On that occasion, she was knocked to the ground by the tide at Shinjuku station, too painful to climb up, but for a few minutes, no one came to mourn her. She wondered what had happened to the city and why it was sick. Four years later, she left home to live in Tokyo, threw herself into this strange place, writing down the 60,000-word "RiTokyo" face. The deeper, sometimes the more painful you may be, and the more you will accidentally see yourself with the same coldness, but you will begin to understand that there is no city, or one, only the positive and shiny of the surface.
Two running books came out a few years ago, referring to Ouyang Jing, you want a brave runner who challenges himself to resist vulnerability, and around the world, with tens of millions of words, inspires more strong instincts. But this summer, her new book, "The Survival of Lito,"is no longer about light.
She recorded her four years in Tokyo, not talking about how beautiful it was or how ugly it was, but about how it was full of emotion. She was going to write "Ri Tokyo", hidden behind the bright, underground culture of those who remain, filth and loneliness. And there's always the next level. 'A lot of people know me because of running books, but that's what I really want to write about
It wasn't that she loved the city so much, but rather that she hated it to some extent; in the face of the closed and indifferent large and national culture, she felt only a tingling sensation, never to be greeted. But why didn't she choose to come back to familiarize herself with warm Taiwan, but stay in the sick city and try to drill into the bone marrow?
Because she felt it, there must be something, in this foreign land, summoning themselves. (Interview next: Together through the bereavement and depression interview Ouyang Jing: we are more like friends than mother and daughter)
Photo: RK (IG:@rkrkrk)
I don't love it here, but I just want to stay.
"If I give up understanding them and go back to Taiwan, I'll be a little reluctant." When you feel, why is Japan so annoying, Japanese men are so annoying? I don't think I want to live in Japan! I'm leaving! I don't want that. I'm going to figure it out. 」
On that occasion, she was knocked down at Shinjuku station, and for a few minutes no one came to mourn herself, saying it was cold that night, and tens of thousands of commuters couldn't find a warm heart. She wanted to know, what makes them so cold?
She used the words "I don't want to escape". She wanted to figure it out all. And then she slowly learned that the thing that knocked her down in that huge station hall, leaving her in pain for hundreds of seconds, was not just a deep-rooted culture of national closure;
Later, for example, she got up and didn't know why, and walked silently to the hustle and bustle of Kabuki.
She was there, sitting on the expanding desire of people, the sound of the place black and white layer, the night curtain is in the right or body exchange; for a moment, she remembered her own dark background of the father, how in her childhood, built the smell of the adult world. She linked her love for Kabuki, which turned out to be related to her father.
Recall that she had a serious verbal argument with her Japanese cohabiting boyfriend; in one fell, she left the door and walked all the way to the streets of Shinjuku, an extremely lonely street. I didn't ask Jing much, what i felt in my heart, I just remember her saying that when she found out that she hated the city, she didn't choose to go home to Taiwan.
Instead, it's a stranger.
Amazingly, she was in this thought irrelevant place, find the soul of the trust, think of the once far away in the heavens father, touched their own and the world of some kind of native link.
"Shinjuku is the home of my heart, even if the human feeling is cold, dirty mess. 」
Photo: RK (IG:@rkrkrk)
Shinjuku, or Tokyo, is part of herself, she didn't have a chance to know in the past, and life will be arranged at some point for her to understand.
Talking about this, I suddenly can understand why she didn't choose to walk away no matter how many injuries she suffered here. When one day, choose to leave the native family, like a demonto want to throw themselves into a strange place, that must be justified. And that reason is usually very close to the core of our lives.
What's like, like having a voice in your ear, "Do you want to see, who are you?" Gently as filament, so ask you to dream.
Want you to be at some stage in life, in some corner of the world, to be an absolutely right, but entangled outsider.
City Survival: Always Remind Yourself to Be an Outsider
She did almost every effort to fit herself into the place.
Tokyo is flooded with tourists every year, but on the surface the crowd is passing by and doing nothing, they are just conditionally accommodating each other; Even restaurants, she says, would refuse foreigners, and they felt bad about it, as if it represented something bad to eat inside.
So she went to learn Japanese, handed over her Japanese boyfriend, integrated into the Japanese community, and lived in Itabashi, in Tokyo's Minmin district.
As a "resident", the more she got involved, the more she knew the distance. 'She always tells herself that I'm an outsider,' she said. Such awareness, so that she can survive.
"For example, if I see a restaurant that seems like a great one, if I tell myself today that I'm japanese, I'm not afraid to walk in at all. Because in Japan girls are not very good at eating alone, that is very shy thing. In this community of culture, women eat alone, representing you without friends, no partners, or no family. You're a social loser. A label, so deeply imprinted in the cultural atmosphere. And then there's more, the etiquette that doesn't make sense to her, the morbid psychology of over-caring about what others think.
