Chengdu, December 2022

8 am knocking on the door.

It’s aggressive.

Flashbacks to when I stayed in the Chinese hospital in Shanghai for my foot surgery.

“zuo he suan!” (do the pcr!) a woman’s voice calls.

I stumble out of bed, turning on the light, first thought, barely awake – mask. Must find mask.

Once I’ve located the mask, placed strategically next to the front door where I can grab it as I am half-asleep still, I open the door at the same time as the guy diagonally opposite me, whose phone number I had asked for in order to get into the airport WiFi. I could see his eyes over his masks, and he smiled, and I smiled back. We would continue this little dance for the next five days.

The Woman in the Hazmat Suit jabs her finger at my name on the paper.

“Name?”

“Yes.”

“Age?”

“27.”

She began to open the plastic around the swab, and I took off my mask and bent down a little, opening my mouth. She swabbed quickly, and they moved on. We closed our doors, the curtains were drawn, and the show was over.

My room was spacious, and it was soon to be realised that the hardest thing about this quarantine would be the food. Similar to plane food, it was all I had to eat for five days. That boy on the plane helped me order a snack pack, I ordered the one with the two tea’s. The plane didn’t have any warm food or blankets, with only some snacks in a plastic bag hanging off the backs of the chairs.

I had taken a picture of a group of people in Hazmat suits at Cairo airport, thinking they were a group of paranoid tourists. I was soon to realise they were the crew members of our flight. All the workers in the Chengdu airport were also Hazmatted up, a sight that is uncomfortable for one, although naturally or unnaturally so it is hard to say.

I was originally meant to continue on a flight to Shanghai, thinking I’d quarantine in Shanghai, but instead was ushered, along with everyone else on the flight like a herd of cows, to the waiting area, which was when I first found out that I would not be quarantining in Shanghai, close to my home and within reach of my mother if I needed anything, but in the outskirts of faraway city that I had never been to before. The boy whose number I had asked for asked me what I was doing in Chengdu, to which I happily responded, “I’m transiting here – I have a flight to Shanghai in four hours.” He hardly knew how to tell me that I would have to quarantine right there in Chengdu.

After getting slips with numbers on them, we were barked at to sit and wait for our numbers to be called. Little by little, we shuffled meekly to the scanning area where we had to scan our Very Important Code Without Which We Could Do Nothing. It was as though our entire essence, our very inherent meaning and value lay in this code – without which society would spit you out. Then we were propelled to testing stations, barked at through the steps – take off your mask, open your mouth, you’re done – go! – and then ushered to our suitcases. Having obtained our belongings, each person unknowingly weighed down by materialism, we were then herded off to the waiting area for the big buses. We got on the second bus, and it wasn’t until after a while that we realised we were heading away from the city and into the countryside of Chengdu.

The entire way the bus had a loud siren, as though announcing to anyone in a nearby radius – we are transporting contaminated individuals! beware! – as I felt my migraine settling in. I realised I was on a vehicle going to an unknown destination in an unknown city. It was terrifying, but excitement gripped me. Terror and excitement are just two sides of the same coin, are they not?

I’ve categorised those 5 days of quarantining into my productive and non-productive days, which is quite reflective of me as a person, I’d say. The first day and second I mostly slept, as there was not much else to do. The third day I was extremely productive, had a lovely qigong session, meditated, read, journaled, and did some work, and the fourth day I potatoed again (as a verb it is very useful term I’ve found), and on the fifth day, I left.

I woke up on the fifth day, of my own accord, without a woman yelling “zuo he suan!” (do the pcr!) outside, excited to be able to leave. Not having to do the he suan in the morning now seemed strange and alien, something I had gotten used to in just a few days. I quickly went to take in my breakfast from the little table outside – each person’s door was accompanied by a little table upon which the food would be placed for breakfast lunch and dinner, and a small rubbish bin which the person would be expected to throw the meal after eating in the bin. It was already cold, as the outside temperature was rather frigid. I stared down at a small box of milk, a mantou, and a small piece of bread. I ate what I could and left.

I wonder what my father would have thought. This is not a China he would have recognised. In fact, he would have struggled with the quarantine – as it wasn’t foreigner-friendly at all. After all, hardly any non-Chinese citizens may enter the country now and have not been able to for the past few years. He would have been able to enter with his work visa as a Professor at the university, but the quarantine, with all its technology-dependent aspects – such as the check in, downloading and obtaining the health code, the wechat group in which you scan a code to enter and in which you ask all your questions, he would have struggled with. But then again, has China changed in its very essence? The trajectory of becoming increasingly militarized and the governing party characterised as a dictatorship is not new, it is not as though China was becoming democratic and progressive then suddenly veered off course into the sea of dictatorship. But I still think this is not a China he would have recognised.

