![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_seclusionsometimes i will be going about my daily life then i'll remember ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
gdgdbaby wrote a bjyx fic, if you would only let you, where xiao zhan and wang yibo roadtrip through china and finally sort out their feelings. then i will pause, dramatically stare out a window, and remember how i cried my eyes out reading the part where they had an "honest" conversation by the bund in shanghai and the catharsis i felt reading it.
that one fic singlehandedly made me miss shanghai, a city i had not been back to in four years at the time, and made me recall my own conversations with someone that was very dear to me at the time. i remember it so vividly: reading the passages in shanghai, my excitement at recognizing the places they went to, the moment of realization and recognition when they ventured to the bund and began to actually talk. lucy has this amazing ability to tear into my ribcage and take a battering ram to my heart in the best way, and the thing is, i'd never spoken to anyone (apart from ginny, because ginny held my hand throughout this whole ordeal) about it. but man i remember reading that fic, realizing what kind of conversation was about to happen, and remembering the conversation that did happen as i read the passages, and crying. then i went on my instagram, pulled my photos from shanghai and remembering how much i missed the city, four years later.
for a while i couldn't look at the photos from shanghai without feeling like my heart was going to break. i fell in love with shanghai, the city -- not pudong side, which is glitzy and glamorous and flashy and all the good stuff that people love to post. i liked pudong and how bustling it was, how busy, how loud. i remember walking down nanjingè·¯ with nathan, swept up by the crowds and him pointing out shops i might like. it was a cold evening, 11pm, and the city was bright and its lights were blinding.
i remember that whole day: it was the weekend and because daniel and sisi had plans and nathan wasn't in shanghai at the time, grace offered to show me around. grace gave me instructions on how to get shaanxi south station from hongkou and i remember panicking because i didn't know to navigate the terminal. but i remembered at least what the character for south was and somehow i managed to find shaanxi, and i managed to meet grace in one piece. when i told her about it she laughed and said "you know there's an english option, right?" which, no grace, i did not actually, but hey man, my nine years of chinese prepared me for that one moment. thanks, susan-laoshi.
we had a lovely afternoon, just two ladies approaching the age of "leftover women" who were decidedly not looking to settle down yet, just chatting about our favorite spots to travel to, our exes and our favorite tv shows. i miss grace a lot, actually. i remember sitting by the massive apple store in shanghai and comparing notes about new york and manila and our next travel plans. then joy texted to say let's have dinner, and we went to this fancy restaurant where grace and i felt underdressed and had some truly fantastic food and a deconstructed mango pudding dessert. i remember texting nathan the whole time, because he couldn't be in shanghai while i was there, and he was just constantly texting and asking how i was doing, if grace was being nice to me (she was THE BEST), if joy took us somewhere weird. and i remember that was the first time i felt culture shock in shanghai, that deconstructed mango pudding with smoke from dry ice rising from the table. it was something you'd see reynold poernomo do on masterchef australia. it was a very expensive dinner. i was terrified of ordering anything. joy paid for everything. grace and i protested but he did the thing where he signed without us knowing.
i remember texting nathan "this is the first time i experienced culture shock here" and he replied something like "i told joy not to bring you anywhere weird!" but the food was good! and i remember he texted me then that his flight was delayed and i was extremely confused -- he was in okinawa at the time, living and working remotely. why was he at the airport? and that was when he asked if i was going to be too tired to hang out when he arrived, around 10pm, and i nearly dropped my phone. grace asked me what was up and i said nothing, just received a text, as i replied hell yeah let's hang when you get here. my heart was beating so fast then, i thought it would give out. nathan wasn't supposed to be in shanghai while i was there; it was a point of disappointment because we rarely got to see each other when he wasn't in town for work, but he made sure grace, joy, daniel, bill and andreea were taking care of me and showing me around. and they all did, they told me to go with them for office lunches, translated the menus, suggested food. daniel and andreea had dinner with me on my second night to make sure i ate because apparently nathan warned them i tended to forget about eating, and to make sure i understood the menu since hongkou didn't have many restaurants with english menus. it was a kindness from the shanghai office that i keep with me, and a kindness from him that i did not expect.
