Amidst

Beautiful landscapes are like a piece of art that’s fallen on earth. Among them there’s this place called Cambridge. Like a wooden sculpture carved straight out of a tree trunk, it’s exquisite and ancient, natural and full of life.

I’ve lived at different places. From the metropolitan Shanghai, to the rolling hills painted by pads of colors in rural Vermont, to the laid-back South American city Montevideo, to the very tree-friendly but anti-pedestrian areas of North Carolina. But there’s no place quite like Cambridge, where everything, every manifestation of life, is so well integrated.

I remember driving through the city center the first day I arrived. It was a nice day, which is not so common in this season. The car made its way through the traffic on the narrow streets. Tourists filled cafes and shops and walked by the old walls of colleges like Queens’ and King’s, looking small under the antique iron gates. This wasn’t the Cambridge I had expected. There was so much life!

But life took a different shape within five minutes’ drive. Once we made our way out of the traffic in the center, as we headed toward my college Fitzwilliam, which is situated in the northwestern part of the city, we were soon greeted by open fields and empty roads along the River Cam. I did not like how far I was from the downtown area at first. Getting a bike became one of my top priorities.

But I liked the campus of Fitz. Though renovated in the 1960s, it doesn’t look nearly as ancient and magnificent as those renowned colleges in the center, it’s got its own aesthetics. Modern, simple, and delicate. The buttery, for example (it took me a few days to get used to saying “buttery” instead of “dining hall”), is just a large hall with a high ceiling and the upper part of the wall made of glass. Long, light-colored wooden tables stretch across the space, giving it a slightly sacred feeling, especially under the sunlight shining in from above. The windows have white wings (I haven’t figured out what function they have except for aesthetics), which make the building look like a fancy birthday cake from the outside. Well-cared-for plants spread around the campus. The whole place is like a low-key botanic garden.

I bought a bike soon after, the first brand new bike with gears and lights I’ve ever had. The first few days I got lost quite many times. All the streets look different yet similar. You travel past rivers, houses, churches, shops, lawns. They alternate so freely and seamlessly and the roads curve and intersect in such a way that you can easily go in the wrong direction and not find out until you’ve gone too far away. (Well, there’s also my bad sense of direction, which shouldn’t be neglected.) Many paths could lead to the same destination. The center is small, compact, but the city is big, as big as you can make it. It took me a few tries to find the shortest route from my college to my department.

Now that I know the way I feel more at ease. I can choose to turn left after coming out of the house and follow Huntingdon Road, the main street, until I reach the bridge, and then turn right into the lane in front of St John’s and Trinity College. That allows me to get a feel of the city. The art and craft market is out every day. And there are always tourists taking pictures at the square between King’s Chapel and Great St Mary’s Church. Alternatively I can cross the street outside my house and follow Storey’s Way, and make a few turns until I reach Grange Road. That is a main driveway, with woods along the two sides. It suddenly turned cold last week and dry leaves and nut shells fell off the trees. As I ride my bike on the sidewalk (the road is dominated by cars), they make noises against my wheels. The shadows of trees make this path seem darker, and make me feel small, in a different way from the path through the city center.

Today at my dance team practice I met a girl from Moldova (I felt bad that I couldn’t locate the country until she explained to me it was in Eastern Europe, somewhere near Romania). Is it your first time in the UK? She asked me, as many people here did. When I told her it was, she said you should go visit other places. Cambridge is not Europe. It’s a bubble with its own culture and taste. Like Middlebury to me wasn’t a good representation of America, I guess Cambridge cannot tell me much about England. Where else can you find cafes with stacks of books in it? The city was built around the university. The air is tainted by the academics.

Yet I have to say, having spent four years in a town of a few thousand people in Vermont, I find a kind of vibrant energy here that gives me surprises every day. It’s not necessarily the presence of the river, or the Gothic architecture, not the old or modern libraries, or pretty shops and bookstores. It’s the mixture of all of them. You walk along the street and hear a few different languages within minutes. In the herds of pedestrians professors are as invisible as the homeless. You bike fast amongst streams of bikers (whom they prefer to call cyclists here) that are always traveling at racing speed, and the next moment you pass by a huge flock of ducks on the riverbank of St John’s, resting on the grassland with such ease that they seem to own this place more than anyone else.

With these small surprises I travel across the town of Cambridge, the streets flowing on, like extensions of the river. All this, including the shapes of the clouds, were such foreignness to me just two weeks ago. But I feel like I’m owning it more and more. It’s quite amazing how a place settles inside your body. When thrown into a new environment, your body quickly adopts it as home. I notice myself getting used to looking toward the right before crossing the street, and no longer feeling like another species biking on the left side, or putting out one arm as everyone else before making a turn. By imitating I’m becoming. Becoming part of this place. But how much a part of it am I?

I sometimes, when crossing the bridges, stop and look at the tourists on the boats listening to their punters telling them stories and tales about Cambridge, and feel a sort of pride of a half local with my backpack full of books. My student identity gives me a sense of belonging. But I am also just another tourist, taking pictures of the tourists, as the tourists take pictures of the ducks. To whom does this place belong? I step on the grass of Parker’s Piece, or Jesus Green, and imagine covering the footprints of countless scholars that once made their mark on this land, and because of whom Cambridge now bears its name, and I sense more strongly the unreality of all that I am experiencing. This place is so beautiful that I sometimes feel as if I were in Disneyland. And who am I? Mickey Mouse? Watching my surroundings while being watched, making the place and being made.

All this is just to say, I am grateful for being here. The fluidity of space, both outside and inside, is subtle yet striking. And I am indeed fortunate to be a part of this.