Vanity Fair and City II (29)

The lost generation---When the lost girl written by D.H Lawrence got lost in her Manchester House, we get lost in our city.

Peter invited us to have dinner, a good-bye dinner. He left as a colleague, but will remain as a friend among us. In this unknown city, we don’t have our ancestors, we don’t have our families, we don’t have our relatives, but we have friends.

I don’t like having dinner with them as most of them are from the North and they like spicy food. As a Cantonese I can not eat any spicy food. However, I can not refuse. Not all things can depend on my mood.

During the dinner, I saw them eat happily, but I had to soak the spicy food in the wine, to wipe off some spity taste befoe I put them into my mouth. Most of the time, when we go out, we will gossipe and say the bad things of those who are absent. That’s become a routine. I hate that but I have to hear their saying, or else I will become the object of their gossip. I guess nobody can avoid being gossiped by them.

Jokes, complains, scolding, while we ate, drank…Some pretended to be a lady and refused to drink, but I have to admit that wine is no different from other liquids, and it tastes much better than the Chinese medicinal herb. So when Peter said “bottom up” to me and I drank the whole glass of wine, everybody stared at me unbelievably. What’s up? I don’t mind drinking some wine occasionally. And if it is necessary, I can learn to smoke too.

Peter told us why he quarreled with Kate. That’s because of the convention differences. As a Hong Kong citizen, Kate insisted exploring the mainland market in a Hong Kong’s way, which is doomed to fail in the mainland as conventions in the mainland are different from those in Hong Kong. Peter knew it was doomed to fail, so he quitted. Anyway, he doesn’t worry about his pocket very much.

He has changed lots of jobs, jumping from one company to another, like many of us. Now he has graduated nearly three years, but he still feels lost, also like many of us.

It seems that we all feel lost when coming to our career and our future. Not because we don’t know what we are doing, but because we know clearly what we are doing now but don’t know what we should do in the future.

Now I have graduated nearly one year. Like most of my classmates, I begin to feel lost. I can not see any future. I work, I earn; I pay, I gain; but that’s all.

Those who get comfortable jobs feel lost as their jobs are too easy, too comfortable, so they can not see any future; while those who get stressful jobs, who always work overtime, who have spoilt their health by the stress and over-time working also feel lost, as they can not see any future, either.

Yuan Jian, once a gifted student in Peking University, killed himself after he was fired by a fund management company in Shenzhen. To work in fun management companies will get extremely high salaries, but also a lot of stress. The business rule to fire the weakest has become the nightmare for those empolyees working in these companies.

…

Anyway, nothing is really worth killing ourselves.

Anyway, I cherish my life even though I am as slight as a dust and as obscure as a sand. When the sunset shone upon me, I released and felt that I was the wild wind that blew to a vast place unruly and intractablly: Yes, compard to those hot, rich, sexy, passionate, beautiful, enthusiastic, open-minded girls, I am poor, obscure, plain and little, but I am not soulless or heartless. I can feel the inside myself. And if my parents had gifted me with more beauty and more wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. You don’t know, some feelings can go beyond the outside things when you can feel the inside yourself.