Happy Saturday!

As I’m writing this, I have just landed in Taipei a short while ago and when we landed, I swore if I dared myself, I would kiss the ground but the germs… lol. For three weeks, I haven’t been able to access the outside web like my email, bank, and finance for more than 15-30 minutes at a time as the wifi will suddenly stop working like someone knew I was accessing outside websites. Blog posts had to be written either quickly or in parts. My watch had to be synced manually, and even then, it often took several tries. I was constantly freaking out because not only did I felt my phone wasn’t working right but I also felt paranoid, like I was being monitored and overheard.

I spent the last week in my hometown – Zhongshan. It’s been the thing I look forward to since the beginning of the trip. I was looking forward to getting to taste nostalgia – all the food that reminded me of when I was a child. Instead, I found the streets fill with unfamiliar cuisines. “What are these northern cuisines doing in the Cantonese part of China?” I asked my mom. I don’t remind so much non-Cantonese restaurants in my hometown the last time I visited in 2018.

“Migration,” my mom said simply. People from the north are migrating south in search for employment and an improvement in their standards of living.

When my mom went to Shenzhen a few days ago, leaving me to myself, I thought about walking around, visiting my old haunts for the sake of nostalgia but not only the weather wasn’t cooperating (having a heat index of 103-degrees-Fahrenheit despite the actual temperature being only in the high 80’s), it seemed the places I visited as a child had all changed into something unrecognizable and no longer worth visiting. Honestly, I used to think my hometown was somewhere special but after visiting Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai, with its high-rise apartments, unique-looking skyscrapers, and public transit system, my hometown looked just like a clone of the other cities in China.

Thursday was my birthday and I celebrated my birthday in my hometown for the first time in almost 25 years. Being somewhat of a control freak, I ordered my own birthday cake from the local bakery. When I was a child, the birthday cake was always my favorite part on my birthday. I didn’t care whether I had any gifts, as long as I had cake, I was happy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find this kind of cake in the US, so my birthday cake had to be perfect this time and it was – 2 layers of perfectly baked sponge cake with fruit and cream. Yum!

I got to cut it too.

In our final day in China, my mom and I visited my grandfather (my mom’s dad) in his nursing home. We brought along some food and had a meal. My grandpa’s 86 and has had a couple of stroke. He’s still alert but no longer talks (as much as he used to, at least). I was dreading the visit because my grandpa used to swear like a pirate and my mom and her dad don’t get along but since he can no longer speak well, it took that dread away. Still, it didn’t lessen my anxiety of seeing so many sick and dying elderly in one place.

The anxiety kinda made me wish I had some of the boozy dessert lying around. Did I mention I had a boozy dessert in Shanghai that completely calmed the voice in my head? Who knew all I needed was alcohol to calm my anxiety?

Anyway, thanks to Natalie for hosting WeekendCoffeeShare and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.