Snow

Scholarship essays--they're the worst! This one is about my travel experience, feedback/constructive criticism is appreciated. :-)

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Living in the Bay Area, the concept of “snow” seemed mystical to me. I knew it was real, just like how Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, or how unicorns could be seen galloping in the forests as the radiant sunlight illuminates the forest canopy. But just like how I never went to the Arctic, followed a rainbow, or trekked in a forest, I could not relate to the concept of “snow” until I see it fall from the gray skies and into the warm embrace of my palms. Last winter in December, I had the opportunity to study abroad in China. I stepped out of the Beijing Airport and took my first breath of the winter air in China. I could see the vapor of my breath condensing to smoky trails that gently faded into the cloudy, polluted air Beijing.

But as always, life is disappointing. My dream of seeing snow was never realized, even in the middle of winter in China. What I saw was ice. What I saw was piles of ice shavings made from an invisible icee machine that magically appeared on the roofs of pagodas in SuZhou and sidewalk curbs when I was shopping on the streets of Shanghai. The street vendors selling ripped-off Rolex watches in the entrance of the Forbidden City told me, “It snowed last night!” In my dreams, “snow” wasn’t like a sneaky ninja that only operated in the darkness of the winter night.

I was gloomy, just like a lovesick teenager, yearning for the love-of-my-life, to literally drop from the skies. With my dream of seeing snow shattered, my entire world became a lot uglier to me—what I saw was probably something called “reality.” The country was rapidly industrializing. Construction workers were building skyscrapers that seemed like ladders to the sacred heavens. But all around, little shops and huts were marked with a red Chinese character—a character that symbolized its complete demolition and represented the sacrifice that had to be made in the lives of the Chinese people. And in the economic trade center of Shanghai, at first glance, it would appear that this city, was indeed wealthy. But outside of the Yu Yuan Bizarre were women in dirty clothes, with a baby in one arm, and extending their curved palm out with the other. They have a keen and desperate eye for travelers, taking advantage of their unfamiliarity with modern, Chinese society. The native Shanghaians, had Louis Vuitton handbags in their hands and Dolce & Gabbana shades that seem to not only block the UV rays, but the disparity in their rapidly transforming country.

Dry skies. Poverty. Materialism. I didn't have to travel abroad to see this. Our last stop was the Summer Palace in Beijing. The marvel that was the grand marble treasure of the Summer Palace, which took away from the Chinese people did not impress me. But what it sat on, what it was surrounded by--did.

There at the Summer Palace, I finally found peace. It was a chilly, winter afternoon. The winds gently brushed across my cheeks and combed my hair. The surface of the lake before me was blanketed with a sheet of ice. The trees surrounding me were naked and still. The world seemed to be asleep. It was beautiful and tranquil. But I noticed, there was still no snow. It was then that I realized that perfection can not be found anywhere on earth, even in the most beautiful of places. And that I found absolute beauty in a society, like all societies, that contained so many ugly things.