i tried to put it from my mind after he texted he was boarding since i was still with joy and grace -- we went up the IFC100 after dinner and i remember looking down at the bund, the expanse of shanghai and thinking, i could live here. i loved shanghai so much then.
i went back to my hotel. i didn't tell grace that nathan was coming; i thought she knew. then at 10:30 nathan texted and met me right at my hotel. i think we took the subway back to pudong. all i remember is chatting with him, catching up, asking why are you here. and i remember going to nanjingè·¯, going down in the middle of all the bright lights and i think he laughed at me; i was so dazzled. it wasn't magical, but it was comforting in a way i can never fully explain. i remember standing in that center square, looking around at all the people -- just teeming with people, buzzing, full of life and i understood nothing but in that moment i understood something about my lolo that i never figured out. i remember walking down to the bund, nathan showing me shops he thought i'd like and looking up at all the buildings and guessing what kind of architecture was there, guessing the origins of each building and laughing at our very wrong answers. just laughing and walking and talking about shanghai and our officemates and everything and nothing. and it was cold and the lights were so bright and we ended up in a darker part of the bund, it was so late that we watched the lights of pearl tower go off, watched the last of the boats pass by, while we talked. we picked a spot, all dark and i remember looking out at the river when he said "hey," and when i turned around he snapped a photo of me which i still have. and i kept it because i looked good, but also because i thought, is this how you see me?
maybe i was a little in love with him back then, but i never realized.
we talked a lot then. about china, about gay rights, about manila, about the things we loved and hated about the cities we lived in. we never talked about the one thing that floated between us, and that was what he was doing in okinawa instead of shanghai, whether he was broken up with his ex or not, if he was over her or not. what was going on between us, this nebulous thing where it was clear we cared for each other more that officemates, that we were close friends that everyone questioned, that he's spent time in my home and with my family and there was just something always between us that neither of us wanted to address. we steered clear of it, always venturing close enough but hidden behind stories of mutual friends, of vague wonderings of whether we'd find ourselves living in the same cities, "would you ever date an officemate?'. "well i dunno!". talks about well yeah i mean when i do care for a person, i'd do whatever i could to be with then, but there's only so much you can do sometimes. always circling the topic, but never broaching it. and i remember telling him that sometimes you just have to make up your mind and do it then. it was a weird conversation, a weird time, an in-between, stasis.
and i remember going home, he dropped me off back in my hotel before taking the bus to wherever he was staying. the next day we went out, he treated me to a lovely restaurant in shanghai and we had a nice day with daniel and bill and sisi, and daniel was like hey what are you doing here mate and he was like, visiting. LOL. then monday came around and grace saw him and in chinese yelled WHY ARE YOU HERE and it was the funniest thing. thanks for the shengjianbao haha. but that was also the morning i heard bill ask daniel, does she know about his girlfriend? in chinese, because they don't know i understand a little chinese, and that was when everything turned upside down.
then my boss said, you're not the first guy to move to japan for a girlfriend, and i remember thinking, i can't believe i found out he is back with mina from my fucking boss. i felt like the biggest idiot in the world. i went back to my hotel and cried. i went back to manila and cried some more, and told ginny, and i was so heartbroken i called off work the next day to wallow in my sorrow.
still though, that week: lunch exploring the different restaurants and stalls around the office, getting purple! rice balls! from the old man around the corner, then getting skewers from the uncle by the bridge. i remember walking with my officemates and looking around on a cold, sunny day, watching joy and maxi eat lamb skewers and i just felt - yeah, i really like this. dinner with sisi and daniel at tianzifang in a beautiful, delicious indian restaurant and getting to know sisi and how just her wonderful, amazing adventures, and learning how daniel and sisi met. "sisi is a dongbei girl, so she's headstrong," is what grace said, and sisi and i got along so well. hanging out with daniel and sisi at their place, walking across shanghai to get amazing beef noodles and drinking whiskey with bill and nathan at constellation. that one evening at a burlesque club in hongkou called the pearl. an honest 1930s club in shanghai. i think i knew i loved shanghai, not for the glitz and glam but for the city that it is, despite not understanding anything and the air pollution lol and the general chaos, when i realized i liked puxi more than pudong. just the calm, the quiet of it -- a world away from pudong and yet one i really enjoyed for all the airs it didn't have. i can't explain it, but i really liked puxi and just going about an ordinary day.