Shanghai, December 2022

The streets are empty. Shanghai looks like it did at four am when I would come home, the streets swimming in front of me through my drunken lenses. I complain about people, and I claim I am yearning for nature, for solitude and peace and quiet, but the empty streets strike a funny feeling inside of me. On the onset, it is eerie, and it feels alarming – to see streets that one is so familiar to seeing packed and bustling with people, to see it naked and derived of its hustle and bustle, is eerie, but upon a moment of reflection, one breath later, one realises that actually it is incredibly freeing, one can act and do as one pleases.

It rained a few days ago as I was running around doing errands for Mummy. I met up with her by the bus stop to give her my passport and bank card as she had some business to do at her bank with it. It was beginning to rain, and I had an umbrella, but she didn’t. Consequently, I gave her my umbrella, although I was going to the other side of the river to pay a deposit for our New Years’ Eve Dinner. It began to rain as I reached PuDong and I was on a bridge overlooking a highway, with the tallest buildings in Shanghai and some of the tallest buildings in the world surrounding me, as the rain began to fall more.

Trudging along, feeling rather sorry for myself, I slowly realised that I missed the rain. In Egypt it rained less than five days a year. It wasn’t raining that heavily, so I wasn’t getting soaked, but it was a pattering of rain. I looked up at the heavens and let myself feel the rain, and I felt an incredible wave of excitement overcome me. I took off my mask, realizing that I was smiling, enjoying the rain, being one with the rain, and there was no one around me, not for miles and miles. It was just me alone in dystopian Shanghai with the rain.

Recently I (I had originally written “quite by chance”, yet everything is a butterfly effect, leading me to this point in time and space now) found myself looking at the poetry of my father’s supervisor during his studies in English Literature at Cambridge, the prolific British poet Jeremy Prynne. Looking at Prynne’s poetry was a strangely illuminating experience – having, in the last year, edited and been deeply entangled with the massive volume of over 500 poems my father had left in the hopes of being published before he died – I could see Prynne’s influence on my father, interwoven between the words. 

My dear father had compiled the hundreds of poems he had written over the decades of his life – in Thailand, England, India, China, Australia – into one document, trailing with endnotes at the end, secrets to the soul, with clear intentions of getting it published one day, with different collections set out, the exoteric layer, the visible display and the format of the poems each perfectly placed and set, and the esoteric meaning of the words drifting beautifully on each page, waiting to be released out into the world and be lead back, both coming together to form this strangely mysterious compilation.

I initially attempted to have it published by the ECNU (East China Normal University) Press – where he held his final position, as head of the Anthropology and Sociology department, but years later, there still shows no signs of the Chinese government issuing a book number for the publication of this book. I began to submit samples of 15 or so of his poetries to small poetry presses in the UK and US, but found myself facing the massive difficulty of publishing poetry posthumously.

In this journey of getting his collections published, I found out that my father had self-published his father’s, my dear grandfather’s, writings himself. Looking at the introduction my father had written for his father as I struggled to put words down on paper for the cover letter I sent into the poetry presses, I had the feeling that life was repeating itself; feeling myself an ironic, inevitable part of the cyclical nature of life, reminded of Nietzsche, but feeling closer to him, as though he were right in the corner of my heart, as I wrote those words, remembering the words he had written for his father’s written works after he had died.

I felt, as I was pouring over his poems, night after night, that this must, surely, be the footprint of his soul – and when faced with such a thing, one will know. One will know beauty in the face of beauty.

As I work towards a PhD one day, the meticulous research of supervisors was what led me, in the past few days, to reflect on my father’s own supervisors. It led me to Jeremy Prynne, who had written extensive commentaries on Wordsworth, who was also one of my father’s most beloved poets and who had a large influence on his writings, and to Andrew Turton, my father’s PhD supervisor at SOAS in Anthropology, who I remember attending my father’s memorial service in the UK a few years ago. I was sorry to find out just yesterday that he had passed away last August, may he rest in peace.

Alas, I felt quite alone, yet with the alone.

These uncoverings are, to me, an ode to the strength and beauty of the relationship between a teacher and a student; the mirroring of two souls, the sharing of ideas, fears, hopes, dreams – the archetype of which we can always look to Rumi and Shams.

Those before us will leave, those after us will continue, and all we can do is enjoy, learn, repent, love, worship, and cry.

A few from Jeremy Prynne…

THE HOLY CITY 

There’s no mystic moment involved just

       that we are

       is how, each

       severally, we’re

       carried into

the wind which makes no decision and is

a tide, not taken. I saw it

       and love is

when, how &

       because we

       do: you

could call it Ierusalem or feel it

as you walk, even quite jauntily, over the grass.

.

From, “News of the Warring Clans”

This is the ace

of all desire,

fed by the smoke

and flame of this

exhausted fire.

.

.

