Rongshan Sha

BA Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy

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Waterloo Communion

My suitcase still breathes of Hangzhou tea leaves,
whispers of home steeped in Confucian ghosts,
now resting beneath Brutalist concrete spines
where Pentecostal hymns waltz with Beijing roast.

In Lecture Room 1.11, we unmap borders—
your Lagos cadence lifts my fractured “others.”
We scrawl Fanon in Mandarin margins,
as samosa grease smudges Hegel’s reckonings.

The café queue hums like a UN summit:
Persian verbs dance with Yorkshire slang.
You shape my tongue around “democracy,”
I guide yours to trace 平等 (píngděng)—equality.

At the 24-hour library’s neon shrine,
a Syrian law student breaks her mother’s thyme
cookies. We dip them in bitter British tea,
rewriting Foucault with crumbs on knee.

Southbank’s skateboard thunder beats our debates—
you quote Arundhati Roy to counter my Mencius,
while Polish Janitor Marta laughs, translates:
“All wise men sound same scrubbing midnight floors.”

Our Waterloo is no battlefield nor crown,
but headphones split between C-pop and grime,
pierced ears cradling twin hometowns,
brewing utopias in borrowed pantry time.