T i f f a n y H s u

 I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, mostly due to my flightiness and fear of commitment.  I've also squandered my fair share of opportunities, the same opportunities many people would gladly trade their lives for just one of.  I've been very lucky in my life, but not always smart enough to recognize what I had in front of me.  I know this is starting to sound like a deathbed confessional, but that is not my intention.  This is a realization, a retrospect on my life as I deal with the struggles created by my latest misstep in life.

When I lived in Shanghai every day was a new lesson, mostly learned from the men who came in and out of my life.  I think about this now because recently I had someone reach out to me with a note saying we met in Shanghai in 2007.  I couldn’t for the life of me even slightly recall meeting this man.  Though I couldn’t remember this man, there are a number of men who have educated me about life, and their lessons influence me to this day.

I’ll start with one of the last. 

I was searching for a new job as a last ditch effort to stay in Shanghai.  An Australian entrepreneur reached out to me for what I thought would be a business opportunity, but instead we found ourselves on a few dates for the last brief moments I had in Shanghai. The first night we met for drinks was at the trendy XinTianDi in a lounge surrounded by seductive dark wood highlighted with red accents.  I was impressed with his ambition for such a young age of twenty-six to my twenty-four.  Here was someone different from the other expatriates I met in Shanghai, not like the ones coasting by with positions in multinational companies, nor the ones struggling to find their footing, nor the ones living an artist fantasy with late night dance parties and bottles of forty ounces of beer.  Here was a man with ambition, connections, and a vision for where media would direct itself in the coming years.  He was looking for a woman to stand by his side and run a media empire with him, I was the first girl he “auditioned” for the part, but my focus was elsewhere.  He did start a successful media company in Shanghai, was featured in INC Magazine’s up and coming entrepreneurs to watch list, and to this day is still leading conferences about the state of media in China.  Eventually he found that right girl, flirted with cheating on her during a visit to San Francisco, but I’m happy to say they’ve worked out their relationship and are now happily engaged, but that’s not a story for me to tell. 

The first night I met him he hobbled around in crutches after injuring himself in a sporting accident days before moving to Shanghai.  His vulnerability kept things from being awkward.  As we sipped glasses of Cabernet and talked about the climate of media in Shanghai, we let the conversation become less guarded.  I told him about my situation, the difficulty I found in finding another position after leaving a job with a boss who expected me to whore myself out to our clients, but more on that later.  That was when he introduced me to the theory of “chumps versus champs”.

A chump is your average worker, nothing spectacular about them, but nothing to complain about either.  A champ on the other hand does amazing work, is a thought leader, and could probably do the work of three chumps without breaking a sweat.  If given a choice, an employer would choose a chump over a champ any day, because, though they would get better work out of a champ, the chump will be loyal and stay while the champ would leave for the next interest that caught their attention.  He said I was having trouble because I am a champ and needed to accept it by creating something for myself.  I never took his advice.

After that night I headed to Beijing for a trip I promised my cousin we would take, the Australian and I kept in touch while I was gone and we enjoyed more time together once I was back in Shanghai, but all too quickly I left on another trip, this time to Tibet.  This would be my last trip before I arrived back in Shanghai to my welcome back party, where I surprised my friends by letting them know it would also be my farewell party. 

Once the party was over I headed back to my apartment to finish packing for my flight the next day.  Even as I write this I feel the heaviness in my heart at the reality of leaving Shanghai, a decision made almost six years ago, but still fills me with regret.  When I finished packing my life away, I lay in bed feeling completely empty and utterly lonely.  I knew I was making the wrong decision, but I made a promise to go home.  Six years later I can’t remember who messaged who first, but all I know is the Australian was the last person I saw before leaving Shanghai.  We agreed to meet at an diner not far from my neighborhood in Jin’An.  I opted to walk, and as I neared the diner drops of rain fell in replacement of the tears I didn’t want to shed over leaving.

In the brightly lit mirrored hallway leading upstairs to the diner, I paused to check my reflection and wiped raindrops from my eyes. Upstairs I was met with a disarmingly welcome smile and a promise of a good conversation to end my night.  He ordered a meal, hungry from a business trip.  I ordered cranberry juice, too full from a day of goodbye eats.  There was no sentimentality since he treated my leaving as temporary.  He knew I’d be back, and I was, but that was the real temporary.   I had written this moment out before, five years ago, that time I filled it full of suspense over who's text message I answered in agreement to meet on my last night, but that was a different story, a different angle I was working on. 

The next day I sat in a cab and took the long way through the city and to the elevated road that would take me to the airport.  Once on my flight and in my seat I noticed I was sitting one seat off from my seat from the flight that started my time in Shanghai.  A believer in serendipitous signs, I took it to mean I hadn’t come full circle yet, and had a reason to go back to Shanghai, but more on that later.

Writing this reminded me of where the real regret of leaving Shanghai lay.  It wasn’t in the fun nights out, the crazy times with friends, nor the men who interested and irritated me, it was because I lived a time when I believed in the impossible, a time of possibility and hope that I lost as I grew up and grew addicted to comfort. 

More vignettes of the lessons I’ve learned from men to come.