Looking for travel accommodation? You have more choices than you think you do. From 5 star hotels to homestay, from WWOOF to Couchsurfing, these various kinds of accommodation are after travellers' binoculars, giving you what you are looking for. If you have realized that travelling has become a trendy tag of your lifestyle (or, who you are), Couchsurfing may have well become a hot choice of accommodation. Surfing on couches and it makes you (feel like) a local. That's true, but it may not be all that you could try out to mix with the place.
People begin to chase after the concept of "authenticity" in the 21st century. However, the fact is that the more we want it, the easier we get lost and end up finding ourselves with illusions of authenticity. Same for travelling. Chinese artist Li Gang seems to understand this well. Brochure of his exhibition Ruins states, "(J)ust like the visitors' impression for the remains of ancient buildings, what he sees is not the remains themselves, but the cultural imaginations wrapped up by all kinds of languages." Tourists flock to the Forbidden City for the splendid palace. My mother, as well, said something like that to me while I was at Beijing," (H)e who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man." She could not care less about why Chairman Mao says that but she just wanted me to join the crowd and feel how magnificence this place is. Anyway, what I really see is the actual palace and the Great Wall, the architecture itself, when I get rid of packaged-illusions. Sadly, we are always living in illusions.
There is no doubt that Couchsurfing marks a new trend in travel accommodation. Like homestay or WWOOF, Couchsurfing also markets itself on localness, except that it involves no money or laboring for exchange. Instead, it emphases on cultural exchange which cannot be measured by money. In fact, there are two things that worth noticing: the first one is the concept of "couch". Couch, a symbol of modern homes, according to luxurious magazines. If we go beyond the symbolic meaning, it reminds me of the reality that not everyone literally has a couch at home. By that, I mean, back to the basic, Couchsurfing may not be able to reach the people whom do not literally have room to host. As in Hong Kong, those who live in so-called "cage homes", cubicle apartments, sub-divided and partitioned units do reflect lives of the lowest social stratum, but it is not easy to get into their lives through Couchsurfing. It brings me to the other thing, which is that only netizens, rather than all citizens, gain the pass to this but I believe that those who aren't inside the pool of Couchsurfing also got interesting stories to tell. Is that what you are looking for?
This is the story of an ordinary man I met in Xian. It goes like this... I missed the last bus to my host's place and this motorbike drive gave me a ride home for 20 yuan. He talked a lot about himself during the journey. A cook, almost 30, single, he told me how hard he managed to survive in this city and how materialistic the woman he have encountered are... The day after, my friend and I went to his workplace and tried his knife-shaved noodles. Who would have thought that I would become his guest days later, just by asking. He is a rural hukou-holder from a small county near Xian and he came here a year ago. Working at a small noodle restaurant as a cook, he earns 4000 yuan a month and sometimes take passengers on his motorbike after work to make extra money. He rents a 100-square-inch room in Jixiang Village for 500 yuan a month. Sun beams enter through a tiny window, the only window in his room that makes the air less stuffy. The shared bathroom and kitchen space for an entire block entails the hygiene condition, as it usually does. If you ask me when do I really get to know this guy, the answer would be the moment when I saw children's cloths and toys in his room. He has a 10-year-old daughter who was, at the time I came, enjoying her summer holiday at hometown. The mother of her was his ex-girlfriend, more than 10 years ago. With unplanned pregnancy, the two of them wanted a marriage but the girl's parents were strongly against it, all because he can't afford the dowry of 500,000 yuan that they deliberately asked for and because they are urban hukou-holders. The mother ended up giving up custody of the child and the daughter was what he has to remember that relationship. 2 years ago, he seemed to have been married, or not? A dowry of 30,000 yuan, an extravagant wedding, a wedding certificate... Nothing went wrong, except that his bride was wedded to someone else. He told me it constitutes a marriage fraud and he has already filed a lawsuit against her. Now, his only wish is to have his daughter grown up happily.
A friend of mine is a social worker graduated from university 20-odd years ago. Once when she was travelling on her own, she was invited by an old local woman, whom she met at a remote village in China, to be her guest for several nights. There was no Couchsurfing at that time, neither personal profile nor references to look at. It is how you feel about this stranger when you talks to her/him that decides whether you are going to trust her/him, to spend another minute with her/him or to stay with her/him. This is how we get to know others. Isn't it?
美好的廿一世紀，既真實又夢幻，我們追求真實性，
沙發，象徵現代人的家，
想起在西安的七月，我做過這樣的一個決定。錯過了末班公交車，
想起在西安的七月，我做過這樣的一個決定。錯過了末班公交車，
我認識一位社工，廿多年前她剛大學畢業，獨自到中國旅行，