for so long i couldn't look at shanghai without remembering how i had my heart broken and god it was awkward as hell between nathan and i for a while. then we both got over it i guess. it has been four years, after all. we're still friends now; he was the one that reminded me that if i lost my job or resigned it wouldn't be the end of the world; when i was going to talk to my boss he prepared me for the conversation and cheered me on. he was the first person i told about potentially accepting this job. "i'm so happy for you! i'm so proud of you!" is what he said to me when i told him i got the job. and it still means a lot to me. "dibs on your sofa" was the second thing he said, and i told him yeah you can get the second room. it's the weirdest thing.
but seriously. when i read lucy's fic, all of that came flooding back -- all these memories and emotions that i locked away for ages and refused to look at. in a way lucy's fic, that fic about letting yourself feel all the things that you kept compartmentalized for so long out of fear of the future, fear of loss, because in that moment there was just no way -- and the freedom you find when you just let yourself feel it -- it brought everything back. it was the first time i'd thought of that night in shanghai and the heartbreak that came after; the in-between until it wasn't. and i cried remembering everything i felt then reflected in the uncertainty that moment in the story, how much it hurt and yet how much i've grown past it.
it's amazing how much a fic can make you feel. this post ended up being a story of my memories in shanghai and a little bit of a love letter to that one fic and how much it helped me achieve some catharsis from an old wound i never looked at again. since then i've been able to think of shanghai without my heartbreak dominating it, and instead i think of all my friends still in shanghai who i miss dearly. i miss them all the time. i miss shanghai so much. i miss being there, i miss the city, i miss who i was with and without him there. i miss him too but i'll probably see him in hong kong lol. shanghai is still one of the first cities i'll go to once borders up, to find more traces of my family but also because i loved the city, and i'm so grateful for lucy's fic for reminding me all the joy and the sadness that shanghai gave me. sadness, joy, laughter, and tears -- all of it in nine days that felt like a lifetime. i'll see you again one day, shanghai.
nightmares are expensive, but memories are free. -- JJ Lin
that one fic singlehandedly made me miss shanghai, a city i had not been back to in four years at the time, and made me recall my own conversations with someone that was very dear to me at the time. i remember it so vividly: reading the passages in shanghai, my excitement at recognizing the places they went to, the moment of realization and recognition when they ventured to the bund and began to actually talk. lucy has this amazing ability to tear into my ribcage and take a battering ram to my heart in the best way, and the thing is, i'd never spoken to anyone (apart from ginny, because ginny held my hand throughout this whole ordeal) about it. but man i remember reading that fic, realizing what kind of conversation was about to happen, and remembering the conversation that did happen as i read the passages, and crying. then i went on my instagram, pulled my photos from shanghai and remembering how much i missed the city, four years later.
for a while i couldn't look at the photos from shanghai without feeling like my heart was going to break. i fell in love with shanghai, the city -- not pudong side, which is glitzy and glamorous and flashy and all the good stuff that people love to post. i liked pudong and how bustling it was, how busy, how loud. i remember walking down nanjingè·¯ with nathan, swept up by the crowds and him pointing out shops i might like. it was a cold evening, 11pm, and the city was bright and its lights were blinding.
i remember that whole day: it was the weekend and because daniel and sisi had plans and nathan wasn't in shanghai at the time, grace offered to show me around. grace gave me instructions on how to get shaanxi south station from hongkou and i remember panicking because i didn't know to navigate the terminal. but i remembered at least what the character for south was and somehow i managed to find shaanxi, and i managed to meet grace in one piece. when i told her about it she laughed and said "you know there's an english option, right?" which, no grace, i did not actually, but hey man, my nine years of chinese prepared me for that one moment. thanks, susan-laoshi.
