HARD NOT TO

Go to China

I hardly ever write about China even though it is the main thing I think about and think around. Now after 7 years of not living in China I’m going back. Just three days ago I talked to my friend Chad in Shanghai about the possibility of chatting up the owner of a wood-fired tofu factory in Fujian at 2 in the morning and sniffing rare Oolong Tea in the Wuyi Mountains during the last week of May. I’ve done this “talk of China” thing with Chad since we first noticed each other in an Asian geography class in McGilvery Hall and talked about Daoism through three pots of tea in his chaotic house. Hilariously, I moved in that night and spent the rest of the year sleeping on his couch.

So yes, in answer to the question you must be pondering, after 7 years of not living in China I’m going to live there with Chad. And since we both speak Chinese (sort of), and both still solipsisticly study Chinese culture, it will be fun to plan escapades inside the pictured red roofed tea house tucked away in the Wuyi mountains.

That’s right, Jenn and I are both going to China for the next year: we took our visa pictures and eyed some tickets. We’re going to travel everywhere, sleep on the steppe, read dense books, joke around in bazaars in childish Uyghur, find new ways to mangle Chinese, and play cards with new friends. Like everyone else we’re going to try to find our own way, but, dangerously, we’re going to do it in China. And so the excitement is building.