An informal blog & landing page for Alice Xin Liu
I think this was a fuzzy entry about sex and what happened when I was 18/19 during the second year of university. It has clear signs of sexual assault and non-consensual sex, because I was unable to categorize my feelings after the event “Should we go on the pavement?”, rather than presumably, fuck you.
I went to the National Art Museum over the weekend. The resurgence in Red culture that has been a feature of China today- a whole crew of art students were presumably told to go sketch at Yan’an.
This was the place of the beginning of my family’s folklore, and the Catholic church, in the sketch I snapped, which was left behind by missionaries, was renamed the 中央大礼堂 or Central Committee Hall (roughly translated).
This happens to be the place where my grandma and grandpa held their wedding.
I was with a friend yesterday and we discussed givers and takers. The context of the conversation was with men and it sparked so much within me. My father was a taker. He took everything– my time, my energy, my love. And when he gave it was with the expectation that I had to return big things to him, like my unconditional loyalties or all the things which I could give to him.
But that was it- his love was conditional, and my love was unconditional, because it was a child’s love for a father.
The first time that I experienced unconditional love was with the man pictured, J. This photo was taken during our first Spring Festival together, so 2010, almost ten years ago, ten years next Spring.
It was such a strange (and sudden, to be fair) thing in my life that I didn’t know what it was– I couldn’t recognise it. What was this thing, shiny and sparkling which looked dull and strange when it first got there?
Because I guess when you’ve been brought up under the glare of only conditional love, you have no idea what it is you have on your hands when it arrives on your doorstep, unannounced, closing the door and hanging its coat on the hooks on the wall in your hallway.
That’s a giver.