It feels as I've spent the last two years preparing for my return to this magnificent city. Nothing could be farther from the truth- it is merely a coincidence that I am ending one chapter in my life in the city that started it.
When I arrived here two years ago I started a blog about the experience. I spent a week here, and the ramblings I wrote then were along the lines of:
"No words can describe the energy and the buzz here. The contrast. I am overwhelmed by the mix of alien Chinese going-ons and familiar European architecture. The whole city feels like a construction site. Today I walked along a beautiful street, walking past laundry hanging out of windows out on the streets, endless groups of men doing strange stuff to pipes and bikes and wooden planks. TVs and Radios blaring out of windows that seem to look into houses from a hundred years ago. Next to this area there was a huge crater where they are going to build a new shimmering 21st century sky scraper. A woman was selling poultry meat next to the construction site, surrounded by construction workers busy laying pipes or lines or whatever into the site. It was such a baffling sight, such juxtaposition- the laundry hanging out to dry, the street market, the construction of another modern skyscraper and the selling of poultry in the middle of a construction project... I've decided to buy myself a digital camera."
I read through what I had written and realized that anyone writing the word "juxtaposition" in a blog probably is a little to overwhelmed to make any sense of what they are seeing. I gave up on the blogging idea after just this one post.
So, I'm here again. It's difficult to decide what is real and what is my mind indulging in romantic notions of fate. it's golden week, which means the entire city is quiet. It feels like I'm in a small village, not a 20m-head municipality.
