It is a very quiet time, and I know why.
The Chinese love popularity, and lots of vivacious
social life, though I am more of a Northern European and actually do not think it is anti-social to want to be alone sometimes,
and this is not regarded as stigmatic in those cultures.
I have various health care issues to think about,
and feel unwell just from the stopping of my daily swimming several weeks ago, when the pools closed, and the ocean got too
chily for regular swims.
I am sadly decided that I will never have a Chinese
mate, as the cultures are too far apart, quite apart from everything else.
I myself of course am not a perfect woman, and
the people I have fallen in love with are not perfect men, either - Though they might like to think so!
I cannot accept the incessant group dynamic as it is not my
cultural conditioning, which is the dyad and the individual, so why should I change? Why should they?
The issue here is that most Chinese parents prefer
a Chinese woman so the proper generational balance must be maintained; they have suffered and sacrificed for their children,
and expect rightly to be treated better than we treat our own white older citizens when they grow incapacitated.
I am not a barnacle, a parasite, a cut-and-paste job, who wants
to say "Gee, thanks for accepting me."
I want to be Just An Ordinary Me.
I know now I don't want to go on writing about
myself in China too much longer, or maintain this huge moneyless website, or write about Cultural Gap issues.
This is because I myself am bored out of my mind,
so I must find artistically and intellectually fresh subject matter, which will not be hard.
China herself is a generous and hospitable country, and there
is enough there for travellers, and travel writers, and travel photographers, and people from international non-profits running
good-will projects - to sustain our interest for a lifetime.
I wish I had entered there to work with children in a non-ESL
direction, though it is too late for regrets. To have had some sort of private income, and done philanthroipist work
would be marvellous.
I must accept that Joe will have to be apart from me possibly
forever, as he must take care of his old mom and dad, as they have taken care of him, and he is a responsible Chinese person
to devote the next ten or fifteen or even twenty years of his life minding them.
This is reality: face it.
I am finishing the Feng Shui and Photo Gallery sections, then
onto writing about New Age health topics.
And so I walk alone, by the ocean that heals and gives us an
unlimited vision of a larger world.
