Philosophical Imagination, Aesthetics, and Creative Writing

Tag: Wuhan

  • Flashing Lights and Crumbling Walls: Patches of Time Captured in Xianhua Lou’s Lenses

    Flashing Lights and Crumbling Walls: Patches of Time Captured in Xianhua Lou’s Lenses

    In the early autumn of Beijing in 2017, I explored many beautiful and picturesque old hutongs and as a southerner, I found it delighting to see greenish pine trees lining beside the traditional resident houses in the city. Embracing the scorching sun, the city of Beijing is coming off as both youthful, vigorous and also vividly reflective of China’s long and complicated history.

    2017, Autumn in Beijing. These traditional brick-built houses were located in Beijing’s artist district in the northeast, with many modern art galleries and exhibitions open for tourists to visit. Featuring China’s classic 70s and 80s proletariat spirits, the area’s brick-built houses were remindful of a time when people tended to live together for the most of time and prefer co-habitative living environment.

    Wuhan 2016, summer. The koi flags or koinobori hung on the roof of a shop outside a private business college in southern Wuhan; that was a time when the city was on the wake of a series of urban renovation projects or gentrification processes that later saw the completion of city’s expensive yet very expansive Metro system and later, the only BRT system on Xiongchu Avenue. At that time, college students in Wuhan often clustered in the so-called Optics Valley Square to kill time by hanging out around nearby shopping centers. That was a time of constant change and perhaps, in other words, a period of transformative changes happening all at once.

    2024 July at Hong Kong’s PolyU. There in the Contonese speaking city, your would rarely need a jacket or coat from April to November until you get indoors or take MTR, the city’s public transit system, where temperatures could get pretty low thanks to the city’s effective air conditioning system. There is an entire floor in the library that opens 24 hours a day for self study except for extreme weather conditions such as typhoon or heavy rainfalls. If not because of financial restrictions, I would have wished to be staying in Hong Kong as long as possible; among the locations I love to visit in the city, PolyU’s library stands out because of its widely accessible wireless network and beautiful view of the Victoria Harbour.

    Qianjiang, 2024, summer. The small city is located in the southern part of Hubei, on the southern bank of the Han River. Heatwaves approaches the city this year, with recordbreaking high temperatures that lasted until late November and the rain was getting particularly scarce and precious this summer perhaps due to climate change. The inland city is known for its delicate lobster cuisine that was initially originated from a small township named Wuqi in the Jianghan Oilfield in the northwestern part of the city.

  • Dreams in the Jianghan Plains

    “Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
    Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
    The whole universe indicates that it is good,
    The past and the present indicate that it is good.”
    —Walt Whitman, To Think of Time

    With air-conditioning on though the temperature that night was not high, yet, I slept, feeling that would be the best way to remember a passing season. It’s about going to autumn though the leaves of Gingko trees on the sidewalks were not turning. The little city wherein I live was not particularly good at being looked. Beautifulness might not be the sort of the words to describe these kinds of small cities. Expectedly, the season was changing.

    “Summer or winter, they are seasons we have to live with, like it or not.” My grandmother replied me when I murmured that I hope summer could remain forever so I wouldn’t have to wear much clothes.

    In the living room, with my grandmother folding clothes and my mother wandering idly, I took my camera and suggested to take some photos for us. A DLSR camera always requires someone to help control the shutter lest the photo taken be unwatchable so that we were unable to be pictured together for a long time and nowadays there wasn’t much freelance photographers to be find in such a small city.

    “Smile, grandmother, and remain relaxed so your naturalness will reveal; say cheese.”

    Several rounds later, my grandmother still smiles with eyes wide open, concentrated, a characteristic technique she learned during her younger years when being photographed was still a much celebrated and important activity. She takes this activity seriously.

    Trembling and heart-rendered, I give photos to her for review.

    “Old. Aged.” She murmured reluctantly. “Delete those.” Almost protesting.

    So saddened was I for witnessing the passing of the time but unable to do anything to solace her still hopeful eye sight that I was standing idly with no idea what I should do later.

    Going is the time.

    So unspeakable are our lives. To live is to remember the unrememberable because that was something we could barely be able to live without.

    Before I left my teaching job that I worked for about a year and a half for my postgraduate studies, some colleagues had been often trying to correct my pronunciation.

