Origins: How My Year in China Resparked My Poetry

 A year in China? Poetry? What were you doing over there and where exactly is this going? What's funny is that I didn't even think I would be writing about China in the context of my poetry until I started writing Origins: Way Before Not A Monolith. My feelings about my year in China were complicated for a very long time. I always said I would do a video but as we've discussed sometimes the spoken word and I don't exactly get along. But after 7 years and a poetry book under my belt, I think it's time we talk in-depth about my year in China and how it encouraged me to rediscover my love for poetry.

Me literally on the Great Wall

Ahh, You'd be remiss if I didn't give you the backstory to this backstory, right? Yes! I thought so. So why China in the first place? Well, it's late 2017, less than a year before I set out for China, I'm a recent postgraduate with nothing to show for it (at least it felt that way at the time). I graduated from the University of Florida with no real big girl job prospects. I did not get into any Speech Pathology Master's program because I only took the GRE once and let's say those scores weren't moving the needle competitively (bummer). In earnest, I didn't think it'd be THAT hard to get into grad school (now why the hell did I think that) but I can admit that I had completely underestimated the amount of work my classmates were putting in over the last two years. Anywho, I didn't fret… yet. I graduated with my still hard-earned degree (cause I had a lot going on and still made it work) with the understanding that not everyone was entering the workforce or grad school, there were thousands of us graduating from UF with no real plans and that was ok (I needed it to be ok). Since I would be living at home for a bit, I got a job as a Summer Camp Counselor at the Orlando Science Center while ferociously applying for university jobs. Somewhere along the way I had convinced myself that I wanted to work in higher education since Speech Pathology was outside my immediate reach. Was it a direct result of all the extracurricular clubs that I was involved in during college… the same clubs whose focus was mentorship and getting kids into college or some post-secondary program, exposing them to numerous careers, that kinda stuff? Yeah, seems like a safe assumption. But I really did love it, I loved giving tours, and presentations and showing kids all their possibilities. Exposure and representation can change lives, I still believe that! It seemed like the perfect path forward.

Well, I finally got that email in late August of 2017 inviting me to interview for a part-time job at Valencia College, and a month later, I was officially a coordinator on an amazing team (mostly black team at that ) on my path to being a Higher Education professional. I did all the things I loved doing in college, I traveled across the districts, and it was a fun job when I was out and about. But…and it always feels like there's a but…but moving up in the college/university system showed itself to be a painfully slow and often financially disrespectful experience ( and I do mean disrespectful ). I got a gut feeling that this wasn't quite the path for me. I loved my coworkers but I also knew I did not want to follow thier paths. I lacked the passion that is vital to prosper in these spaces. In the end, I had the skill but not the desire to work in academia.

So what now? I'm 22, broke, a bit depressed (cause wtf did I spend these last 4 years doing), and exceedingly antsy. I needed to do something drastic, quickly (you'll come to learn just how dramatic I am in this series). Immediately, my mind lands on travel. That's what you do when you don't know what to do, take a gap year and get the hell out of your environment (itching to change it up). And since I couldn't just travel for travel's sake (again, see 22-year-old broke girl comment), I had to get creative and think about jobs abroad. I toyed with the idea of being an au pair in Europe (because it's Europe!)  but I didn't want to be attached to a family getting paid pennies just to see the sights (no disrespect to au pairs but I didn't have the luxury, your girl still had US bills to pay). Lucky me, I had a friend teaching abroad in South Korea during my post-graduate blues era.  This opened up the world of teaching abroad for me, a world I knew little to nothing about before talking with her (shout out to Bria). After picking her brain and reading every article and blog about teaching English abroad (while black, can't forget the while Black part), while also being mindful, very mindful that I did not have the funds to spend on a $1000+ international flight, I had to get to work. Through the noise, I found the Ameson Year in China program, applied was accepted, and started my lengthy visa journey. By the Summer of 2018, I had recieved my visa; before I knew it I was giving my family and friends kisses and saying goodbye to coworkers, on a 19-hour flight from Orlando to Shangai on September 1st, 2018.

