Surly Teenagers in a Mall

I’m posing like a surly teenager whose parents have allowed them to go to the local mall. Because that’s exactly how it feels like to be in Shanghai right now. We’ve been granted more freedom, but we still don’t have any agency, and there still isn’t much to do. So you end up mainly shuffling around like listless teenagers, bemoaning authority figures and their stupid rules. Some of our friends keep getting ‘grounded’ at home, and the same might happen to us, for reasons our teenage brains can’t process. It’s, like, so unfair.

So when people ask me how I’m doing, I usually find myself answering just like a teenager. I mumble something about being ‘OK’, while it’s quite clear that I’m being antisocial, short-tempered and petulant. But putting one foot after the other and ‘getting on with it’ is how I survived my teenage years, and that’s what I’m doing now. It’s an awkward phase I’m going through.


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