    “This vowel you pronounced should be pronounced this way.” Miss D had said during a teacher’s training session.

    “Oh, really? I didn’t hear him pronouncing this wrong.” The school master had commented.

    I was standing in the classroom where bright lighting shone on my body. That was days before I started to teach my first class. No one said how good my spoke English is as if this is something unworthy of mentioning while a manager had flattered an other colleague for her good speaking skill.

    “Correcting you is for the good of your future students.” A colleague had said. I said nothing in reply.

    Helping from those strangers is something too much to bear. Their almost dispiriting desire to be seen as superior is too much for another stranger to behold.

    Why do they think I need their help?

    It’s been about two years that I didn’t live in Wuhan so I only have my memories to rely on.

    It’s also a special time. And the reason I applied the graduate school in Wuhan is of the short distance between the city and my grandmother’s home.

    The backpack is heavy-weighted but somehow its weight made me feel consoling. There seemed to be a lot of people going outside as usual at the railway station of Qianjiang. I did not sense out the difference of the passenger traffic between now and then. When the time came, people were hurry to line up, getting their tickets checked. only the prevalent mask-wearing had made the difference obvious. Travelers alike were keeping distance from others. I remembered in January when I saw the news of the outbreak, I felt anxious and called doctors to consult because some colleagues of mine had come back from Wuhan. And when I expressed my concern for going to the emergency hall of the hospital, the doctor replied calmly: “Don’t worry, just wear a mask.”

    Doors of some shops inside the Hankou railway station’s underground floor were closed with shelves inside emptied while I waited for school bus. People sitting on the chairs were looking at their phone screens with masks donned.

    Looking at Yangtze from the bus window, I saw cables of the bridge over Yangtze move fast. Over the misty river, the traffic was still busy. The city seemed alive and it was a rainy day.

    I used to go to the bank of Yangtze and feel the liveliness of the city life and there always seemed to be tourists on the streets taking selfies. But things seemed different recently. Even I was in the bus there was an air of coldness that could be felt outside. Did Wuhan change or did I? Enthusiasm inside me seemed to be disappearing though I thought that could be a normal process of growing up. When I was little, I felt curious about everything unseen before and seldom bored about the most trivial things such as sightseeing the wild flowers and plants.

    There was a gulf between the past and the present.

    There are trees in the campus, very old and large trees, clustered together, making whoever walk there feel like being in a forest.

    Years ago before my graduation when my grandparents had come to have a visit at the campus, three of us were walking together on a trail in the hill near my then university. “The air was fresh and I feel my skin had become better because of that.” I said to them.

    My grandparents had only smiled back and continued walking. “It is beautiful.” They said.

    Several days after my graduate school enrollment, at a interpretation class, I made a speech regarding educational equality and humanity after two world wars because of the professor’s encouragement of self expression in a new semester. After the class in an evening, a classmate approached me saying :“Classmate Lou(my surname in pinyin), how excellent English you spoke, have you been studying abroad ever?” “No. I just attended several online courses from Open Yale and other universities and you can try to have those materials obtained too.” I replied.

    After hearing my speech regarding the pandemic recently in English when a teacher asked us to do some speech with whatever the theme we like, a dorm mate asked me whether I had contested in some English speaking competitions.

    “No.” said I.

    “You speak so well and so logic.” He said.

    There was a sense of coldness in my dorm and I knew maybe I shouldn’t have exposed my English speaking in front of them.

    While I was sitting before the class started today, a female classmate said loudly and ruthlessly: could you sit away from me? For teacher will surely focus on us.”

    I was silent for a while. “what should I reply?” thought I.

    “I won’t be very active to attract teacher’s attention.” I remembered saying.

    “No, you have better sat far away from me otherwise I will change my seat.”

    I said nothing. And other classmates was slightly beaming watching me.

    I didn’t move.

    Why should I move? For students are coming to school to learn things. Did she see me as a threat? So unprecedented were such coldness and hostility cast against me that I haven’t realized that I started to morally sanction my own wish to learn. Is such ostracizing attitude I felt justified? Why should I move instead of her?

    Should I compromise my dream for their approval?

     I had been name-called during my elementary years for I play games with girls.

    There were so many things strange from my perspective, why should I be seen as normal in their eyes? For they had never cared about me?