And from my father:

the woodcutter’s tale

pagoda

song

stick-chopping

fire-by

saw Li Kuan

float

with a smile 

in her hair

she waved me

into

the fire I

jumped

like grasshopper –

the moon still shines

and Li Kuan is happy

by its light

.

lone

mist on the roof-tops

clouds in my head

the room is darkness containing

the memory

of another’s light

burns softly in the corner

with a candle

my handwriting shrinks

and dwindles :

                      some strange formations in the sky

                      tonight

                      I wonder what they signify

                      my love

The Poor Poet

Virginia Woolf had written about women needing space and the means to think and create. This means the time and resources, in order not to have to work – nor be obliged to be a housewife, and be able to have the time needed to create.

For a man, it is different, he is, in many ways, born with the world laid down before his feet.

Of course, I must take into account Virginia Woolf’s positionality, a white woman during the early 20^th century. The intersectionality of this gendered realisation largely neglects race and class, however, the point holds true nonetheless. A black woman will find it harder to have the time and space to create than her male counterpart, while an upper-class woman would similarly have more societal obligations and roles dictated by society that are not forgiving to her own needs and wants, than her male counterpart.

“The poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog’s chance… a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.”

“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I now have my own space. A charming, unique little flat with its own feel, I realised living in one’s own place – to curate a relationship with it, is to care for it, and it, in turn, will take care of you. I can’t help think longingly about the day I have my real own place, a place under my own name, not paying rent to anyone else, where I can design the walls, the bedrooms, the structures, the stairs.

Why is it so much easier to prioritise the everyday chores, the societal obligations – to see this and that person, to pick this and that up, to run this and that errand – rather than the things the heart wants, the yearning to create? Although, the yearning for love, acceptance, companionship are also things the heart wants.

I suppose life is a long journey to find the balance, or perhaps it is an everlasting dance between the two. To create, to leave one’s impact, to be the best one can be – in whatever it is one deems important, and then the other. Yet for others it seems people are content with the latter, without the aspect of creating. There is no real need to create, they are satisfied with supporting themselves and their family, being a good person, having a stable life not having to worry about resources, and a stable job.

Then there are the rest of us, the creator-yearners, perhaps, I should name us.

The struggles of the creator-yearners are seldom understood and are inevitably rare in their individuality. 

I have to water myself, my own needs, my own yearnings, my need to create, and to prioritise them, because society won’t.

I hope this little flat will give to me what I want to give to it – what it needs. When I moved in, the pipes were leaking, only a screw was sticking out of where the doorknob should have been, lightbulbs were missing, the kitchen had parts caked in dust and soot, dust covering entire parts of the place – it hadn’t been cared for.

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry.”

“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I am privileged to have these material things needed, but one must take care of them.

To have this, as such a young age, is undoubtedly a privilege, a privilege that many women lack. Once this room of one’s own is attained, there is no excuse, there is nothing standing in the way.

Instead, there is the fear, that my very need and want to create, my very yearning, will be my demise. Just as Sisyphus carried that meaningless rock up that hill, day after day, meaninglessly, he gave meaning to his life, but what if I am unable to carry my rock up every day, as it seems meaningless, more often than not? In the end, I may crumble from this pressure, this self-driven pressure and expectation to truly be someone.

And yet, in the face of the Strangeness of the Universe,

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

I don’t want to be Woolf’s imagined Shakespeare’s sister – Woolf’s genius literary device of a metaphorical woman, imagined, as Shakespeare’s sister – who was equally as talented as William Shakespeare himself, but, alas, will amount to nothing, forgotten in the dust of history,

“…it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. […] She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers.”

“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

Judith, never stood a chance.

“For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom?”

“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

Woolf wrote this in 1929, almost 100 years ago. Although certain things have changed, technology has progressed, the geo-political nature of international relations has shifted, pandemics have come and gone, climate change has worsened, yet the very difference of societal obligations and its treatment of women still remain, in its core essence.

Since we are little girls, we are held more tightly and bound more strictly to societal’s expectations as a daughter, as a sister, and later on, as a wife, as a mother; our own personal desires held to a lesser degree of importance than those of men.

To be a woman, in a man’s world, is a hardship unique to women throughout the centuries. To have a room of one’s own, is a privilege indeed, one that those of us lucky to have must make good use of.

Will you?

Will you grow, evolve, and transgress

past the endless societal obligations

like the boundless waves of a sea

and transgress, into eternity?

past what our mothers and fathers have drilled into our heads

our heads that were once

filled with play-things, toys and pacifiers

we replaced these with books, games and school

then with bullying, jealousy, and mimicking’s of

what we thought was love

mimicked from the screens that follow us

wherever we go

replaced by drinks of solitude

cigarettes of despair

numb our chattering minds

chattering away the mumuring, “grow, evolve and transgress”  

replaced by what they call “adulthood”

and solitude in the most crowded of places

will you transgress beyond these?

transgress beyond all these societal hands, molding us

beautiful shifting, shapeless, figures –

of which we were molded to fit into

since the idea of the creation of us was first transmitted

from neuron to neuron

in someone’s brain?