My Chengdu stories

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I didn’t plan to fall in love.

I didn’t plan to fall in love when I moved to Chengdu. I didn’t plan to look into the dark-eyed masses and find one pair of brown eyes staring back.

Sure, the masses stare back, too. They jostle and hustle and want my photo. Some are kind, some point, some just shake their heads. I am just one of many foreigners here. An oddity among many oddities.

When he looked on the streams of foreigners trickling into his city, he didn’t plan to fall in love. He didn’t look into their multi-colored eyes and expect to find one blue-grey pair staring back.

But that’s what happened.

I looked at Chengdu, and I found his eyes. At times they are the dark of shadow-cloaked brown. Hard to see into, but a welcome place to rest. At times they are the gold of sun-drenched brown. Soft pools, asking me to explore their warm depths. Here they invite conversation, and we share our histories and dream our futures. There they say let’s just be, and we enjoy each other in the moment.

What does a future look like where worlds collide?

I didn’t expect to come to Chengdu and find more of who I am by losing parts of myself.

Let me explain. I don’t belong. That is what I believed, anyway. Who I was was tripped up by who I wasn’t. I am a third culture kid. That means I grew up between cultures. I was a hybrid of cultures. I could fit into all sorts of places. I could watch. I could adapt. I could enjoy. But I could never fully belong. Not in my passport country. Nor in any host country. This meant that over the years I came to find my identity in not belonging. If I belonged, my subconscious thought, I would cease to be me.

No, I didn’t plan to find that I belonged when I moved to Chengdu.

I’m a foreigner, and Chengdu reminds me of that every day. Tall. White. Blond. Foreign.

When the sky is blue, I dream of Papua New Guinea, the land of my birth. When homesickness hits, I dream of waves of green grass bending beneath the winds that sweep the hills of my youth. Or of the thunder of my horse’s hooves beneath me, defying life to tie me down. Or of orange run-off from storm-washed clay dirt roads, roads that burn my bare feet only hours later thanks to the heat of the victorious sun.

But when Chengdu sees me, they see tall. White. Blond. Foreign.

And I see multitudes, walking through greyness, punctuated by reds and golds so bold that they yell at me. I see a foreignness that’s deep, yet threaded with a familiarity that’s confusing because I’ve never known it before. A place totally different from Papua New Guinea, Australia, America, Japan, France, Indonesia, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, England… from anywhere I’ve lived or visited.

But then… the faces of Chengdu separate into friends who see me for who I am, delighting in my complexity. And inviting me to belong to them.

And when he sees me, those brown eyes searching, he wants to know me and he wants to be known. He invites me to share his history, his future. His history, rooted, grounded in a way I’ve never known, born of this place. His future, merged with me, intertwined, taking flight on the wings of shared dreams. And in this moment, now, he invites me to enjoy learning what it means to belong. He offers me his heart. He waits for me to take it, too, and to give him mine.

I feel like two people, in that moment, that season. Me looks at “me”, and wonders who I am. I am a familiar face, known from infancy, and now also a stranger. How can “me” so quickly belong to a community that loves me like family? How can “me” know a man who wants me to actually be his family, till death do us part? A man native to a place unlike any I have known, and who has never been to a place that I have loved and known. And yet he invites me into a belonging deeper than I have dared to go. Will I lose “me”? Which “me” is me? Are both me? I feel disjointed, separate from myself, two beings who demand my attention and refuse to let go. And so I wait to say yes.

I didn’t expect that such a discovery would involve waiting, and that waiting could be proactive.

Time doesn’t heal wounds. But in time, as I address my losses, I am finding healing. I wouldn’t change my glorious third-culture life for anything, but it did come with deep loss. In Chengdu, in friendships, laughter, conversations over squid on a stick, in tears, in listening, in being listened to… In Chengdu I have come to see that I can belong and still be me. I will not refuse this gift. “Me” has re-fused into one again.

I didn’t plan to fall in love when I moved to Chengdu.

Xiaochu path painting is a watercolor painting I did of a path in my apartment complex.

About the author: Sarah was born and raised in the glorious nation of Papua New Guinea, where she spent the first eighteen years of her life. She moved to the U.S. in 2000 for university, and to Washington, DC in 2005 for work. There she spent five years at The National Bureau of Asian Research, learning to appreciate both the United States and Asia. After completing a masters degree in International Design and Communication Management at Warwick University, UK, she began the journey that eventually led to Chengdu, China in August of 2014.

The opinions expressed do not represent the views of the China Daily website.

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