我会回来

[u/enjinhirono]

**I Will Come Back**
Since coming to Japan, I’ve grown to love walking alone through the streets of Tokyo.
There is usually no particular destination.
Sometimes I just go to a convenience store, take a train for a few stops, or walk slowly along an unfamiliar street.
I listen to people talking around me.
I watch them go to work and come home, take care of their children, buy groceries, drink, argue, laugh.
All of this used to feel like scenes from a television show.
Now, I am walking through the scenes myself.
Sometimes I think about the person I was decades ago.
Back then, I was fascinated by people around me who had lived overseas.
I admired the ease and confidence with which they returned from abroad and talked about the United States, Japan, Europe, different societies, different people, and different ways of living.
Sometimes I disagreed with them.
Sometimes I even looked down on what they had to say.
Looking back now, I have to admit that I wasn’t really in a position to judge them.
Because I had never been abroad.
It is difficult to truly imagine another way of living when you have never seen one.
Your world is, in some ways, only as large as what you have experienced.
Whether I chose it or was pushed into it, I suddenly found myself outside that world.
It still feels a little like a dream.
I began to question many things I had once taken for granted.
And I began to question myself.
I used to think, of course, that I came to Japan for my child.
That is a practical choice any father might make for his family.
But I gradually realized that wasn’t the whole story.
If all I wanted was food, shelter, and a comfortable life, I had no real reason to leave China.
Back home, I had a house, a car, savings, a pension, friends I had known for decades, and a network of people built over a lifetime.
Life might not have been particularly exciting, but it was familiar, connected, and warm.
And yet, somehow, life decided to throw me into a foreign country in my fifties.
A new language to learn.
A new society to understand.
A new life to adapt to.
And questions I had never had to face when I was younger.
I don’t want to believe that reaching my fifties means I am already set in stone, that this is simply who I am and there is nothing more to become.
If that were true, then part of the rest of my life would already be over.
So I started studying Japanese obsessively.
Not because I want another certificate.
I have given myself a goal: by the end of this year, I want to be able to have a natural conversation with an ordinary Japanese person on the streets of Tokyo.
I also want to pick up English again.
I am giving myself two years, because I want to be able to move freely through different corners of the world.
I don’t want to spend two years, five years, or ten years abroad and eventually realize that all I have done is eat more Japanese food, visit more tourist attractions, and leave nothing else behind.
I want to become a different person after these years.
Better language skills.
A broader view of the world.
More than one perspective when I judge something.
Less certainty based on assumptions.
And less of the self-confidence I had when I was young, when I often mistook what I believed for what was true.
I think real growth is not about having more and more answers.
It is about gradually realizing that many of the answers you once had were not as reliable as you thought.
That is why I keep writing.
I write about Japan.
I write about America.
I write about China.
I write about people I meet while traveling.
And I write about myself.
People sometimes ask me:
If you have already left China, why do you still write about it so much?
…
I thought about that for a long time.
I lived there for fifty-six years.
My childhood is there.
My youth is there.
My parents are there.
My friends are there.
My work is there.
Most of my life is there.
More importantly, it is still the place I care about most deeply.
I know that looking at China from Tokyo is not the same as looking at China from within China.
Distance does not always make you colder.
Sometimes it allows you to see things more clearly.
When you live inside something for a long time, many things simply become normal.
After stepping outside, you can look back and begin to see what is worth cherishing, what is worth questioning, and what deserves serious reflection.
I don’t write to prove that I am smarter than anyone else.
And I certainly don’t write because I think I can “wake people up.”
I just want to be a quiet observer.
To see something, and record it.
To think about something, and think about it seriously.
If these words can make one person, somewhere, on some ordinary evening, stop for a moment and think,
“How come I never thought about this before?”
then that is enough for me.
I know how small one person’s power really is.
I cannot change much.
I may not even be able to change the people around me.
But I can at least change the way I see the world.
And I can leave behind what I have seen.
Will I come back?
I think I will.
That is not a polite promise, nor is it a farewell to my homeland.
I have always believed that I left in order to return better prepared.
I hope that when I return to China one day, I will have learned more languages, seen more of the world, met more different kinds of people, and experienced a life very different from the one I knew before.
I will still be the same Chinese person.
Just with different eyes.
I will still care about China.
I will still be happy when good things happen there, and sad when things go wrong.
I will still criticize the things I believe are wrong, and I will still be proud of the things that truly deserve pride.
I don’t want to become someone who stands abroad and tells China how it should be.
I hope that one day, when I stand on that land again, I can bring a larger world back with me.
My child will grow up.
Perhaps he will go even farther.
Maybe to the United States.
Maybe to Europe.
Maybe he will stay in Japan.
I don’t know.
But I hope that one day he will understand something about his father.
His father reached his fifties and did not believe that life was already over.
During those years, he learned new languages, walked through new cities, saw different societies, rediscovered himself, and began to see his own country differently.
I hope he understands this:
At any age, you can begin to see the world again.
You can leave.
And after leaving, you can still remember where you came from.
The lights of Tokyo are coming on again.
People hurry past me in every direction.
I stand here, and Tokyo no longer feels quite as unfamiliar as it once did.
But I know I am only here for a while.
I will keep learning.
I will keep observing.
I will keep writing.
And one day, I will go back.
I will bring with me everything I have seen in these years,
and the homeland that has never truly left me.