Feng Huang Lu

I had been drunk for weeks it seemed. Days and nights merged into each other carelessly, smoothed by the coercive hand of hedonism. I should have felt seedy, or guilty, or contrite, but I didn't. All I felt, as I watched the stars fade and the sun slink slowly up from beneath the dark neon earth, was euphoria.

I spoke my thankfulness out loud to the sky. I lifted my arms in gentle exaltation and chuckled. With the fresh cool of early morning brushing my face, I let my head fall back and smiled, and thanked God for the moment.

It was 6am as I strolled unsteadily along a quaint Shenzhen alley towards my peaceful apartment, slowly sobering and happy. More intoxicating than the alcohol I had thrown back earlier during uncounted rounds of Chinese drinking games, was the freedom I had discovered here. No-one knew exactly where I was. No-one knew what I was doing. I had no responsibilities and enough money to cover an extended period of Asian living. It was beyond privileged, almost decadent; I knew this. What I was experiencing very few people ever could, and I was blissfully thankful.

Being a white man in China brought all sorts of advantages, economic and social. But that was not what had me singing quietly as I passed through the black iron gates guarding residential apartments that towered like massive stucco anthills over the center of Feng Huang Lu. For the first time in my life the future was irrelevant; I had let it go. I had given up the lie of living for a hope that would never arrive. All I cared for was the moment I was in, and the liberation was giddying.

Waking hungover the following afternoon, there would be time for the return of angst. Wounds from deep loss and brutalization do not heal in so short a time as between aching sobriety and grinning drunkenness. But each evening they could be released anew to lose voice within noisy, gaudy nightlife. And perhaps one day, they would never return.