22

22.2

Today is February 22, 2024. I have been thinking of starting a blog for a long time. Now it has finally come to real. Somehow last year I wrote very little – these things only come spontaneously, so perhaps this is a year of writing.

I used to have a few blogs before this one. I started my first blog when I was around nine years old – it was so trendy back then, to be on the internet and have your own little page to write. It was on a website called SINA, a leading Chinese website about pretty much everything – now they own Weibo, which is the Chinese twitter (X). I had another blog opened by a writing class I used to attend. Both blogs disappeared as the servers were down. I couldn’t remember what I had written back then, I wish I could though.

Now I don’t have a “blog” blog, but I have a “public account”, which I write once in a while, in Chinese. There are a few problems around that. The first problem is you could only access it via WeChat, a pretty much closed system. The second problem is so much censorship going on there, just like any other thing in this country, things I wrote are not necessary allowed to be posted and read. The third problem is I realized things disappear – I don’t want my writings to be gone again like in my childhood and teenage years. So I pay for WordPress this time, to start my blog, and let’s see how it goes.

Oh, there is one last problem – I am not so good with writing in English. Indeed, I love writing since a very early age, but it was all in Chinese. I did write some things in English – mainly my assignments and theses. I guess I could still write in English, however, worse than Chinese, and better than Dutch. In the end, if I can write a lot in Chinese, but also filtered out a lot by the censorship – then I’d rather write in English. Let’s dream big, maybe someday I could write in Dutch too, oh life.

I have been kind of a content creator for three years now, slowly got 55k followers. After some exploration, I realized it is not the thing I am best at. Most posts I made are videos, from a few minutes to up to fifteen minutes, talking about things happened in life, my reflections, and sometimes I also make VLOGs. After I started for two years, I started to get some collaboration requests from different brands, and that guaranteed some pocket money. In the process communicating with the PRs, I learned how to attract attention strategically for more exposure. You could say it’s marketing. To be honest, I didn’t like it much, but I also know how to manage to do it at times. Me talking in front of the camera in an exaggerating way makes me feel quite awkward still. But I love sharing, good things, beautiful things, also confusions and setbacks I meet in life. Indeed, sharing is caring, as it connects likeminded people together.

What I like about writing is, the conscious meditating process of hanging out with myself. It is to a very large extent different from making a video. Making a video is not making a film, especially videos that you put on social media, it is mostly about pleasing others. I like people, but I don’t like to please them. This process might be too idealistic, but what I like is to share, and to be seen. Then people who feel you will receive the message. I know there are overlaps between these two processes, but the first one gave me more inner joy. (However, I will still make some videos for now.)

Okay, let’s come back to this blog. The very direct reason (still a bit shy to say) to start it is that I want to write about music. Maybe all genres, but mainly classical music. Classical music seems has more or less been with me throughout the years at least I could read sheet music from early years, but for the last one point five years I got so drawn in it. When I said “drawn”, I meant I got an addiction there. A day without listening to classical music becomes a world of black and white (if you agree with me that this is a colourful world). For better understanding music, I picked up the violin again after hating (joke) it for twenty years, I started to listen to different recordings of the same piece, I also began to travel to different cities or countries for a concert I want to listen to. Before I realised this started to get crazy, it was already crazy…… It’s like I hear some voice coming from the sky saying “Sorry Rong, it’s a time of no return.”

Seriously, I feel lucky, like, unbelievably lucky. It is the best hobby I could think of that one person could have. There are so much “bad” hobbies in the world, that I also have some: occasionally drinking, vaping, looking at my phone sometimes for too long, sneakily eating snacks at late nights. Therefore, comparatively listening to classical music is indeed a good hobby. Let’s talk about the scenarios around it though – how people perceive it as “inapproachable”, and how I got the chance to fall in love with it.

Well, I have had been to a concert like less than five times before I started to regularly go to concerts. Let me think, one time I was invited by my violin teacher when I was in high school, the other time I went to a choir concert out of no reason, also there was a time invited by a friend to a concert played by her university orchestra. That was pretty much it. Also, back then there were no concerts that made me feel like I had the urge to go to another one. The more important reason is at that time it was too luxurious to go to a classical concert – Beijing is too big to travel around, and I didn’t understand why I should spent money on some music I could have listened to online.

Things started to change when I moved to Oud-Zuid in Amsterdam. Oud-Zuid is a region that is old, and in the south (literally in Dutch as old-south). It is traditionally an area lived by wealthy and upper-middle class Dutch people. I am not rich, at least I am not rich yet. I was just lucky to have found a tiny studio in the area with a kind landlord who rented it to me even I did (and do) not have a stable job and income. My home in Amsterdam is very small, just enough for me and my pretty dresses, but not the second person at all, not even a cute boy. Therefore, I stopped inviting friends over since I moved to Oud-Zuid.

