"Man, you're exhausting to be around," America said in that friendly, careless, unkind way of his.
"I'm exhausted," China did not reply.
There's a balance in everything, China thinks, and maybe he's run over the edge, but that's the old him thinking, the old way, the old senility, the old- He's so very old.
Time gets this odd feeling to it, this inevitability, when you've lived as long as he has, seen as much as he has, and everything comes back and everything ends and nothing does, and in the end it all blurs together.
But things are new now, everything's newer and brighter and faster, and faster, and faster, and China's not only in the thick of it, he's leading the race.
It's a strange thing, when you have lived and lived and lived, seen empires rise and fall and fall, seen old age creep in, and new life replace it, it is a strange thing, when you have lived so long, to find that suddenly you are old, to turn around one day and face your own mortality.
China used to like the slow things, contemplation. Everything was circular, it had its time for living and its time for dying, rise, decline, and birth, empires, dynasties, following one after another in an unending order, and at the heart of it all, unnassailable, China.
Rise and fall and rise again, and the Qing dynasty was falling, and the opulence was comfortable, and China was still the center in the end. But this was a new age, the world was running forward, racing in the West, and China looked on and wondered what the hurry was. But England was on his doorstep, and all the world was bending out of shape, and China kept his pride still, he tried to keep his pride. Europe laughed at him.
And England reached for him with greedy hands; he would be no Mongols, no Manchurians, because China would never be the center of his world. Opium whispered in his ear. "Rest, rest," it said, "There is no need to do anything at all."
That is the sickness of the old world, the old thoughts. That is what China turns from, saying "Never again."
The world was running once, while China sat, contented. The world ran, and so China has run after it, faster, faster, faster. And it's not enough to catch up, because now he will never be left behind, he will leave all the rest in his dust. He has to. There is no room for rest, no room for stillness, no looking back.
And China loves this new world with its new toys and new discoveries. He works hard and he plays hard and then he works again harder. He never, ever stops. There are new things to see, new things to make, new things to learn, new things to buy, on and on and on forever. There's no stopping him, and he won't stop he's-
Terrified.
And so, so tired.
But he's on the straight road now. Growth, always growing, never stopping, never content. Because he knows where that road leads, and he refuses to go back.