we had a lovely afternoon, just two ladies approaching the age of "leftover women" who were decidedly not looking to settle down yet, just chatting about our favorite spots to travel to, our exes and our favorite tv shows. i miss grace a lot, actually. i remember sitting by the massive apple store in shanghai and comparing notes about new york and manila and our next travel plans. then joy texted to say let's have dinner, and we went to this fancy restaurant where grace and i felt underdressed and had some truly fantastic food and a deconstructed mango pudding dessert. i remember texting nathan the whole time, because he couldn't be in shanghai while i was there, and he was just constantly texting and asking how i was doing, if grace was being nice to me (she was THE BEST), if joy took us somewhere weird. and i remember that was the first time i felt culture shock in shanghai, that deconstructed mango pudding with smoke from dry ice rising from the table. it was something you'd see reynold poernomo do on masterchef australia. it was a very expensive dinner. i was terrified of ordering anything. joy paid for everything. grace and i protested but he did the thing where he signed without us knowing.
i remember texting nathan "this is the first time i experienced culture shock here" and he replied something like "i told joy not to bring you anywhere weird!" but the food was good! and i remember he texted me then that his flight was delayed and i was extremely confused -- he was in okinawa at the time, living and working remotely. why was he at the airport? and that was when he asked if i was going to be too tired to hang out when he arrived, around 10pm, and i nearly dropped my phone. grace asked me what was up and i said nothing, just received a text, as i replied hell yeah let's hang when you get here. my heart was beating so fast then, i thought it would give out. nathan wasn't supposed to be in shanghai while i was there; it was a point of disappointment because we rarely got to see each other when he wasn't in town for work, but he made sure grace, joy, daniel, bill and andreea were taking care of me and showing me around. and they all did, they told me to go with them for office lunches, translated the menus, suggested food. daniel and andreea had dinner with me on my second night to make sure i ate because apparently nathan warned them i tended to forget about eating, and to make sure i understood the menu since hongkou didn't have many restaurants with english menus. it was a kindness from the shanghai office that i keep with me, and a kindness from him that i did not expect.
i tried to put it from my mind after he texted he was boarding since i was still with joy and grace -- we went up the IFC100 after dinner and i remember looking down at the bund, the expanse of shanghai and thinking, i could live here. i loved shanghai so much then.
i went back to my hotel. i didn't tell grace that nathan was coming; i thought she knew. then at 10:30 nathan texted and met me right at my hotel. i think we took the subway back to pudong. all i remember is chatting with him, catching up, asking why are you here. and i remember going to nanjingè·¯, going down in the middle of all the bright lights and i think he laughed at me; i was so dazzled. it wasn't magical, but it was comforting in a way i can never fully explain. i remember standing in that center square, looking around at all the people -- just teeming with people, buzzing, full of life and i understood nothing but in that moment i understood something about my lolo that i never figured out. i remember walking down to the bund, nathan showing me shops he thought i'd like and looking up at all the buildings and guessing what kind of architecture was there, guessing the origins of each building and laughing at our very wrong answers. just laughing and walking and talking about shanghai and our officemates and everything and nothing. and it was cold and the lights were so bright and we ended up in a darker part of the bund, it was so late that we watched the lights of pearl tower go off, watched the last of the boats pass by, while we talked. we picked a spot, all dark and i remember looking out at the river when he said "hey," and when i turned around he snapped a photo of me which i still have. and i kept it because i looked good, but also because i thought, is this how you see me?
maybe i was a little in love with him back then, but i never realized.
we talked a lot then. about china, about gay rights, about manila, about the things we loved and hated about the cities we lived in. we never talked about the one thing that floated between us, and that was what he was doing in okinawa instead of shanghai, whether he was broken up with his ex or not, if he was over her or not. what was going on between us, this nebulous thing where it was clear we cared for each other more that officemates, that we were close friends that everyone questioned, that he's spent time in my home and with my family and there was just something always between us that neither of us wanted to address. we steered clear of it, always venturing close enough but hidden behind stories of mutual friends, of vague wonderings of whether we'd find ourselves living in the same cities, "would you ever date an officemate?'. "well i dunno!". talks about well yeah i mean when i do care for a person, i'd do whatever i could to be with then, but there's only so much you can do sometimes. always circling the topic, but never broaching it. and i remember telling him that sometimes you just have to make up your mind and do it then. it was a weird conversation, a weird time, an in-between, stasis.
