Tajikistan
Chapter 1
Obviously being a Chinese in your own country doesn’t grant you much of privileges at all, especially when you mix yourself within a situation which also has been dipped by your foreigner companions, like applying a tourist visa from Kyrgyzstan/ Kazakhstan consulate in Urumqi. So after few unsuccessful visits at the consulates (I tried speaking English for the whole time before they spotted out I am a downright Chinese from my passport; I flashed my Singaporean student pass; I flung my wriggly curly hair back frivolously to one side while speaking English and flashing my foreign student pass at the same time to the lazy-eyed officer sitting behind the counter, who, to my dismay, remained an apathetic attire the whole time, and none of those gimmicks landed me a green pass ), also intimidated by the onerous application procedure listed specially for Chinese citizens, I switched back to be a downright Chinese as my passport would like me to be, and did what most Chinese would do before travelling, I contacted a travel agency. After managed to haggle down a few nickels, like chiseled out the ice dregs from an iceberg, I was cornered down to the consideration of Tajikistan Visa as it was the cheapest choice given the situation. So I buckled up, emptied my wallet, crossed Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan off my travelling list, enlisted onto my notebook a capital TAJIKISTAN, a country which I knew nothing of except being the neighbor of my-plan-to-visit Kyrgyzstan. And I walked out of the agency office, feeling much poorer than I walked in, and much elated, exultant, exhilarated about a new journey in coming.
One week later, I got a little green paper with Russian scripture ticked to my passport. And I flew to Tajikistan immediately.
I continued my lifelong campaign for the love of alcohol even on the plane, 32 000 feet above the air, pitch black outside of window, half of passengers sank into slumber by the diligent autonomous sound of engine while the plane insidiously flitting through the darkness, I asked for some Merlot. The book I was reading, the Way of All Flesh, became a bit of bleary as a result of two-rounds-of-wine-drowsiness and after-midnight-drowsiness out of diurnal instinct. I leafed to the page, where Samuel Butler described a life living backwards, starting with death, then growing younger and younger before we entering into the wombs to end our lives. I tried to follow Butler-like kind of thought, and it only opened a jar of worms, my mind was bombarded, under the influence of ethanol needless to say, by post Butler-like questions: would that make the afterlife a beforelife in our current time frame? Would that make people pay more attention to beforelife as they are so concerned currently about afterlife? Why didn’t people cast the same amount of curiosity to afterlife as to beforelife, even though we come up insensibly and go down insensibly equally and we know no more about the end of our lives than about the beginning, yet one can find zillions of literature depicting ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ without daring to dabble even a raw draft of beforelife?… Would people who ‘previously’ resided in Heaven grumping about starting living a life on earth backwards?… Would those risen from Hell, after being tormented, tortured and burned, be grateful about starting living a life on earth backwards? …Hmm, what would a beforelife look like?… hmm, What would My beforelife look like? … Hmm, I think I’d like to be a grape, perky in green, luscious in purple, and if handled properly even at a decaying stage I can ferment myself into salacious liquid, the most delightful, enjoyable companion of all mankind, no matter if they live their lives in a backward or forward fashion, like I am enjoying the companion of my before-life now…
The captain suddenly decided to bring me back to real life from my grape-afterlife-butterfly-wine dream by striking alert all the lights inside the plane cabin. I straightened up, put away my Butler book, and the empty wine cup, opened up the window shield, the dotted little lights, symbolizing the great civilization of human activity, under the contrast of night darkness were flickering rather peevishly down on the ground. Few minutes later, the plane landed me at Dushanbe International Airport.
Three hours of flight, three hours of time zone difference, I was back at the time I set off.
Stand Correctly 