The Return of the Prodigal Moi

After years philandering Bai-Kues abroad, I, Ms. Wu, finally made the long overdue visit to the Middle Kingdom of Shanghai, China.

I arrived incognito. Someone such as myself cannot simply show up to this land of repression and not cause a rise of national (and physical) proportions. Ah, Shanghai, the Paris of the Orient, the Whore of the East, my first love…and I discovered, no longer my roots, my home.

Yes, alas, ’tis true. Shanghai was no longer. No longer were the decadence, the frivolity, and the bacchanalian debauchery. The heydays of head throwing (and giving) laughter of gargantuan scale is now considered pass in favor of economic advancement and high rise buildings architected in the most atrocious fashion imaginable. In the name of national progress and advancement for the People, whom as far as my travel companion and I could detect, were far too involved in spitting and other forms of behavior reserved for the confines of a water closet to understand the meaning of an open, democratic country.

I felt quite ashamed. It was the first time my travel companion visited this country that I have so often brandished about like a dazzling jewel. He, a daring adventurer and ravisher of women, remained the perfect gentleman in the barrage of bodily fluids issuing from multiple directions, and further more, in the face of blatant stares from local people his equanimity was as constant as his relentless appetite for nocturnal pleasures.

Considering Shanghai’s infamous history of cross-cultural influences from the British, French, and even Russian, I was frankly quite aghast at the close-mindedness of the people when it came to interracial relationships. Mind you, I am quite accustomed to being stared at all my life, but this type of staring felt accusatory, implicating, and communist. It was then that I realized I was in a communist country. Capitalistic ideals may have been integrated in the economic relationships with China, and certain democratic values such as multiple ownership of property do circulate in the government and economic sectors, but communism in China is far from dead.

What is left manifests itself in the people’s mentality. What is communism but an enthusiastic participation in a communal social structure that places the Common Good over individual desire? As the antithesis of consumer culture where the distance between desire and attainment is short and easily breached, it is no wonder that interracial couples are stared at like curios in China. As symbols of the freedom to make individual decisions, they exemplify in a way the dream of capitalism, the quintessence of the best ideals of consumer culture.

My journey to the East was long. But not nearly as long as distance between the Chinese government and the People’s ability to understand and embrace capitalism and democracy.

Until next time I bid you zai-jian.
Ms. Wu