Wobbling, grounding, and (Happy New Year!)

(This post was originally published on Dec 30, 2024.)

In July, I wrote about farewells. In those farewells, I reflected on my friends’ new journeys abroad, trying to contemplate my own. I felt like a ceiling lamp - trapped in a specific place, my feet awkwardly off the ground.

I was hanging here. Was this - Beijing - my place?

In July, I wandered in a haze.

Work took me to Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia in the following months. In between work trips, I also solo-traveled to Taiwan for ten days. Five years ago, Taiwan felt almost like a second home, thanks to my parents’ purchase of an apartment in Taipei and my father’s real estate dealings with his Taiwanese partners. Five years later, it is a place I could only visit due to my Hong Kong student visa, which allowed me to apply for a single tourist permit valid for 14 days.

It was in Taichung that I became exhausted. The hotel I booked last minute through a rough Red(小红书) search was a huge disaster: a room with only a tiny window, damp and almost moldy sofas, and warped wallpaper. Even worse was the city, “I must have traveled to the wrong neighborhood!” I yelled quietly at my heart a hundred times while desperately trying to hurdle through streets clogged with motorcycles and homeless men. The following day, I took a northbound train to Taipei and changed my flight to Beijing, leaving two days earlier than planned.

My capturing of Taichung.

Throughout this embarrassing escape, I kept thinking I must be crazy. Taiwan had been like a jewel in my heart for so long: the democracy, the preservation of traditional Chinese culture, the entertainment industry (growing up, all my favorite TV shows and pop stars were Taiwanese), and the street food were all my holy grails. They made this island superior to my homeland - a symbol of true, sacred betterment. I had longed to return during the five years of cross-strait stasis, so why did I feel so exhausted and, to say the least, unimpressed when I finally had another chance to come back?

The problem must be me.

My interest in traveling vanished completely after this trip, as did my enthusiasm for keeping up with "outside" news. My VPN was still used daily, but only for browsing Instagram and Netflix and checking updates from the YouTube accounts I had followed for years. My subscriptions to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and a series of high-quality English podcasts remained active, but I rarely engaged with the content they published.

I knew the Russian-Ukrainian war was ongoing, the Israel-Palestine conflict was deadly serious, AI was developing at a horrifying pace, and Elon Musk had become best buddies with Donald Trump. I was aware that populism kept rising globally, climate change was wreaking havoc in many countries, and issues surrounding transgender rights and abortion were being fiercely debated in the U.S. I knew these things, and they were all I wanted to know; I found myself comfortably nestled in my echo chamber, unsure whether I was fearful or tired of learning more about the world.

The avalanche keeps sweeping away more. At one point, I avoided reading English books, dedicating all my reading time (which isn’t much) to Chinese words. Carrying a Kindle filled with English novels downloaded from Amazon has been a proud habit of mine for the past several years, but this year, my Kindle remained unopened for months.

With my English reading habits gone, I also lost my passion for English writing. Chinese has become my sole focus for writing improvement; I left Chinese middle school to study abroad at 15, never receiving a proper education on ancient Chinese literature afterward. What I lacked must be made up, I decided; consequently, I purchased a substantial number of books on ancient Chinese, making serious attempts to get through at least two pages of them daily (with a lot of failure, to be honest).

Self-confinement isn’t all bad, I realized in December. All the avoidance and rejections brought comfort - a sense of stability, almost like my feet touching the ground. By channeling all my energies into my business and relationships in Beijing, I no longer dwelled on the possibility of leaving or escaping China. The space I occupy is finally where I feel I truly belong.

I got too cozy and stopped writing for Elephant Room. “Make China Relatable” - the mission statement I gave to this beloved project - still hangs quietly somewhere, but the statement itself has become the elephant in the room. If I were determined enough not to see it, it would remain unseen for a while.

I thought I could unsee it.

In the autumn of 2023, I went to Hong Kong as a full-time student for a Master's in Journalism. Leaving my company’s daily operations, my husband, and our cats back in Beijing, this nine-month study was a gift I gave myself to escape from all the stabilities in life.

My Journalism cohort consists of about fifty students, fewer than five of whom were Hong Kong locals; the rest were all from mainland China. Among the mainland students, I was the second oldest. Most of my classmates were fresh graduates from various top Chinese universities, young and in their early to mid-twenties, without much work experience.

Conscious of my age, I interacted with my classmates carefully, not wanting to reveal too much about my uninteresting adult life. Rather than talking and sharing, I listened and observed their behaviors and opinions. In my personal work and social circles, young people - the “post-2000s” - were almost nonexistent. What do they think about themselves, China, and the world? What do they want in life, and how are their desires different from mine at their age? I wondered with full-fledged curiosity.

