China makes me feel like a poet...

Sometimes China makes me feel like a poet. When I’m walking through the
ancient cypress woods at the temple of heaven, walking up to a
templehall that is centuries old, or simply experience the joy of
savoring adelicious milk tea from the mom and pop stand by campus I feel
like I could break out a Tang Dynasty style poem.

Walking in ancient woods
Ancient arches speak
Tea refreshes my mind
How long have my thoughts wandered?

Sometimes just the vast number of emotions I feel at one time makes me
feel like a poet. One time when I visited a temple I was overcome by so
many emotions I felt like I could just start spewing beat poetry
right then and there. Looking at a gorgeous temple I was struck by the
beauty and tranquility and felt peaceful, but at the same time I was
struck by the disrepair and desertion around me and felt a sadness and
melancholy. Then just the thought that I was standing in front of a
beautiful centuries old temple in Beijing made me excited and happy, but
then realizing I’m standing alone in front of a temple in Beijing, China
made me feel lonely and disconnected from the world. There are some
movements like these that I feel like Beijing is slowly striping away all
my preconceived notions, thoughts, and feelings and instead dissolving
them to reveal raw emotions. I can’t help being honest with myself in a
place where there is no familiarity. China makes me feel like a poet
because sometimes the only way I can express my thoughts, even to myself,
are in disjointed ambiguous lines of poetic verse.

Sometimes China makes me feel like a poet and sometimes China makes me
curse. There are times when I am riding the subway, smooshed body to body
with Chinese people and I think, “why am I doing this?” There aretimes
when I am in a restaurant and can’t read anything on the menu and
nothing ever comes out looking like it does on the picture menu. There
are times when I am haggling in the market and I am being pulled at and
yelled at by all the vendors and I just want to yell in frustration.
There are times when I need to get laundry tokens and try to ask for them
in Chinese and the girl at the counter just states at me blankly, and
then when I point to the phrase in my book she laughs at me before
handing me the coins. There are days when a couple minutes after having
eaten lunch I start to realize that lunch will shortly be leaving my body
and I want to use a couple four-letter words.

But whether China is producing poetry or swear words it is definitely an
amazing place. It is a place that is challenging me and forcing me to
learn more about myself. And one of the scariest things is that
I’m really starting to like China. Beijing is growing on me. Yesterday
when I went to buy my favorite green milk tea from the mom and pop stand
the women greeted me with a smile and already knew my order. It is those
kind of things that are making me at home here and letting me see past
the stress and frustration to see that I’m enjoying Beijing.