Coming Home…

I just returned to Hangzhou from a two week trip around China.  On returning, I had a very wonderful feeling of being “home”.  I have noticed this before when I have moved to different cities around the world.  There is something special about, after moving to a new city, going on your first trip from that new city and then coming “home”.  Travel is of course obviously about the place you go, but it also has profound impacts on the place you come back to.

I noticed this when I came back to Hangzhou.  A month and a half ago, Hangzhou was very new, very foreign.  I got lost regularly.  I did not know where to eat, where to buy soap, where to take the bus.  Everything was new, difficult, challenging, and time-consuming.

Then I went to Chengdu, Xi’an, and Beijing.  There too, everything was always new, difficult, challenging, and time-consuming.  That is travel.  But then I came back to Hangzhou.

I was already excited to be coming back to Hangzhou after two weeks on the road.  But on the bullet train from Beijing I started to get very happy and excited to be reaching my town in China.  And when the train pulled in and I stepped into the familiar station, I felt exhilarated.  I remembered this bus stop, this sky-line, that newspaper seller.  I knew which bus to take.  I knew that I could call 唐胶， 张琴， or 强江 (my closest friends here) – we could meet for dinner or to walk around West Lake.  My teacher is here and my classes.  My bicycle routes.  It really had a familiar sense of home.  I felt very, very happy being back.  And that happiness came from traveling to other places.  It helped me to see Hangzhou in a new light.  I saw the ghost of myself and so many past happy experiences.  I travelled China to see the world, and I better found myself when I came “home”.

I have noticed this phenomenon before. When I was in Senegal, Africa, living in Saint Louis, and then coming back after a two week winter holiday trip to the far eastern part of the country.  Coming back to my friends and host-family in Saint Louis, I had a new fondness, a heightened familiarity, and a wonderful confidence in that formerly foreign place.

I even noticed this the first time I made a 3 day business trip from my new home in Encinitas, California a few years ago.  Coming back then too had a magic to it, where I knew my town better.  I appreciated my apartment and my sense of place there.  Sometimes going away helps you to better understand yourself and your home.