Photo: RK (IG:@rkrkrk)
"Japan is a nation of peer pressure. You'll see that they wear suits all over the day; But when your co-workers and supervisors wear suits, do you dare not? Big hot days hot to no, 311 after the earthquake east Japan power can not open air-conditioning, they are still wearing. 」
And on the tram, there was no whine of sweat.
What a human-like nation this is. She shuddered, guarding herself, who I was, where I came from. Avoid yourself being engulfed by this stubborn cultural torrent.
She told herself that the old lady was a foreigner and relaxed. You can simulate a national look, such as speaking Japanese very well, wearing a bathrobe for the summer flower festival, to the local bathhouse after the soup and then to the next-door house for a drink. There was a moment when she looked around the house, the warm alcohol in her body, flowing, there will be a few moments, feel that such a life is very good.
But the city is not so simple, the depth of the nation is even more. You can take your favorite cultural levels and build the lifestyle you want, but while you live here, when you're not just a tourist, you won't be able to avoid the dark depths behind the glitter.
Go far away, you'll know where it's home
What's more, she has a greater intention for Jing, a "resident":
"All I want to do in my life is to do social and cultural observation. So you know you have to be in a higher position, and you're going to be objective, not looking at these things with the prejudice of your native culture. 」
I turned to ask her, will there be a face is, you really want to guard in the bottom of my heart, you love that place? "After living in Japan, I began to know exactly where I was going to die in the future. It will be Taiwan. Love to the depths of things, are fragile. So be careful to guard.
Then you also begin to realize how strong you can be because you are vulnerable. Sure enough, to be a traveler, to be determined to leave the original home, to a strange geographical simulation of a new home, which each other to influence and extend the cultural tension, all need to be more strong to meet.
Although Jing told me she would not just stress that she was a runner, but I can't help but say that she really thoroughly practiced a kind of runner spirit -
"Long time to overcome suffering and loneliness." In the face of all kinds of cultural shocks, she confessed to the original self, and can be fearless to accept to love, in a cold cover of their own foreign land, thinking of the sentence "I will definitely return to Taiwan later", is a need for strength of the moment. But I knew she was already a strong person when she said it.
Photo: RK (IG:@rkrkrk)
A foreign land is a mirror that lets you see yourself
Looking at the book jing, including the moment she sat in front of me and spoke, I felt particularly addicted. I always like her fisttomy to meat, what is, in particular, she said she and the city has a "black history", I think others are afraid of being smeared, but she is biased to reach out their hands to show you her hands full of dirty.
The most addictive thing is that you see her in the end, how to make themselves clear.
She talks about when she was a child, she was often complained by her mother, "Why are you so cold?" "I am Virgo, puzzled, want things to be a one-off. But I never thought there was anything wrong with it. Because I think this kind of life, is to take good care of themselves. 」
Why don't the Japanese help a man who falls to the side of the road?
"Because they are worried about the crowds that are blocking the way to the station, they try not to stop as much as possible." Take care of yourself for the benefit of all. As before, will think about why people want others to care about you? "It would be nice if you cared about yourself." I never ask people to care about me. 」
At that time, she was indeed at ease. But today, she finds a place in the world where everyone is colder than herself, a huge cold cover covered with an outsider who accidentally falls in, and she suddenly realizes that the iron walls of the copper walls are a mirror of herself:
"I found out that I really didn't like the Japanese. But I do have a lot to do with them. 」
I can rest assured that I don't belong here.
At the beginning, she like a loss of life, found that the original thought seems to be a good outlook on life, in fact, not so let oneself appreciate. She walked into Tokyo's dark, damp alleys, exposing desires, selfishness, indifference, and said, indeed, there was no beauty you could imagine. Like telling myself at the same time, I didn't think it would be better.
Living in life, I asked her what was the biggest change? The city won't change after her 60,000-word real-life Tokyo. But the woman who passed through Tokyo, she re-understood herself, and began to try to accept herself:
"I also start edthings and remind myself that when I see someone wrestling on the side of the road, I'll go over and pull him. 」
That reach edaddest imagination, is living for four years, in the deep into the city, into the self after, she had the original inthe heart, want to understand things finally have an answer - I can rest assured that I do not belong here.
If in the future, she will find that something is lost in the corner of the world, she has a greater heart, to face, and then pick it up.
I think Jing told me that home in Japan was just a place for her to live, "That's not home." She was a little firm. It's just a place to live, a living place, a ritual that needs to be performed.
I stand here, looking at the native self, the native family, love their father, remember their mother.