[Tirinal]

I'm doing some traveling inbetween midterms due to a lack of actual work that needs doing (econ major = yay).

..

There is an odd quality to China. A dense, regurgitated mass of humanity writhing like a snake's body bereft of head, yet it all seems to function flawlessly. It defies comprehension. Every few decades as many people as were killed in all the wars of the world step down and another group of completely different and completely similar people claws upward to replace them. And nobody seems to notice or consider this the least bit out of the common way. Tiananmen Square gapes its jaw wide to devour the yawning horizon, and in every corner, in every open nook and cranny there is a person taking up some small measure of space. I keep getting the feeling that it's just an elaborate experiment in pacing. Step, left, march, chant. Ninety years of experience garbled into a few score words remembered by the child and forgotten within another generation. And then they look at me and map out the course of my life with dread callousness, as though wondering to which automaton I pledge fealty. Fertilizer in training. Wormfood. I am white in China.

Repeat.

This is the new world order. You can't compete with something of this nature. This is life regimented into a pattern of cast-iron and makeshift chains. It happens everywhere but here it's concentrated. A thing of mass. The girl with the long ponytail to the grandmother with the short, tethered bun in every household of every shanty town in every province expanded worldwide while I stand still besieged with postcards and fanciful trifles that veil a Cheshire grin. I am white in China.

Repeat.

It accents home and accents sickness. The comforting neon pulse of Starbucks logos beckon, and then that stifling pause as well-worn and well-caressed green letters dance coyly into alien shapes. I am white in China.

Repeat.

I am white in China.