The conclusions I reached, based on my very limited observations over these nine months, were that my classmates fell into two categories. The majority were “practical,” coming here solely to obtain a Master’s degree for the best value in terms of money and time. (Hong Kong’s Master’s programs are generally much shorter than those at Chinese universities and cheaper than those offered by American or European institutions.) Their decision to study Journalism was also pragmatic: either they didn’t receive offers from their preferred majors (Corporate Communications or Public Relations, for instance) or, as I later learned, young graduates with a Master’s degree in Journalism are eligible to apply for a wide range of civil service positions (考公务员) in mainland China.

Then there were the others: the messier or “free-spirited” ones. They, or rather we - since I consider the younger version of myself to belong to this category - had the majority of our life’s agenda not figured out. Yet, in our messiness, we grasped at a sort of abstract genuineness: our passion for journalism, for writing, and for telling real stories, to do something meaningful and tilt the world slightly if we ever got the chance.

Hong Kong memories as a student: beers with classmates, campus selfies, canteen meals, and my favorite lunch: roast goose/soy sauce chicken combo with rice.

Humans, as social animals, naturally gravitate toward those with similar smells. During my studies, I gradually formed small circles of friends with some classmates from the second category, drinking overpriced (by mainland standards, all drinks in Hong Kong are overpriced, sigh!) watery beers in random pubs in Tai Wei, an area close to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where most students chose to rent. Most of the time, I just listened, learning about their family stories and their undergraduate years in campus lockdowns. Their fear of being unable to get a job, yet their desperate desire to remain in the news industry. Their determination to produce quality content while facing the inevitable downturn of traditional journalism. Their dreams and the complex realities that ambushed those dreams.

I listened and realized something: it’s not just the younger version of me that is part of “us” - my current version is with them, too. At 32, despite having a stable-looking business and a support system of loved ones, my complicated relationships with myself and the world remain, as does my love for journalism and the wish to tilt things.

Can something be grounded but still have the capability of tilting things?

Can I be this something?

It’s been half a year since I finished my Master’s and settled back in Beijing. Two weeks ago, I returned to Hong Kong for a friend’s wedding and met up with one of my classmates for coffee before leaving the city.

Unlike most students who hurried back to the mainland once studies were completed, my classmate was determined to stay away from home and earn a living without family support. With outstanding English writing skills and strong perseverance in job hunting, she landed a reporting position with one of the most prominent foreign media outlets in Hong Kong. (Please understand that I must blur out most of my classmates’ personal details for security reasons.)

Her eyes beamed as she shared her recent progress at work: more published articles, participation in investigative reports and in-depth interviews, a better salary, and thus renting a slightly more spacious room in Hong Kong. Yet, with knitted brows, she also expressed her worries about being a Chinese reporter for an English media company - the nuanced challenges she is facing, and may face in the future.

“Would you consider writing for Elephant Room?”

I hadn’t intended to ask her this, but the question slipped out naturally.

So here we are.

After that blunt question, my classmate invited another classmate - equally outstanding in English writing and equally brave in pursuing a career in international media after earning her Journalism Master’s - to join us. Together, we formed a little group chat - “Elephant Room Legacy Pass-On Team” (大象屋衣钵传承小组), as we jokingly named it - and began brainstorming future writing topics. Soon, you’ll see works from them, or maybe from my other classmates or young Chinese fellows, appearing on Elephant Room.

I know there is still much vagueness that is not fully addressed in this letter - for instance, how I now see myself to China, the world, and Elephant Room. But this ramble has been long enough, and you, dear reader, deserve a quick ending for the sake of your attention toward other good things.

Let’s wrap up on three (positive) notes:

-Yes, I am currently still wobblily grounded and groundingly wobbling.

-Elephant Room, the media project I started when I was 25, now opens itself to works from others. I will start by inviting writers who remind me of younger versions of myself and Yan (this sounds so egocentric, ugh!) when we first started the project: those who are passionate about reporting on China with a personal narrative, those who are critical yet intimately bound to this country.

-Thank you, my dear reader. Over the past seven years, Elephant Room has been on and off like a moody teenager. Your patience and generosity - for our imperfect English writing and more than occasional laziness - have sustained this project until today.

Seven years ago, I started Elephant Room with Yan, believing that in the English media landscape about China, nestled between foreign reports and government-oriented propaganda, there should be a space for “real China” stories: reporting from independent Chinese individuals who know what’s truly happening on this land, who are equipped with the will and skills to translate these stories for a global audience.

Seven years later, this mission sounds naive. But at the age of 32, I am still very, very proud to be a naive human.

Happy New Year!🎆

Stay naive,

Biyi

(Wobbling and grounding)