photography, meat, emotions

My bunny is growing so fast. She's eating bushels of vegetables and doubling her weight. I think it's barely a month old and was probably taken away from its mother way too early. The subject of what to do with after 3 months, when I have to leave, comes up a lot. I keep joking that, well, in the worst case scenario, if nobody will take it, then I'll just have to eat it. I remember once upon a time when my dad threatened me with that, and I was seriously afraid that he would do it, and actually eat my rabbits. But now I'm the one joking about it. I couldn't actually do it though. Even with the meat-eating frenzy I've been having. Even Chinese friends have commented on how much I like meat. Food has been such a major center of pleasure every day. May and I have been eating up a storm throughout Shanghai, and I've been especially keen on having different kinds of meat. At the "Brazilian" barbeque place, I had maybe 2 dozen chicken hearts... absolutely delicious. When we went to Zhou Zhuang 周庄, this touristy, historic town connected by canals and cute bridges, we had blowfish, fresh from the tank by the window. Veal, goat skewers, frog legs, lots and lots of pork... Chicken meat tastes so boring now.









But before I got sidetracked by the thought of food: this bunny is adorable, a great companion now that May went back to Singapore and I'm living by myself again. But honestly, I don't feel as affectionate towards it as I did towards my pets when I was little. I just realized that, I have so much less affection in general than in the past... After hearing all about my dating history, May commented that it doesn't seem like I 惦记/miss/feel attached to people very much. I have to admit that it does sound that way, with the fact that I haven't dated any girl for longer than a month, and I've been traveling and saying goodbyes so much that I'm almost used to it. But I do remember everyone fondly, and care a lot about a few people. It's also been intentional that i didn't want to get into any serious emotional relationships for a while, after getting out of such a long, overly-intense one. And I really value my independence, freedom, and self-reliance. But hearing the way other people described it, it makes me sound quite cold. I don't know what to make of that. Cause I don't plan on getting all sappy and stable anytime soon...

I've been learning a lot of random things about photography from May, who does it professionally. We hunted down this particular kind of houses that she wanted to photograph: houses built exactly like American suburbs, in rows that are all identical and utterly boring, but built in Shanghai. We pretended to be interested in buying in order to get in - it's a gated community with 24 hour guards who live on site. The guards are Chinese and live in these little huts on the edge of the overgrown field, well out of site of the pretend-suburb. Most residents are foreigners, or, to be more precise, white European or American, rich, businessmen, their housewives, kids, and maybe some business women too. This is such a scary neighborhood. It's taken over by rich expats with a lot of financial power, who are living in China in order to do business. They live such an insular lifestyle, separated from normal China, in houses with red rooftops, neat lawns out front, European chandeliers and furniture, with an International school next door to sent their filthy rich kids to. It's funny to think, these are the kind of kids who make-up most of the "international student" population at harvard. They seem sorta interesting, from the surface, cuz they've lived all over the world, following their parents, but all the while they're hella privileged, spoiled brats who have never lacked a good education in English-language schools, wherever they are, and never really became a part of anywhere they've lived. I was really glad when May finished taking her pictures. Just being in those suburban rows of identical, fake-perfect, symmetrical houses made me feel suppressed. Like I couldn't breathe.