College is half over — where is my direction?
Time flies — in the blink of an eye, sophomore year has come to a close. Fresh from being trampled by one big design assignment after another and then final exams, and about to start organizing our undergraduate innovation project, I honestly couldn't be bothered to write anything at all. But this school year brought many changes in me, and a new batch of experiences — some pulled off, some failed. Before seeing the year off, I'd still like to set down a few casual words.
I think back to when I first arrived alone in Nanjing for college, wholeheartedly delighted, ready to welcome my new beginning — and then the news of my dad's passing drenched all of it in gray at once. In those chaotic days, I had to travel back to Guangdong to handle everything around Dad's affairs, while keeping track of all the miscellaneous enrollment matters of a new school and a new class — and there was also the bittersweet long-distance relationship that had only just begun, the old friends left behind and no new ones yet made. Every relationship, every emotion — I had to face them all.
Running away is shameful, but it works. Back then I couldn't look squarely at the fact that was causing me so much pain; I hated the enormous helplessness I felt toward my own life. During that stretch I broke up with my girlfriend, cared nothing for what went on in my new class, threw myself frantically into club activities, and wandered around Nanjing whenever I had a spare moment — doing plenty of things I now look back on with some regret. But seen from another angle, that was also where my collision with myself began.
At first, being alone was not an easy thing to get used to; later on, I actually learned to enjoy it. For me, the greatest gift of solitude is the freedom to do things you find interesting that look thoroughly boring to everyone else — the moment the thought arrives, you can act on it, no need to recruit company. Going to a movie alone when the pressure became unbearable; running out early in the morning to walk the campus when snow fell; picking a windy day to stroll around Xuanwu Lake in full bloom; climbing Purple Mountain alone at night to look at the lights of Nanjing and the summer fireflies... Little by little, I became able to find a happiness of my own inside solitude.
The magical part is that once I could be at ease with myself, being with other people no longer seemed so hard either — confidence in myself became the key that unlocked the fire door which had long stood between me and others. I'm grateful for the invitation I received in the first semester of sophomore year, from students in another class, to build a straw landscape installation together; it let me feel the joy of working with others again. It had been a long, long time since I'd last tasted that kind of joy.
Being with others is also a very good way of coming to know yourself. When you trade ideas with someone and your view gets shot down, you learn that this view belongs only to you. Not everyone thinks the way you do, and not everyone will like the way you go about things. It reminds me of a line from Yohji Yamamoto: the "self" is invisible; it collides with something else, bounces back — and only then do you understand the "self."
Everyone is so different. I often think the so-called "interesting soul" is really a relative thing: there will always be someone who, like you, loves doing some particular "boring" thing. The two of you can be boring together, and strike ever more "boring" sparks off each other. To each other, I think, you are the interesting ones.
I used to feel I ought to study those interesting people and cultivate an interesting soul of my own. I don't think that way anymore. Being able to do the things I myself find interesting — that's enough.
Landscape architecture is a heavy major, and it regularly makes me question my life.
We are the ones on campus speed-walking down the paths hugging drawings and laptops, the ones who apparently need no sleep at midnight. Every day it's classes, drafting, design work — often overloaded beyond our own control, and just as often bingeing shows and refusing to get out of bed, equally beyond our own control.
Through the first semester of sophomore year I was still deep in the fog, unsure whether continuing down the landscape design path was right for me. From what I knew, the world out there wasn't friendly to this profession, and the healthy soil the landscape industry needed to grow was still missing. Low pay, busy work, limited room to advance, out of step with the times — that seemed to be the state of the domestic landscape design industry.
And yet, I think I do love it. For me personally, it isn't only that it satisfies my urge to create — it's the sense of accomplishment in the thought that one day, through it, I could offer people a more comfortable way of living. If I could bring even a little bit of good change to this problem-riddled world, I would be quite content.
Sophomore year was also when I began working on design projects with my professors and helping with a fair amount of research in the field — which inevitably deepened my understanding of the discipline, and multiplied my daydreams about it too.
Since sophomore year I've been paying far more attention to the leading figures of the field. I've watched plenty of their talks, and I genuinely love the ideas they envision — co-governed landscapes, pedestrian-friendly transportation, lightweight architecture — and I'm glad for every good result they achieve in the directions they explore. In my eyes they are such dazzling people. Looking back at myself: in every respect, still far from enough. Better keep at it.
What the elders at home care about is whether I'll someday find a suitable, secure job, whether I'll have a stable life. But my own strengths, my longings, my potential, and all the possibilities of the future — those I can only face on my own. The confusion and tangles of the heart, the hard choices along life's road: like drinking water, only the drinker knows whether it runs warm or cold.
Whether I will ultimately walk the road of landscape design, I cannot yet say — but its quiet, steady influence will become part of who I am regardless. Setting out while still packing, advancing while still hesitating — I suppose that is simply what growing up looks like.
Studying design seems to have made my life less dull.
This semester we had a course called Architectural Design (1) — essentially the gateway course for architecture students — and congratulations to it on winning my favorite course of the semester. The teacher showed us how marvelous space can be: how differently, and how interestingly, different spaces shape what people feel and how they behave. Right at the start of the semester, I tore through "Architecture: Form, Space, and Order" along with Yoshinobu Ashihara's "Exterior Design in Architecture." I remember finishing them and feeling that the world had suddenly become quite a bit more magical. There was also a course called Site Design — I wasn't enrolled, but I audited it from the first class to the last, and the teacher taught it beautifully too.
Design has taught me how to observe daily life. "Hm, I don't think this plaza is designed very sensibly — this part really ought to go..." "Do you know why this building was done this way? Let me tell you..." — hearing sentences like these come out of my own mouth still feels amazing. With these skills, even the wait before meeting up with classmates is never boring, because there is simply so much in daily life to observe! How plants grow, how a site is laid out, people's curious behaviors, storefront design, the color schemes of posters... All of it has begun to catch my attention, prodding me to think about each design's strengths and shortcomings. Truly a fine addition of something interesting to boring old me.
Learning makes travel run deeper. The Beijing field-trip practicum left a very deep impression — even now I could sketch a rough map of Beijing's famous sites from memory and describe their general layouts; I suppose that's what you gain from traveling with a mountain of coursework in tow (laughs). And after the garden history exam, I can even still recount, more or less, how those gardens evolved and what defines them. This trip, I feel, meant something different from every trip that came before. The difference is that this time, before I ever laid eyes on a place, it had already passed through my mind thousands upon thousands of times — so when I finally stood in front of it, its details lined up one by one with the details in my head, and out came the exclamation: "It's exactly like the book said!" The former is traveling with a microscope; the latter, with the naked eye.
I wonder when in my life I'll get to see Rome and Japan. I'm really looking forward to it.
I was planning to write a bit more. But I'm sleepy, I don't feel like writing anymore, and I'm off to bed.