The quest for authenticity

I have been performing as a Xi'an native for the past few years.

Last year, I pitched an essay idea about “citywalk” (an aesthetic, prechosen route circulated on Chinese social media, usually xiaohongshu) to the technologist journal Reboot. I wanted to explore how the 19th-century concept of the flâneur (wanderers, strollers, affluent leisurely men) has evolved under the digitization of urban spaces in China.

The French flâneur, the most popular literary depiction being Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd”, is capable of slipping through crowds unnoticed, unquestioned, to prance through the streets and discover the “real” and “hidden” city. There’s a lot to say about the figure’s gendered, racial, and economic priveleges, of who can afford to saunter around the city, from 19th century Europe to now.

To return to contemporary China, the problem with citywalk, my original thesis was, is that it searches, in futility, for authentic experiences within an age of aesthetic conformity under social media, of deeply-anxious 20 and 30-year-olds wanting to escape the mundanity and stress of modern life in China through constructing digital and idealized personas that of course, don’t really exist.

I titled the article “The quest for authenticity”. I focused heavily on the idea of performance, of churning the same content for both personal peace (this experience was great! I have pictures to prove it!), and it becoming part of the marketing strategy for businesses utilizing the wanghong tourism market (somewhat comparable but at a much larger scale to the UGC economy).

I didn’t end up finishing the article. I had written a very incoherent first draft and gave to my editor, who, gave spectacular advice on how to restructure my argument (a history of Chinese tourism, from opening up the country, to tourist groups, to 特种兵, to citywalk).

So I started researching, reading about Chinese tourism, about digitizing urban spaces, and felt increasingly distressed and less confident in my original thesis. My editor’s revision notes made complete sense, and the article that would come out of it sounded incredibly interesting. But for some reason, I just couldn’t write it.

I won’t go into the many reasons I have learned from my procrastination, except that I only just realized that my approach using the framework of performance, wasn’t at all this more academic article needed. Performance and authenticity, which strayed away from the economy and general social consciousness, was an idea deeply personal to me.

This quest for authenticity, the crisis that I go through every so often of whether this idealized, un-compromised version authenticity even exists. I pitched that citywalk could never be authentic because I had felt like, what Holden Caulfield would call, a big phony for pursuing it, for believing in it.

Last year, I returned from the States for the summer, writing (or supposed to be) the second draft of my novel. Broadly, it’s about understanding one’s personal history against what one’s taught of one’s birth nation’s. Specifically, it’s about two post-grads in Xi’an trying to figure out how to live their lives (or is this broadly?). So, I decided it was high time for me to experience life (authentically) as a Xi’an native (though I had not lived in the city for the past eight years). I looked on xiaohongshu. I found citywalk routes in the newly aesthetic alleys that used to carry some historical significance. The amalgamation between the old stone walls and the new, warmly-lit coffee and bagel shops made me swoon.

And so came the day where I followed a citywalk route in 德福巷 with my cousin, eagerly awaiting the joy of living to wash over me. Of course, that didn’t happen.

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A month ago, my roommate’s husband, who’s Indian, and very interested in Chinese history, asked me what it was really like growing up in Xi’an.

“Just tell me what you remember. The big things in the news that only someone from the outside wouldn’t understand.”

On the outside, I put on a front of nodding and thinking deeply, a skill I had gained from all my job interviews.

“I don’t remember anything,” I answered honestly. My memories of childhood remain murky.

“Anything at all. Any major news.” He pushed.

“There was 钓鱼岛,” I said, “our spat with Japan over territorial claims. Oh, and there was when news came out about KFC growing mutant chickens. And 地沟油, where the oil in restaurants were found to be coming from the sewers.”

And then I remembered more: The baby formula scandal. The milk scandal. The natural gas scandal. Anything that had to deal with the Chinese people’s standard of living, mainly food safety.

But, and this was a big but —

“But we didn’t have a cable TV,” I told him, “so my memory of the important news might not be representative of what the general consciousness at the time was.”

