flâneur

contractually asian - by Jesse - fish in a pool

fishinapool.substack.com · 1,441 words · saved by 1 readers

I suppose everyone born has entered a contract with life that they did not choose, but it feels like Asian contracts have the most clauses. Your life is, across the world and decades past, inextricably entangled with the throes of the cultural revolution, itself the aftershock from centuries of Western imperialism1 You are born of the economic boom and the bubble that burst, of despair and hope smuggled between cold hard cash. You are born into a technological explosion and the ensuing cultural clusterfuck. You are born of oil and water, and you will spend too much of your life trying to make it become one. Before you spoke your first word, you became the fulcrum of each and all of your parent’s sacrifices. The reason and the result, the cost and the reward, all in one. Remember: Your parents gave up everything for a better life, so don’t get confused and start wishing for a happier one. I was 10 when I cried on the way to Chinese school - a pure, uncontrolled bawling unaffected by the

I suppose everyone born has entered a contract with life that they did not choose, but it feels like Asian contracts have the most clauses. Your life is, across the world and decades past, inextricably entangled with the throes of the cultural revolution, itself the aftershock from centuries of Western imperialism1 You are born of the economic boom and the bubble that burst, of despair and hope smuggled between cold hard cash. You are born into a technological explosion and the ensuing cultural clusterfuck. You are born of oil and water, and you will spend too much of your life trying to…

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