What China means to me.
Childhood
During my childhood, I saw my mom travelling twice a year to China. We used to call at odd times and she was always tired (because of jet lag, I learned early the complexities of timezones). Every time she came back, she brought trinkets to make us discover China from afar. I missed her, but was always entranced by the wonderful things she had with her. We used to celebrate the Chinese New Year with traditional food and decorating the house with lanterns.
Everything she brought seemed marvelous to me. There were umbrellas, dresses, lanterns, those bamboo paintings on scrolls, chopsticks, and quite a lot of food, I loved sweets the most. We could not tell what was written on it, we could only imagine based on the colors and images. I liked the peach ones. Once, we tried one brown, Me gustaban los de melocotón. Una vez, hemos probado uno color café. We thought maybe it was chocolate. Well it was not, and it tasted really bad! It turns out it was not even a sweet, we discovered beef jerky. [Insert dramatic screams.] Ew… It really took us by surprise.
Another thing, I also enjoyed watching the Carmen Sandiego cartoons. In the opening credits we get a glimpse of a Chinese festival. There are fireworks, people holding a dragon and Carmen is stealing a golden lion.1
A little fun fact
Once back in Mexico, I straightened my hair and my host sister posted a story captionned “with the french girl”. Someone answered “¿Qué no era china?” (Wasn’t she china?). Then followed a misunderstanding about my nationality and the texture of my hair, because chinos could mean curls in Mexican Spanish. It was really funny at the time, but I had not thought about it since…
Recently
I lived in Paris during summer 2024, during the Olympic Games. At that time, I was doing my internship and looking for a university for my Master’s. I saw that LUISS offered a double degree of international relations, I had to start as a regular student and then apply to do the second year abroad. Out of the options, I only wanted China. I thought it was a unique opportunity and I started sending many emails to the university. Just imagine, the woman in charge of the exchanges knew me before I even got accepted!
I followed the games with more (gymnastics, fencing and swimming) or less (football, boxing and athletics) interest. Obviously, I noticed China was winning many medals. Upon getting accepted in LUISS, I immediately called my mom and told her that I could study in Beijing. She was not as enthusiastic as I was, because I might move away once again, but she was happy I enjoyed the academic programme.
Then, I read Babel by Rebecca Kuang. Many Dark Academia platforms recommended it. There are a thousand things to talk about with this long and complex book. In turn, I recommended it to many people and all those who had the courage to read it were touched by different parts of it. For some it was the magical properties of silver, my aunt liked the technical details, others were struck by the depictions of racism. Me? Well, it was languages and a new perspective on Mandarin. I wanted to learn it. It seems so difficult (and people keep reminding me it is the hardest in the world), but so beautiful.
So, what now? Well, I am going to China. I studied a lot, my application wa accepted and today is D-10. I will truly realize I am in this wonderful country when I see a dragon. Because as of now, I can still not believe it.
- The 1994 one. I never knew the videogame, but when the new versions came out I liked the references. There were more in the 2019 Netflix adaptation than Red Notice, and also it offered a new perspective. ↩︎
Comments
2 responses
Ahh! So happy for you my friend, you truly deserve everything! May your new experience in China be full of wonders 🙂
i’m expecting postcardsss🇨🇳❤️