“That’s okay,” he said, “I just wanted to hear what you remember.”

Despite that reassurance, I worried that I haven’t been able to give him the answer he was looking for. What did I know of what it means to be a Xi’an native, when I was so immersed in learning and consuming Western culture, even at such a young age? (my role model was Alex from Wizards of Waverley place and my celebrity crush was Emma Watson). What significance would my memories of buying manhuas in our small bookstores, of finding a coin outside our school gates to buy a 星球杯, to be to him? Am I really able to speak on an “authentic” childhood in Xi’an?¹

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In America, I pass my judgement: Panda Express isn’t authentic Chinese food. Are the people who sell rou jia mo at Stanford every Tuesday and Friday even from Xi’an? Don’t expect American news or TikTok to portray an authentic living experience of a Chinese person, whether condemned as brainwashed by the CCP or glamorized for “living in 2030” because of Chongqing’s “cyberpunk” aesthetics. And wait for it, Chinese people don’t drink boba (which is from Taiwan). We drink milk tea, where the tea flavor is much more prominent than American boba.

In China, I fight the same battles, mostly with my extended family: Chinese KFC and Pizza Hut tastes like Chinese food, not American. No, America isn’t unsafe, not in the same way you think anyway. Do you seriously think that everything you watch on the Chinese news about America is true? If there had been three earthquakes five tornados and seven volcanic eruptions, would I still be talking to you over the phone right now?

I don’t really want to go into how we all know the media, especially media controlled or influenced by the government, to be operating. Everyone has their agendas, whether that’s fighting an economic war, promoting nationalism, or earning a shit ton of money.

Authenticity and performance, taken outside of the context of this essay, can involve an entire slew of things that I don’t intend to take on. I realize that I stepped somewhat outside the “bounds” of what living authentically in my native city in this section by bringing in media portrayals, but these are ultimately influential in what was influencing my mental state last summer in Xi’an, trying to write a book about China, about 20-year-old Chinese people to a Western audience. Yet another audience to consider. They wouldn’t know if my novel is “authentic” or not.

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德福巷, the actual street was nothing like the beautifully old but aesthetic one I seen on xiaohongshu. It was much smaller, much much shorter than I had thought, which the post had made it seem. The close-up shots and the careful framing of each picture created a fantasy that only existed on screen, and nowhere. I had felt more emotional looking at those photos than actually being there myself.

We went into the stores. I waited, depressed, as my cousin debated which calorie-less bagel to get.

the citywalk route i followed in xi’an

A month later, I went on another citywalk route during my solo trip to Shanghai. Again, the carefully curated photos of Shanghai’s supposedly most beautiful street (and it was very beautiful). And again, the disappointment of not feeling what I should’ve felt. Joy? Peace? That feeling I get when watching a Japanese movie where characters walking/biking through fields of grass?

I thought there was something wrong with me, with my brain. I wanted to experience life in China to then truthfully write about it. But all I had experienced was the excruciating pain of being eaten alive by mosquitos every day, of sudden bursts of energy to live after watching a beautiful movie followed immediately by long periods of lethargy. What was there to write about? My long hours scrolling Twitter, liking posts about living one’s life, of Kafka’s one-sentence diary entries, of Snoopy in as many different contexts as you could possibly imagine?

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Maybe I’ll return to the original citywalk article, and write a well-researched and educational piece on China’s digital tourism without involving another one of my crises from this constant impulse of self-monitoring, where I am always my first audience before I put forth my life, my thoughts and words, for others to see.

1. I’m fully aware of the stupidity, the dilutedness and loadedness of the word “authentic” here. It is a worry I have, but a worry which nuance is completely lost within these attention-grabbing (hopefully) and provocative (likely) questions. I just wanted to put them there even though I know, I know they are dumb. But even in this acknowledgement, I’m performing the role of a person being able to grasp the intellectual complexity of such a loaded question of belonging, because oh man, was this another essay about immigration and diaspora?