarseness and inflammation creep in, I try to shut it down, resting in silence as much as possible, drinking lots of ginger honey water, gargling with salt, sucking on lozenges, anything to avoid prolonging the effects.

My voice is basically my identity. In 5th grade I asked in an admissions interview for a new school what my hobbies were. “I love to talk”, I said. Losing my voice hits me hard, every time.

Tomorrow I have to MC a friend’s wedding. It’s a 15 minute ceremony, but hours of chitchat, announcements, and people-herding.

I considered taking the day off work today, but the obstacles seemed overwhelming. Asia’s work culture is nothing short of toxic. You’ve probably heard the horrors of Japan’s work culture, but China’s is just as brutal. 996 is common, and there’s a new trend known as 9/10/7. For those who don’t know, 996 means working from 9am to 9pm six days a week. 9/10/7, then, is 9am to10pm, every day. Very few people here have 双休, a special name for a two day weekend. There’s a name for it because it’s not just, you know, a given. This is the reason that as long as I stay in China, I’m likely staying in the relative safety of the education sector, where vacations are a thing and there’s at least some hope of a work-life balance.

Even in the education sector, though, you can’t avoid the fact that you’re in China. My two year contract includes two paid sick days. That’s one sick day per year. Long time readers may remember me breaking my toe two weeks after moving to China. Those two days didn’t last long.

Of course you can still take a day off, but you won’t be paid, and you must get a doctor’s note, otherwise the day will be counted as an unexcused personal day rather than an excused sick day and you will incur an additional financial penalty.

In order to get a doctor’s note, you must go to a hospital. You’d be wise to make an appointment ahead of time. Call the hospital. Can’t speak Chinese or can’t speak it well enough to navigate a phone system? Use one of the many main-party or third-party apps or mini-apps to book an appointment. These are also only in Chinese. Take a screenshot of every page and run it through a translation app, then go back and make sure sure the app hasn’t restarted, losing all your progress.

Make sure your name and details is input correctly into the system or the system may outright reject your appointment request. Also make sure you choose the right department, because if you don’t, you’ll end up getting there and not being able to be seen until the next day, which has happened to me before. Just note the department may be called something you don’t really understand and may not translate well into English, and that the division of medical labor may not be the same as it is in your home country. Good luck!

Of course you can just show up to the hospital but you’ll have to take a number and wait. Go first thing in the morning and you may get right in or you may have 200 people in line ahead of you and wait until they shut down for two hours for lunch and have to come back in the afternoon. You may wait all day and not get seen. Make sure you bring your Social Insurance card and passport or you can’t get seen, or will have to pay out of pocket, and may just get turned away for lack of documentation.

Even if you try to make an appointment in advance, they might already all be booked, so book well in advance if possible. Of course you can’t just go after work, because the hospital closes at 5pm. At that point you just have to go to the emergency room and take a number and wait. There are no specialists at the emergency room, so if you have an earache or something, they are likely to tell you that you need to make an appointment to see an ear doctor during working hours. This has happened to me.

So yeah, I didn’t want to deal with *waves hands at wall of text above* all that. I texted my principal with two options. I can come in and work but not use my voice, or I can take the day off. Remarkably, she agreed to let me come in and not teach classes just help wrangle kids. I was blown away. I had expected to be told to take the day off, left to tackle the hospital system in China again to get a doctor’s note. I abhor the sick-leave system in this country, the fact that you don’t get any rest when you’re sick shlepping yourself around the hospital all day waiting in a sometimes hours-long queue to see a doctor just to say “yep you have a cold here’s your work note”.

Epilogue: the rest of the story

This should really be two journal entries. If you’re still with me, you’re a true friend or a very bored internet stranger. In either case, welcome. It is now a week or so later. I’m recovered from my cold but haven’t pressed publish yet. This is abnormal for me. I usually write an entry in a fast burst of cathartic energy, release my guts onto the page and hit publish without so much as a spell check. I once published an entry with a placeholder title. It went out to my email subscribers as a journal entry titled “Title aahhhhh” or something of that nature. *puts entire palm over face*

Maybe I’m changing, growing. I find myself noticing more and more the “one percent better everyday” moments in my life. The little things I figure out, little process improvements in the routines I’ve run every day for weeks, months, or even years. It always delights and also startles me, to think that I could still be iterating on things I’ve done hundreds or even thousands of times. It’s inspiring and scary at the same time. My former martial arts teacher said once in class “I shave my face every day and still sometimes cut myself”. He asked if anyone had any ideas on how he could improve, how he could avoid making this mistake. One student suggested he pay more attention. Slow down. Be more aware.

I’ve been implementing that advice lately, slowly, in tiny little ways. I decided I would no longer let myself watch videos while I eat. I can sacrifice my auditory pathways listening to podcasts, but the visual, olfactory, and taste parts of my brain needs to be engaged with my food. I will train myself to eat mindfully, one sense at a time.