    While I walked on the runway over a street, I see mid-aged men carrying bags and luggage walk ahead, with blue face coverings donned. Their skin color was not bright. They must not know the need of sun protection. They wear simple-colored clothes. Seldom had I seen them smile. I don’t know what they were thinking.

    While it is sunny today, the street I saw is still not recovered from its normal traffic.

    Will it recover?

  • Slouching toward Wherever the Sun Shines

    Slouching toward Wherever the Sun Shines

    ‘Sunshine cleaning’, a movie I watched years ago, presented stories about different women who divorced and tried to restore their savaged lives back to normal with positive thinking and challenge taking traits, and its characters’ willingness to endure and change. For most of us, life may be seen as living with challenges that need to be overcome, and we manage and get through. At that point, every person may be seen as a sort of hero.

    the weather, in the Northern Hemisphere is getting much warmer and the sun much brighter and shiner, so shine I feel enlightened, physically. Do you love summer time? Answers may vary but I thought, most people may not dislike sunny days. Sunshine is bright, clean, and loving, and also evokes positive feelings. Looking on the windowsill in my room, full of potted greenies and flowers, which are blossoming progressively like burning kindles. Glistening lights are basking in my room, making it finer and softer. I feel happier staying in sunlit room maybe because that gives people a warmer imagination for our future lives, and strength to overcome the hardships we face.

    I’ve always remembered that summer my father took me a tour outside of a elementary school when I was six-year old. His belly bulged and he wore a dark-red T-shirt. Leading the way to that school, on the trail outside the school fence, he turned his face back, facing me, slightly smiled and raised his forearm pointing towards the front-door of the school, saying that he prepared to let me study at that school. I felt his pride while he talking, saw swarms of pupils playing on the playground, crazily, enchantingly. That was summer; the small path we walked outside the school was surrounded by walls of burning ivies and greens. That was an afternoon, the most clear and exhausting one in my memory. “Dad.” I remembered saying and he answered slowly, softly and gently. “That’s a good school.” He said.

    After a fierce argument between my parents, my mother had temporarily taken me back to her hometown that year so I didn’t go to that school. Every September when the school year began, I remembered that walk with my father, his gentle tone with his will to enroll me to that school. I didn’t forget though he had never mention that again. But I know as long as summer continues to come I won’t forget that summer when he walked with me beside that school, with water-clean light.

    After graduating from university, I had tenanted with one of my schoolmates, in an apartment near a lake in Guanggu, a newly constructed borough in the city of Wuhan. While in university, roommates were eager to find jobs to earn money. “Whatever the job is, I will do; and where there is a job, there is hope.” A roommate joked saying. But if one said he or she doesn’t want to find some work to do then, that won’t be true. They need money to go to restaurants, to buy extra outfits to increase their attractiveness and to show their power. Most of the students I encountered then wanted to work, to improve their living standards.

    So hurry was I to find a work to do then that I was lost. I had met a friend, Bee who in his middle thirties, was working as freelance. In his age with an unstable working position, life was fragile and depending on luck. Though getting days by, he loved outings in mountainsides and thus invited me to go outside biking.

    We decided to go to Jiangxia, a mountainous suburb in Wuhan, to have our afternoons pasted. We bought transit tickets and rented bikes to go into the forest in the mountain. There were trees and the sun shining sharply, making us sweating like mad. But he loved biking and often turned his face back to me encouraging me to compete with him on the mountain path on which we biked. There were raspberry bushes, whose twigs were full of thrones. Though unwashed, he picked those berries and ate happily, smiling to me. That was summer; there was sunlight. I knew life could be hard. He struggled to find a well-payed job to get him being able to stay in Wuhan. He said he had never thought about buying house in Wuhan, so expensive that he said he would never bother considering. “Do you know where can a person find a well payed job?” He had asked me. Struggling to make my ends meet, I said I didn’t know either. While sitting on the bench in the neighborhood where then I resided, I saw his face darkened, though that was a bright afternoon and the sun was near setting.

    He said he always loved days we spent on biking together in Jiangxia’s mountainside because he felt he was alive by our energetic defiance towards money. Though we were both not living high-standardly, we felt happy and that was summer.

    There is the light and it has come into my room.