Steve had arranged for a friend of one of his workmates in New Zealand to accompany him to the Forbidden City, and I invited the newly arrived Japanese students to come along. Become something of a tour guide, I led our small party to the bus stop and we rode to Tiananmen Square. As we stood facing Tiananmen Gate, a curious old man wandered up and asked the Japanese students where Steve and I were from, and I had to correct his assumption that our friends were Chinese: he laughed good-naturedly at the strange reversal of roles; a Caucasian interpreting for Asian tourists.

The Forbidden City was even more sterile in the summer heat, and it was the second time I’d failed to be awe-struck by the fascinating history seemingly shrink-wrapped in the renovated buildings. I was supposed to be imagining the community of Eunuchs, Mandarins and Concubines fulfilling the every waking need of the Emperors, but instead I could only feel something more financial in nature. The site is one of the most enduring symbols of Chinese liberation, in that until the fall of the Qing Dynasty only the so-called nobility were granted access. China’s Government for the People, in allowing access to all, were giving the Heavenly Mandate to the People. Now as an international product, the site seems to have lost this newer, and more compelling, importance.

We returned to the Waley bar in the evening for dinner, watching again the parade of backpackers with their lagers at the ready. The Venezuelan woman from our dorm wandered through in a loose, white robe, exchanged a few sentences with the attendants at the bar in fluent Chinese, and then floated out. My curiosity about her was even further piqued later on when, in our dormitory, she approached our Japanese friends and asked for some aspirin in fluent Japanese.

The following day, Steve was visiting the Great Wall, and had to leave too early for it to be important enough for me to want to join him. I instead got out of bed at a more forgiving hour and relaxed in the hotel. I entered into conversation with another dorm-mate, Yumiko, and we decided to team up for another day’s sightseeing. Before long we were drinking blond beers together in Wangfujing’s snack alley and chatting with the Middle-Eastern looking Xinjiangese people serving kebabs. Yumiko was a student of Mongolian and Arabic, as well as being fluent in English, and was on her way to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia to meet with some real Mongol people. Japanese people are classically conservative, meaning that Yumiko was perhaps uncharacteristically charismatic; her casually comfortable nature was the mark of a genuine student of humanity and of a born traveller: at the same time, she was particularly susceptible to alcohol and needed to be supported all the way as we bussed to the Summer Palace, our next tourist destination.

In the Winter I had been more than charmed by the Summer Palace, but perhaps it came more into its nature in the hot weather. The Summer Palace is the perfectly sculptured Chinese garden of fairytales made real; the great lake was a poetry of small boats, and the immense palace above it, with eaves of deep green gently lifting out from all sides like petals, was the Emperors’ magic castle. Yumiko sat on a stone looking joyously over the lake, her inquisitive face perfectly relaxed, grinning in the warm sunshine and under the passing seduction of her glass of beer.

We met with Steve again in the evening, when it was already time for me to pack my bags ready for my return to Shenyang. My time in China was drawing to a close, my visa was due to expire for the last time in a few days, and I had arranged for a flight out, back to New Zealand once again.

I took one last stroll through the Jinghua gardens, only to run into our Venezuelan dorm-mate once again. I bought a can of coconut milk from a stall and asked if I might sit next to her. She was more than happy to tell me her life story and bear witness for Christ, which surprised me as I’d assumed she was perhaps a devout Buddhist. She had been the daughter of missionaries in Japan and China, spoke several languages and dialects, and now that she was getting on in years had given over her life to the Lord’s direction. She had no immediate plans, and had lived at the Jinghua for three months, mostly meditating in that small, cheap dormitory, waiting for her next sign.

I saw her once again as I was about to leave the hotel. She ran to find me with a special and urgent message – that I should be listening to God for direction, and that He would not refuse guidance if I opened my mind. I was a little disarmed by her sudden and direct enthusiasm, but being no stranger to people of faith, I thanked her genuinely for her witness and wished her well. She smiled at me like a comrade.

Before my train left for Shenyang, Steve and I, with Yumiko in tow, her having nothing else to do whilst waiting for her next day train to Hohhot, decided to say goodbye in Sanlitun, the infamously seedy foreigner’s bar street.

