An Outsider.

Its 8.05 PM. Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year and the intensity of celebrations can be seen and heard everywhere. It’s quite chilling out here and the snow that had fallen on 10th haven’t totally melted down yet. The street is completely empty and it was much close to this "pin drop silence" , but for the amazing aura of light and thunderous sounds created by the firecrackers, somewhere far away.

Walking through these empty streets, I was grasping all the strange thoughts in my mind. For the last couple of days, the last phase of winter was really picking up and, adding to the woes all the shops were closed around our campus. The burger shops and the small hotels in back street have all been closed, because of the New Year. We had to almost take a complete “Pradikshina” of the campus in those chilling conditions if we had to find some food in the night. Today the traffic is much light and there are no pedestrians at all. Even though there were not many vehicles on the road, the red letters on the traffic post still read “89,88,87…0” There are predictions for snow falls for another 3-4 days and these could well be the last snow falls we might see in China. Because they say in Nanjing, if it snows this year, the next one wouldn’t.

If you are able to adjust with whatever that comes your way, the life in China has to be funny and enjoyable. Well, first of all let me give a brief introduction about what China is because I don’t think many people are really aware of how life is in China and how everything happens here. It’s this country that lies directly above India. Yet can you name a city in China other than Shanghai, Beijing & Hong Kong? China is one of the emerging superpowers says the magazines and surveyors, then have you ever, bought any of the Chinese products for their quality and brand name rather than their cheap price?

“All that glitters aint gold” is a good old say, which summarizes about China. It’s the place with tall-tall sky scrapers, the cities where the cultural depth is as important to them, as the scopes for development, where the city looks so clean and looks so "westernized" . But you will be stunned at the sight of people spitting in the floors while they eat in restaurants. It’s the country where the university campuses are so vast and the class rooms are so luxurious, but the only thing you will have to compromise is, with the teaching and evaluation standards. Anyone going abroad would be hoping that he can nurture his English communication skills by going to a foreign country, but here in China, 9 out of 10 can't even speak a sentence in English confidently. It’s the country where, one of every three popular social websites could be blocked or banned. The list includes Youtube.com, Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Megavideo.com and even this blogger.com. (am logging in through proxies.) . It’s the same country where the internet giant Google has threatened to stop their internet services. As I said, its all about adjusting to the place where you live and once you do that, all these extreme irregularities becomes extreme fun.

In this 21^st Century when the boundaries seem to erase and the whole world starts converging into a single home , when anywhere in the world you can communicate with a single language, China remains the only place , where you could still feel like an Outsider.