La Guernica

A city(town) with history. Which you can barely see any trace of it. This is the sad thing about destruction, there's nothing left. It's a nice little town, which has revived itself after the bombardment. I guess it reminds me a little bit about Rotterdam. We went into the church, the key watcher showed us around and tried to explain to us a little bit about the reconstruction of the Church. It's the spirit of the locals that reserved the place. Things were remembered by the locals in a different way. I wonder whether the town would be this famous if not for Picasso. The fact that the painting is in Madrid also bothers me a little bit. It signifies the ownership of such things belongs only to the elites. The painting la Guernica has never been la Guernica, but is Picasso, is the elite lifestyle, is the group of people who had the luxury to think about pain of such destruction, is about representation. It has not been about the town itself. Probably therefore it is why the painting will always stay in Madrid. In Museo de Reina Sofia, on the way, being guarded; while people stand in front of it, amazed by its grandeur, fascinated by the masterpiece and forget about the city.

For some reason, it feels like the city has been used. Their tragedy has been exploited as a tourist attraction that didn't bring them that much good. The people who lived there have their lives, with or without Picasso.

otro día

de paseando. The city has another side, and I've found that out today too. I was looking for the Chinese shops that Susanna has been talking about these days, basically our 十元商店. Everything was sold there, anything you could imagine, but i still couldn't find my "steam rack", but it's always fun to know a new side of the city.

As for local Chinese community, I always tend to keep a certain distance. I found it difficult for me to blend in with them and neither do I really want to do so. With the Taiwanese community as well, though I doubt that there is any here in Bilbao. It's just the sense that "we belong together because we have similar culture" bothers me. A lot of times, the Taiwanese students I met abroad, we would barely have anything in common because we don't have similar interests and values. However, when we're abroad, we're rather forced to be put in the same category just because of the most obvious feature we share. This discourse doesn't work for me. Nor do I understand people who only want to spend time together with the people from their same country. I mean, why do you even bother to be abroad then?