Summer Nights in Shanghai Pt. 1.5
I recently uploaded all my essays up until the end of last year into Google AI Studio’s Gemini 2.5 model. I have no idea how strong the model is, what it’s doing with my data, or if it has actually read everything I’ve sent it. All I know is that it was the only free AI implementation that would take my quarter-million tokens worth of writing. I asked it what the best thing I’ve written was, and it said Summer Nights in Shanghai. Is that to say that my writing hasn’t improved in the last four years? Sheesh. I was going to call this “Pt. 2”, but it is only thematically relevant, and only then tangentially. Plus, I didn’t want to sully my purported best work with a questionable sequel.
But this is about my recent nights in Shanghai, and it is summer. I’ve been here for almost three months now, and the blog is due for a life update. Perhaps it’s the right time to delve back into Summer Nights in Shanghai. And the nights, oh the nights. They’re hot, they’re wet, and not conducive to sleep. They’ve been exhausting, mentally and physically. Hell, if my cousin can sleep 4 hours a night, I can surely get away with six. On average. Oh, and did I mention that it’s often over thirty degrees at night, with a humidity that makes it feel like you could drink the air with a straw, making sleep challenging? Alcohol, caffeine, and late night snacks make a dull Chris in the daytime. But Chris is a menace when the sun goes down, gregarious in the way that he was ten years ago, talking about anything and with anyone. Yet they’re tiring, another warm greeting turned into a heated conversation and then a cool goodbye in the morning.
It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To get the most out of these summer nights that I once so cherished? Was I truly in search of the cold glare of the LED club signs and the frigid air conditioning of the bars? I think not. I had a nobler agenda in mind. But as I flip through my old blog posts, wondering why I came, it’s no longer as clear. I list many tangible reasons, but the one I held above all else was that I wanted to give my youth another lease. Living in Shanghai wasn’t a means to an ends, but the ends in and of itself. As the kids on the internet would put it, “I had forgotten that this was the whole point”.
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Still, it seems to be missing a bit of the magic that I was searching for, the spiritual and corporeal toll heavy for what it returned. When I reread Summer Nights in Shanghai, it’s clear that there was a lot that I attached to that first trip that is much harder to find ten years later. The Eternals who I’ve met here reminisce about the wild years, Shanghai’s golden age for expats which coincided with my last sojourn here. Seems like they mostly miss the drugs, the money, and the atmosphere. But as much as it is a case of Shanghai changing, it is even more a case of personal change. The growth in identity and change in worldview is certainly much harder to attain in ones late twenties than in their late teens.
Writing this while coming down from a hectic weekend certainly dampens the mood, but I feel like the honeymoon phase is over. Depending on which account I’m reading, people online say that it’s supposed to last half a years to two years. Maybe I’m just extremely emotionally intelligent. I’m settling into the routine of things, making commitments to drink less and eat out less, sleep more and exercise more. Certain novelties are still there: as I continue to decorate my place and buy essentials (just bought a proper knife and cutting board last week), the packages arriving at my doorstep every day make it feel like Christmas every day. It’s a nice dopamine hit after a long day of work.
It would also be blatantly dishonest not to mention a catalyst for my discomfort, Vincenzo Latronico’s 2022 novel Perfection. I had originally dismissed it as the sort of millennial whining that I wouldn’t normally deign to read (despite chiefly producing its ilk). I picked it up on a lark; it was only a short 125 pages, which would certainly help me with my reading goal which I was falling woefully short of. It is about a young Italian couple living in Berlin. Dissatisfied with their lives, they try to address the problem by moving, and realize that the issue isn’t with Berlin, but lies within. It was certainly the wrong book to read three months into my Shanghai chapter. It’s too early for introspection, especially one that spends its opening pages carefully deconstructing the couple’s apartment, which is what I’ve been trying to build mine towards. I immediately stopped adding knockoff designer coffee tables to my Taobao cart.
Latronico conducts such a scathing critique of his two protagonists, their unconsciousness, their carelessness, and their absolute lack of self awareness. Superficially, they led the sort lives I aspired to in Shanghai: inviting living conditions, social lives well-woven into the fabric of the art scene, and an intimate understanding of the city’s moods. But I’m not even there yet! I mentioned to book to a friend who read a synopsis and immediately started consoling me without prompting. I’d like to see AI do that.
But they’re right. I shouldn’t read too much into it so to speak. I just got here. I’m trending well on the little benchmarks: Chinese ability, meeting people, adapting to work, reading, and writing. Despite the late nights, I’m eating reasonably well and exercising frequently. I’m doing well and I feel comfortable. Though the thought of unhappiness and loneliness linger, there’s nothing to do but trust the process. The big things will come when the little things are put together correctly. I have to be, in preparation for the unlikely scenario that Shanghai eats me up and spits me back out. Not so I can win the battle, but so that in the case I don’t, I can look back at my time in Shanghai and say that I gave it my all, that I have no regrets, and I don’t need to go back another time.
