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Stay, but only if you want to

By Huang Yuli (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-15 07:55

It's hard to say whether it's because of the season or because of my greediness that I've been missing my parents' cooking this month, and the feeling is getting stronger.

After several failures in the kitchen, I tried to persuade my mom to come to Beijing for a while and cook for me; but she doesn't have the time.

The feeling of homesickness rises every now and then and has haunted me particularly often recently. Each day after I finish work, I feed the cats and sit on the couch - the apartment is big enough for me to live in by myself and even too big for one person. The heating hasn't come, it's freezing - the feeling of being so far away from home just comes over me from every direction. And each time my thoughts lead me to wonder: why do we leave home?

Many of us drift from our hometowns in small or smaller cities to major metropolises in search of adventure, or bigger dreams, or a better life, and we become fascinated by the capital's glamour and convenience.

I believe most of us have good reasons to come here in the very beginning, but gradually, those reasons can be lost and we find we are only staying because of inertia.

We become familiar with life here and are afraid that we will not be able to get used to life at home again.

Another reason why some people end up living here is because relatives (including parents) and friends think it "looks good" to have you living in a big city.

Indeed, a friend told me that each time he goes home and meets his former schoolmates who still work in their hometown, their tone with him is a mixture of admiration and jealousy.

It's as if staying at home is second best. Those who have talent and ability are all far away - and the farther, the better.

Personally, I think this is totally wrong. I think young people in my generation (1980s) need to have a clearer mind.

Be realistic. For one thing, the big city today is losing its attraction because of its high living costs, saturated competition, less competitive salaries than before, terrible traffic and pollution.

On the other hand, our parents are getting older and they need to be taken care of, and most of us are the only child in the family.

At a recent get-together with some of my former college schoolmates who continued their studies to pursue a master's degree and who will graduate in March, I realized how attached they think they are to this city.

I can see most of them still want to stay in Beijing despite the unaffordable housing prices and the dwindling number of job offers.

They say things like: "My social relations are all here" and "what can I do in my hometown with German (her major)."

I'm not urging you guys to leave, but if you really want to go home it's not hard to make it happen.

For fresh graduates, it's too early to say you can't leave because of your social relations.

People come and go in your life, your circle of contacts is always changing, you can notice that change from high school to college already.

Even if all your classmates stay in this city, which is not likely to happen in most cases, you can be distributed in different corners and the city's hugeness can actually keep you from staying in close contact.

What major you did is even less of an issue. College is only a very short time in your life. Your major doesn't dictate who you will become. I know a lot of people whose work has nothing to do with their major and who are doing well.

The most important thing is, what do you like and what do you want to do?

Statistics show Beijing had a resident population of about 20 million, including a 7.6 million floating population.

Tens of thousands of college students graduate from this city each year (in 2010 the number was 219,000). If everyone stays, I don't think it's gonna work out.

Again, I'm not trying to persuade you to leave this city; I just really want you to make sure you know why you stay.

Don't stay just because you don't know what else to do, which is pretty much what I did.

Now I feel like I'm stuck in the middle, missing my town which is 1,500 kilometers away, its food, its weather and its people, so, so much.