For a while I thought I would move to a bigger home, even it is further to city central. However, I am staying here with my whole heart. The reason is: it is only fifteen minutes’ walk away from the Concertgebouw! The Concertgebouw is the best concert hall in the world, if you don’t know it yet. I didn’t know about the Concertgebouw even I passed by so many times when I was rolling around on the grass on museumplein drinking beers. It just seemed like a super beautiful building to me but I was not curious what the building was for. Things started to change when someday I happened to read an article about Yuja Wang, and I was wondering when she would have a concert. I was searching and found out she had a concert the next day (was May 16, 2022) at the Concertgebouw. That is how I went to the Concertgebouw for the first time, for that cultural patriotism, haha. It was a wonderful recital, but I still didn’t feel like I would go to another concert.

Summer 2022 was quite special to me, partly because I ate a lot of magical truffles (this is where it would be censored in China). Well, magical truffles are legal in the Netherlands, I thought it was very safe, until my Dutch friends heard my stories and gave me those shocking looks on their faces – they told me they would do all other drugs even stronger ones you don’t want to mention, but not the psychedelic ones. “Dangerous.” They said. They told me that Dutch people don’t do it and it’s for tourists, as a “bad trip” can traumatise one for life. I am not Dutch (yet), therefore I didn’t know about that (which was a good thing). Realisations always come with truffles – sometimes good, sometimes a little terrible. There are a few things I realised that summer:

1. There is supernatural power in this world above us.
2. I should love myself more because I am very beautiful, so as every lovely person (including you, natturlijk).
3. I am not a submissive girl as how women are portraited these days (that’s another story for another time).
4. Music, is indeed a gift from the universe.

That summer, was a real summer holiday – I was not working, nor studying, enough energy for self-exploration. At the end of summer, one day I thought I should go to a classical concert. I had also found out the “sprint ticket” option online somehow – in the end I started to go four days in a row. Even I didn’t know the artists or pieces, I went there, listened to it and learned. I also went to the Concertgebouw once when the truffle effect was not completely gone… (not sure if I should have kept it a secret). The music sounded so shockingly beautiful that I didn’t know where I was: is it truly this earth? Gladly, the tripping effect lasted for quite long until today, I still find the sounds of music unbelievably beautiful, belongs to the universe and beyond. I kept going to the Concertgebouw regularly from that day onwards, until now. It has become my favourite place in the world.

The last thing to discuss is, if it is scary to go to a classical concert because you could feel that you don’t belong there. I would say, could be. I felt it very little at the Concergebouw, because the staffs there are always friendly and considerate. One time, I went back from gym, passing by the Concertgebouw while my bike tire got flat. I didn’t have time to get home to get changed. I went to the gate and asked the girl who works there, how terrible it would be if I entered the Concertgebouw with my gym leggings and Uniqlo worn cardigan. She laughed: “It’s fine! Don’t worry – I’ve seen worse”. Yeah, this is how nice they are. Sometimes you meet people who could look at you a little differently, it’s mostly probably because I am young or I am non-Dutch, which is still rare. However, I felt they are friendly people, so I don’t mind much.

I have invited some of my non-musical friends and dates to go to concerts together. They didn’t feel it so much. Just like me before I started to like it. There are different reasons they told me why they didn’t like it – but reasons are just reasons, not solutions. I believe a right timing would do, and it is out of my control. It will come. When I went to concerts in Berlin and Vienna, I did feel a little “scared”. Indeed, sometime I got stared in an unfriendly way by the elderlies. I get it that they would think I don’t belong here, which also makes sense. Classical music started for the aristocracy, and for hundreds of years developed like that. Some European people want to stick to this tradition, making the music exclusive to them – I guess then they’ll have to pay double or triple. But I get it, everyone has their pride.

Anyways, this is pretty much about what I wanted to talk about with you today. I started my journey on listening, and am still on it, perhaps will be for a long time. There are so many things that intrigue, confuse, nourish, annoy, different part of me, and I want to write about them as I evolve through this journey. There are so many music pieces I haven’t listened to yet, I also want to share my feelings as music reviews. Besides music, I also hope to write about yoga, and reading, and my life in Europe, perhaps sometimes getting a little philosophical or random – I don’t know yet, but I am looking forward to it.

Another accomplishment, I paid for this domain for a year today, yay! “Serongtonin” is a name I have been using for a while. It comes from “serotonin”, a compound that produced in your body as a neurotransmitter that mediates some joyous, calm and happy feeling. I like serotonin, so I took the name and inserted my name in it.

Okay, thank you for reading my first murmuring in this new blog. Tot ziens! 🙂