Off to Shanghai Again
Translated from Chinese by Claude. Read the original
I’m leaving for Shanghai the day after tomorrow. It’s always like this: right before Chinese New Year, when everyone else is rushing home…I’m always heading out… I remember last year, 15 days before New Year, I also left for Shanghai, and then on the morning of New Year’s Eve I took the bullet train back. I was 16 then, and now I’m 17. Being on my own is great. Let me tell you how that trip felt. I rode from the first station all the way to the last. The seat across from me changed hands 4 times: someone got on at one stop and off at the next, then someone else got on, then got off at the next stop. I held my MP3 player and sat there without moving, listening to music and watching the scenery outside the window. It was a hard sleeper, and sitting in it was miserable. (The second time I took a train by myself was to Hefei last summer. That trip was super awkward. Someone mistook me for a ticket scalper… WTF…) I finally got to Shanghai a bit after 8 in the evening. I remember it was raining that day and really cold. The buses had basically stopped running, and there were no taxis either… I walked through the rain across several intersections. That was my first time in Shanghai… I flagged down a taxi, and the driver said he didn’t know that road… I flagged down a second one, and the driver said he’d give it a try… When I came back from Shanghai, I was afraid of being late and missing my train. The train was at 7, and I left the hotel at 4. I waited at the station for an hour before I could board. I’m going to Shanghai the day after tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to it at all… I’m going for an exam… well, an interview to be precise, an interview for classes. (I’m still a minor, so I can’t be going for a job…) It looks like my ticket back is standing room only… Damn it, sigh~ what a disaster…
PS: I think one really pointless thing about personal blogs is this: someone writes about their own life, a diary-type post, and when they’re done they post it in some QQ group begging for clicks. I find that really meaningless, and then you look at the comments and they’re all lukewarm… It’s kind of boring. If you write an opinion piece or something, sure, post it and take a look, the comments are fine… but you’re posting even your diary~ isn’t that annoying…