The new world
(View from car passing along elevated road: Suzhou)
It didn’t occur to me to even consider this picture worth mentioning until it elicited a surprising reaction from my family. I suppose I have already become accustomed to such a stretch of city being outside the window. When compared to my current view of three storey tenement flats from my room in Glasgow, this image seems altogether more daunting. I don’t really see it the same way as I must have done two months ago when I took this photograph. Already I am adapting to this new landscape and to its humidity and elements of the culture within.
I can now appreciate from afar that I am now halved; a piece of me belongs to two very different worlds; in the UK I have a past, with family, friends, a business, a home and jobs I have abandoned. The new world, China, offers me a future of opportunities; future friends, jobs, prospects for learning a new language and conducting new business, and more than likely discovering a host of things I never even considered. I am less apprehensive this time of leaving Glasgow behind – I have done the hard part already, now I need only settle in to a new lifestyle.