This one last time walking through Sanlitun, I was finally comfortable with the naughty, exuberant and subtly disturbing atmosphere. Sanlitun had come to represent for me the state of foreign exploitation of China today, and every time I saw the self-congratulatory Beijing laowai set proudly gazing into the expensive beers and at the expensive lovers it was easy for them to afford, I felt some discomfort at the probability that local Chinese saw me as but one amongst them. All of my travels thus far had been overshadowed by this theme: a growing consciousness of the imposition foreigners are placing on China, and a struggle with coming to terms with my own place as a waiguoren. This time in Sanlitun Yumiko’s presence deterred the girly bar touts, and we quickly found a quiet spot where Steve and I could enjoy conversation about our journey for the last time, as Yumiko negotiated another beer. Steve had a couple more days in Beijing before his flight out to London and the beginning of his European adventures. Like most travellers just passing through the PRC, he would always regard his brief experience in China as being indescribably special.

I’d had no need to arrange to be met at the rail station in Shenyang, given my newfound familiarity and independence in travelling in China. Xiao’s parents didn’t even know the exact date I’d return, and were surprised when I called them from the station, with much improved Chinese, to let them know I was back. I’d had a good night on the train, chatting with an Italian woman who spoke impeccable Mandarin, herself returning to her job in Shenyang. Both devout Chinese enthusiasts, we shared our love for the language. She had asked me which Chinese character I admired the most: I told her that I had always liked the traditional form of ai, which means ‘love’, with each part of the character tracing the progression from friendship through to the union of hearts under the same roof. She was more partial to wo, meaning ‘I’, which, with each of its strokes reflecting across both its vertical and horizontal axes, was the very essence of balance, that pure, Zen-like state of individual consciousness.

Xiao’s mother was preparing to travel with her daughter in New Zealand, and would travel back with me on the same flight. I spent a couple of days after my return relaxing, preparing myself and assisting her with her preparations, and wondering what on Earth I could do upon returning to my home country. I took the chance to catch up with some old friends, in particular Sun Ya Tao, my colleague from Guan Ya who had promised to translate my CV for further job applications in China. But mostly during this time in Shenyang I wanted to take the opportunity to one last time walk around the city that had become my home in China, sad in the knowledge that it would probably never be my home again.

I felt that it was particularly appropriate that the last attraction I would visit, on my last day in China, was the Liaoning TV Tower over Shenyang. I have often written about these observation towers, from which all parts of a city can be seen in one instant – the vantage often providing a surprising insight that comes from piecing together all that you have done in the city until now as if all these moments were part of one single experience. I navigated the now familiar busses to the tower, enjoying Wang Fei’s Fables album as I watched Shenyang scroll by the windows in the sunshine. The tower stands above the Huang He River and is painted white, and on this particularly bright day it made Shenyang look magnificent. I paid the entrance fee and took the elevator to the top.

Watching Shenyang  from above, I saw the city as I’d never seen it before, and was immediately moved, as within one glance it was obvious to me that Shenyang is again right on the point of significant change. I saw from the top of the tower a great city on a beautiful clear plain embracing a curling river – a city which has, in the last century, been choked by industry. Shenyang is littered with huge, identical apartment blocks like great rows of dominoes, the skyline broken by a thousand smoking factory chimneys – and yet at key, central points throughout the city, I could see buildings of new, imaginative conception; sectors where blocks of apartments had been pulled down to make way for more spacious commercial and residential quarters of better design. The famous mayor responsible for the beautification of Dalian city, charismatic and popular Bo Xi Lai, had recently become Provincial Governor, and had announced plans to make similar cosmetic changes in Shenyang. Already, the effects of new policy were obvious, and I could see that Shenyang was poised right at the opening of a new era in its long history, ready to take on its rightful role as the leading city of the Chinese North East.
 

A week before, I had stood at the top of Shanghai’s Jinmao Tower looking at a city that resists its own Chinese nature – but to look at Shenyang was to see a city that has come through a difficult history with discernable pride in its unique character. I could see a future for Shenyang of immense promise, and standing above my sweet Dongbei home, I wished the city great luck as I said my goodbye. It was my opportunity in Shenyang that allowed a place in China for me, and I knew with absolute certainty that China would be part of my every remaining day, for the rest of my life.

In the Liaoning TV Tower, I looked out over all of Shenyang with a word in my heart for all of China: Thankyou.