I need to eat mindfully. My recent year or so of worsening restrict-binge yoyo dieting and weight gain and loss has disrupted my hormones such that I have lost my period for the last three months. I googled “does binge eating cause hormone disruption” today. A one word answer came up: “Yes”.

I had my lifetime worst binge episode in Taiwan. I had dieted down for 6 solid weeks prior to going, people had started noticing and telling me I looked like I had lost weight. I was feeling good, confident, happy with my progress. I felt like I could ease up and enjoy my vacation.

I was only there for 5 days and I gained 11 pounds. Maybe some of that is water weight but certainly not all of it. My face changed shape. I put on fat. I ate past fullness, past discomfort, and to the point of pain every single night I was there. I felt completely disconnected from myself. Lost. I don’t even have any shame talking about it, I just feel numb about the entire experience.

I’m kind of stunned at what I’ve allowed to happen, the way I keep driving at a goal that gets farther and farther away, the fact that I know I probably need to quit this shit and quit it now, but I want what I want and I don’t want to give up.

I busted my knee three years ago and I still haven’t given up trying to fix it.

I endured 18+ years of trauma from my primary caregiver and never, not once, gave up completely on trying to fix it. Fix myself. Find a way out.

I will walk to the end of the earth to get what I want. I will make it happen or die trying. I would rather be in action than feel helpless, stuck, a passive victim to life circumstances.

Classic Aries, my one beloved astrology-loving friend would say. Stubborn to the core.

I had a conversation recently with a friend over ramen and Japanese curry. He was treating me to a dinner out after a hike and I was reveling in the company of a good conversationalist who lets me speak Chinese with him the whole time we’re together even though he’s completely fluent in English. He said some people (pointing to me), are gifted with certain capabilities and tendencies, they are optimistic, take action, and will work to change their circumstances.

I told him simply, 我没办法，我找出口才努力。 I had no choice. I was desperately looking for a way out of an untenable situation. I was in hell. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t accept my status quo. I was uncomfortable.

I am uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in a body that isn’t up to my physical aesthetic standards (which, I understand, are bullshit and come from a sick society. Like, I get that. But also, I’m not really fighting back on this point, which I guess is something to unpack at some point). I’m uncomfortable in a body that is in pain.

I’ve never been able to accept less than what I want. Even when my self-esteem was in the negative numbers and I was accepting all kinds of mistreatment, I still knew, deep down, that I deserved better. I truly feel I deserve to live in the body I want to be in. I believe I deserve to have what I want in life. I feel entitled to it. I also believe only I, through my own efforts, can make it happen. I don’t believe anyone can help me, nor do I really trust anyone to be able to (phew, that’s a big truth I just realized — *laughs in still single*).

My Chinese tutors (I have two of them and they are both wonderful) sometimes have me memorize passages. In Chinese when you 背 something to memorize. The word bei(4th tone) literally means “back”. You carry it on your back. My back. My 驼背, hunched back. It’s true, years of poor posture has left me with a slight hunch in my back. I believe, I have to believe, that it’s not too late to fix it. I go to the gym, I do the lat pulldown machine, the weighted rows, all the things. I think about all the things I’ve carried in my life, all the backpacks to work and school and on hiking and camping trips. All the fears and insecurities I’ve carried. All the hopes and aspirations, the excitements and yearnings. And now, thanks to the powerful tool that is language, the way it gives us permission to think differently, to change how we conceptualize our experience, I can add to that all the knowledge I have amassed. A giant sack of songs and poems and facts and figures, of words in eight languages, sentences in six, hopes and dreams in four or five.

Language is my greatest love and I will never stop talking about it. I will write her poetry until my dying breath. It really does give us permission to think differently. When I was in high school I was afraid to dive off the diving board. I didn’t know I had this belief, but I believed that you had to not be afraid in order to do something. Someone came up to me at the pool and asked why I wasn’t diving. I said I was scared. He said “that’s ok, be scared and do it anyway”. It changed my life. I had no idea that was even an option. I promptly went up, heart racing, mind wild with fear, put my hands over my head, took some deep breaths, felt the pulses of adrenaline shooting wildly through my chest, throat, brain, even down my legs, and jumped.

When my last serious relationship ended, I went on a long walk with a heavy pack. I walked over 300 kilometers in 10 days, listening to my thoughts, the birds, other hikers, and occasionally podcasts. One such podcast was a hiking related podcast and the guest being interviewed said you pack things you don’t need. We all do. She said “you carry it as as long as you carry it, and when you’re ready, you let it go”. It hit me square in the chest, this permission wrapped in the gift of language. I said down and cried right there on the trail.

Anyway, if you’re still here, I love you. I’m glad you’re in my life. If you’re an internet stranger, well, we’re a bit more acquainted now, aren’t we? Go on, say hi.

❤