and i remember going home, he dropped me off back in my hotel before taking the bus to wherever he was staying. the next day we went out, he treated me to a lovely restaurant in shanghai and we had a nice day with daniel and bill and sisi, and daniel was like hey what are you doing here mate and he was like, visiting. LOL. then monday came around and grace saw him and in chinese yelled WHY ARE YOU HERE and it was the funniest thing. thanks for the shengjianbao haha. but that was also the morning i heard bill ask daniel, does she know about his girlfriend? in chinese, because they don't know i understand a little chinese, and that was when everything turned upside down.
then my boss said, you're not the first guy to move to japan for a girlfriend, and i remember thinking, i can't believe i found out he is back with mina from my fucking boss. i felt like the biggest idiot in the world. i went back to my hotel and cried. i went back to manila and cried some more, and told ginny, and i was so heartbroken i called off work the next day to wallow in my sorrow.
still though, that week: lunch exploring the different restaurants and stalls around the office, getting purple! rice balls! from the old man around the corner, then getting skewers from the uncle by the bridge. i remember walking with my officemates and looking around on a cold, sunny day, watching joy and maxi eat lamb skewers and i just felt - yeah, i really like this. dinner with sisi and daniel at tianzifang in a beautiful, delicious indian restaurant and getting to know sisi and how just her wonderful, amazing adventures, and learning how daniel and sisi met. "sisi is a dongbei girl, so she's headstrong," is what grace said, and sisi and i got along so well. hanging out with daniel and sisi at their place, walking across shanghai to get amazing beef noodles and drinking whiskey with bill and nathan at constellation. that one evening at a burlesque club in hongkou called the pearl. an honest 1930s club in shanghai. i think i knew i loved shanghai, not for the glitz and glam but for the city that it is, despite not understanding anything and the air pollution lol and the general chaos, when i realized i liked puxi more than pudong. just the calm, the quiet of it -- a world away from pudong and yet one i really enjoyed for all the airs it didn't have. i can't explain it, but i really liked puxi and just going about an ordinary day.
for so long i couldn't look at shanghai without remembering how i had my heart broken and god it was awkward as hell between nathan and i for a while. then we both got over it i guess. it has been four years, after all. we're still friends now; he was the one that reminded me that if i lost my job or resigned it wouldn't be the end of the world; when i was going to talk to my boss he prepared me for the conversation and cheered me on. he was the first person i told about potentially accepting this job. "i'm so happy for you! i'm so proud of you!" is what he said to me when i told him i got the job. and it still means a lot to me. "dibs on your sofa" was the second thing he said, and i told him yeah you can get the second room. it's the weirdest thing.
but seriously. when i read lucy's fic, all of that came flooding back -- all these memories and emotions that i locked away for ages and refused to look at. in a way lucy's fic, that fic about letting yourself feel all the things that you kept compartmentalized for so long out of fear of the future, fear of loss, because in that moment there was just no way -- and the freedom you find when you just let yourself feel it -- it brought everything back. it was the first time i'd thought of that night in shanghai and the heartbreak that came after; the in-between until it wasn't. and i cried remembering everything i felt then reflected in the uncertainty that moment in the story, how much it hurt and yet how much i've grown past it.
it's amazing how much a fic can make you feel. this post ended up being a story of my memories in shanghai and a little bit of a love letter to that one fic and how much it helped me achieve some catharsis from an old wound i never looked at again. since then i've been able to think of shanghai without my heartbreak dominating it, and instead i think of all my friends still in shanghai who i miss dearly. i miss them all the time. i miss shanghai so much. i miss being there, i miss the city, i miss who i was with and without him there. i miss him too but i'll probably see him in hong kong lol. shanghai is still one of the first cities i'll go to once borders up, to find more traces of my family but also because i loved the city, and i'm so grateful for lucy's fic for reminding me all the joy and the sadness that shanghai gave me. sadness, joy, laughter, and tears -- all of it in nine days that felt like a lifetime. i'll see you again one day, shanghai.
nightmares are expensive, but memories are free. -- JJ Lin
