Who am I?

By Erik Nilsson (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-12 09:52

After several years of taking culture and language classes in Norway, and reading what he'd written about China before his memory loss, Aamot decided to return. He got a full scholarship to study Chinese at Nanning University.

"I found Nanning to be quite suitable after I got there," he says.

He later returned to Norway, until he discovered a newfound sense of urgency to retrace his footsteps during those three lost weeks and solve the mystery of his amnesia.

"Very early on, people said, 'go back and find out what happened', and I was like, 'yeah, yeah'," Aamot says. "As I developed more emotions and links to them, that desire grew. I was saying I've wanted to find out for five years, but now it meant something different."

So he set off for the last place he knew he'd been, Chongqing, where a friend told him he'd been heading for Sichuan province's Jiuzhaigou. He spent most of his time on the sojourn asking random strangers: "Have you seen me before?"

Some said they had.

He then headed for a remote location near the area where he believed the ethnic minority he'd sought lived.

While he couldn't find the nomads, he did find a couple who said he'd attended their wedding on Dec 1 and showed him pictures of them all toasting.

He then headed to Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, after someone whom he'd met in 2000 said he'd told them he was planning to go there.

In a village in Zhangjiajie, several people told him he'd fallen twice. Both tumbles rendered him unconscious and one left him hospitalized for three days.

However, the hospital had been razed and the medical records were lost when they were transferred to the hospital in Zhangjiajie city, he says.

He was told that after the falls, he'd stayed in the home of a local couple for three nights. And he also slept for another night under tarps at a lumberyard with workers who'd helped him before leaving on a bus.

After tracking down the couple who'd taken him in, he suffered an emotional breakdown.

"I think it was information overload," Aamot says.

"I was wondering what had happened to that euphoric feeling I'd had for six years, nevertheless, the collapse probably helped me broaden my emotional base."

Since returning from his quest, Aamot has divided his time between living in China and Norway. "I feel local in both places," Aamot says. "But China feels in a way more like home, because I've spent more time here since I lost my memory."

He works as a consultant, interpreter and press relations advisor assisting Northern European firms and organizations in China. He also runs Cosmic Wind Cultural Collaborations, arranging multi-art projects in various countries.

"It feels so right now to work with international collaboration, because it seems to be in the same spirit as that of the many people who've helped me," he says.

Aamot says that in some ways, he's actually extremely grateful that he lost his memory.

"It's been incredibly fascinating, and it's an experience few people have," Aamot says.

"I can't imagine how it might have been if it happened in Norway. But because it happened in China, I experienced multitudes of different cultures and societies. And I'm thankful for that."

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