Me at The Bund Shanghai, China (it's hot as hell in China in September)

China starts with a fast-paced week of orientation and teacher training in the city of Shanghai. Tons of cultural learning, eating, and mandatory clubbing with my new friends. Do yourself a favor, if you ever find yourself in Shanghai make your way over to their hip-hop clubs, you will not regret it (sincerely a party girl). The week ends with our coordinators coming to pick us up and we are all shipped out to our respective schools. Some people end up close to each other but for the most part, we are all pretty spread out in what I dub "real China”. I ended up in Quzhou, China, considered a mid-size city for China, the city center at the time was about 500,000 people (so much smaller than the bustle of Shanghai). So while it was vastly different from my American dwellings, it had a big mall, multiple McDonald's, Starbucks, and great public transportation that made the adjustment less shocking (but tbh I'm in real ass China so everything is still pretty damn shocking).  I was lucky that I lived about 20 minutes away from one of the friends I met in the program. However, as we were still new teachers with our own lives, I largely navigated this new city solo.

Ok ok, now for this writing part, I promised it would all come together. As I was alone, Black, and not picking up nearly enough Mandarin except to count from 1-10 and order basic food, conversations in my native language became scarce. Only to be had when speaking to program friends over WeChat ( it's like the Chinese version of WhatsApp which is the Caribbean version of regular messaging /Snapchat) or scheduling time to speak with loved ones back home with just the itsy bitsy teeny obstacle of a 12-hour time difference. Sometimes I went days without really needing to speak the English language aloud. Talking to myself here and there but often I was silent in a cacophony of Mandarin. Not to mention, my coordinator had started to avoid me around campus. I believe my Americaness did not mesh well with Barry (his English name), I asked a lot of direct questions in the beginning, especially about money which didn't exactly align with the "save face” culture of China (which sucked because he was the best English speaker at the school). This all sets the stage for a deep loneliness that found me in a country of over a billion. The city of Quzhou, while not rural, was still very much Chinese aside from a local bar owned by a cool bald British dude. So whenever I was out in public, I was subjected to what I always described as zoo-like stares and not-so-sneaky paparazzi pictures.

I'm kinda painting a pretty dark picture of my time in China, but it sort of was for me at that time, further amplified by my isolation. But there were also many amazing days and things I came to love about China (another story, another blog perhaps). One (of many) positives I encountered was the cute stationery that seemed to be in just about every store you entered, especially a popular Japanese-designed chain called Miniso. It was there that I bought a journal that would serve as one of two diaries dedicated to my experience in China.

Miracles Happen Every Day from Miniso, You Got This Diary from Supervior as going away gift

Right before China, I wasn't really in a daily diary routine, I was too busy trying to get my life together. But with nothing but time on my side, I began to document my China experience as if my life depended on it (my sanity surely did). And because I found myself writing so much, I started to play with prose and poetry again. I needed to express what was happening to me in China and always felt that poetry was better suited to encapsulate the feelings I often struggled to convey.  I was living such a unique, damn near singular experience. I was a dark-skinned black woman with locs (budding locs) Canadian born but Floridian grown residing in a town with a total of 6 black people, with 5 of those 6 being Africans attending the University (mind you they showed up halfway through the year and were close-knit bunch rarely seen around town).  So yeah, it was as if no one understood what I was experiencing including my program friends because at this particular time, no one else could. 

So my diary entries became the fodder that would feed my poems (starting to feel like a diary saleswoman but hey it's true). In China,  I was going through a metamorphosis. I was so angry in America; I didn't realize how angry I was until I got to China. It felt as if there was this simmering anger lying just beneath my skin at all times. I believe it was the combination of years and years of overachieving and unchecked burnout, oh and the fact that I still had no clue where the hell I was going with life, and as a people-pleasing perfect eldest daughter, I was like "hell nah this ain't how it's supposed to go”. Where's my fat entry-level paying job and luxury apartment?? Let's all laugh at the naivete of youth…Of course, things don't magically change across meridian lines. I brought my "righteous” anger over but things just worked differently over here. I could fume all I wanted but some things were the way they were, for better or worse. I was a visitor in a foreign land; a land I did not fully understand.

BTS- Confucious Birthday Celebration in Quzho, China

Guest Teaching Event

I quickly realized in the silence and isolation that I did not want to return to America the same way I left. I would absorb the goodness that comes with exploring different countries and ways of living. Again, no glitz or glamour, with my pen and paper, I wrote myself poetic love letters, poems about nature and how there was much more to life than any one country's viewpoint. Wrote poems that looked at humanity through a global lens. How transformative travel is…woefully absent from the majority of American society (a pity).  I wrote to free my heart and expand my mind. By the time my year wrapped, I was no longer the woman seated on that plane last August. I returned home and began to write the earliest poems found in Not A  Monolith poems and musings of a black woman. Writing poems for a book I had not even thought of. Laying the groundwork for a collection that would transform me yet again.