“When I told people I was going to Kurdistan, I got blank looks, a curious expression, ‘Where exactly is that?’ the expression seemed to say.”

— Bourdain’s opener to No Reservations, Kurdistan.

Sitting on my mother’s couch last October, I saw what is now my current job listed on a teaching forum. I had the same reaction:

“Wait… what is Kurdistan?”

Fast forward to today. Eight days before an independence referendum that locals hope will yield the birth of a baby nation — a unified Kurdistan, completely separate from Iraq.

I’m attempting to think next to a bowl of partially eaten figs and the sound of exuberant chaos outside of my bedroom window in Duhok. Phony police sirens and car horns are blaring on celebratory loop. I glance down at my phone and frown in adoration, imagining how cute and useless my air horn app would be if it participated in the celebrations outside.

The streets reveal what has become a regular spectacle these days: fireworks, a traffic jam caused by teenage boys dancing in the middle of the road, people hanging out of cars, and nationalist colors on the cars themselves (just saw a sedan literally covered from rim-to-rim in a Kurdish flag paint job).

The smell of the independence is in the air… that and kebab meat.

It’s hard to believe that, nearly a year ago, I didn’t know this place existed.

Back to that point in time, on my mom’s couch. Having felt rather disturbed by my ignorance of this alleged place, I created a rudimentary crash course on Kurdistan for geo-political idiots (me), researching for hours before I applied. This was made possible thanks to lightning speed, uncensored internet access — a luxury I had missed while living in China prior to this point on the couch.

The YouTube spree, wikitravel articles, Vice documentaries, news pieces, Quora forums, a phone call with a friend of a friend who lived there and messages to almost every single semi-active couchsurfer who lives in Kurdistan (one of whom I share an apartment with now), helped me glean enough information about this region to feel like maybe it was an okay place to be.

Had I known about Bourdain’s No Reservations episode, I could have probably saved some hours. While watching, I experienced so many “YES,” moments, like during his conversation with American soldiers about how mellow it is to live here day-to-day. And definite “NAILED IT” moments, like when he iterates what’s actually the most threatening thing about living in Kurdistan: tedium and autocratic bureaucracy near the Turkish border.

Hilariously ironic was the near seven-minute intro spent on the military combat training that Bourdain and his crew underwent to visit the place I call home. The place where money changers set their cash on the street because no one steals it. Bourdain comments in the end that he felt a bit silly to have had all that training, four Peshmerga body guards, and bullet proof chest armor after seeing how safe Kurdistan was.

Bourdain captured the warmth, hope and hospitable charm of this place, yes. Absolutely yes. And rather amazingly, he managed to honestly depict Kurdish cuisine in a positive light without grandiosely fluffing it up to be something it isn’t. Quite a feat for a food-based series in an area where cuisine doesn’t exactly shine like a chef’s knife.

There is one part for me that was overlooked, however, as it always is: what it’s like to be a woman in this society.

Bourdain alluded to it just once while at a teahouse, joking, “No coffee, no booze and no women allowed.”

While he makes it sound a bit like an endearing boys club, this club gets really old when you lack the preferred parts for participation and are faced with that every single day. Riding in a taxi, furniture shopping, eating at a restaurant, walking to the market, buying vegetables, stopping for tea — all of these mundane activities start to feel a little strange, and often uncomfortable, when there are essentially zero women around you. At all times.

For all of the raw, honest moments and pleasant realities revealed, Bourdain effectively overlooked 50% of the population in making this episode. He and his crew of, well, men, represent the other half. The half that isn’t obligated to ask permission before leaving the house and can walk alone after sundown without being judged, followed or stared at with every step.

For me, his failure to identify this even slightly is a bit of a tragic loss, as it’s something I feel gravely— even with my own privilege as a Western woman. I invite male friends to my house all the time, I can swim in a resort pool with a bathing suit on, and I don’t feel ashamed when I walk somewhere alone. But with these liberties, I still feel the oppressive weight of uncomfortable stares as I pass the baker, the tire salesman, the taxi drivers and the kebab shop. Apart from frequent cases of harassment, I’ve been totally safe here. Men stare partly out of curiosity, and largely out of sexual frustration. Thankfully, that’s typically where it ends — for me. The weight of this issue for local women is obviously much more significant, however.

It doesn’t appear that Bourdain’s crew visited the more conservative side of the KRI where I live. The fact that they were advised to wear body armor when heading from Erbil to the Turkish border could have had something to do with it. After all, a stop in my city would have obviously been too much of a liability (again, this is simply hilarious to me at this point).

But I wonder if he had paid a visit to Duhok, or Ronya, or if maybe the fixers in this piece could have found a way for him to speak more freely to women, if his story would have changed at all. Sadly, I don’t think so. Because I don’t think women would have complained, and certainly not to a man — one rather befuddling trend in the gender chasm. Furthermore, all attention goes to the “unified” Kurdistan, even when half of the population is completely misrepresented.

Remember that time on my mom’s couch I keep mentioning? Well, everything I read or watched was created by a man, and nearly everyone I spoke to was also a man. Foolishly, I ignored their inability to analyze, by no fault of their own, what the female experience is like here. On the flipside, that’s also why I’m thankful to have it for myself.

Kurdistan has elected female officials. Some women wear tight jeans, drive cars, and even fight in the military. They have a voice. But somehow, I never hear it… The elephant in the room here stands among the individuals themselves. It often feels like no one, not even other women, want to speak up or discuss this reality in a critical manner. It’s just, “the way it is.”

Well then, fuck the way it is.

And thank you Anthony Bourdain for doing almost everything else right. One day your daughter will visit Kurdistan and have a very different experience than you.

Of that we can be sure.

In the meantime, I will continue to admire the girl from my friend’s blog who dared to ride a bike to school, my 19-year-old student who sneaks out of her house to go hiking, and the women who founded Duhok’s film festival. So often, people are disempowered to the point of resignation. But then there are those who aren’t.

A flame needs just one spark and a breath of fresh air.

—

There were times I thought that maybe I should quit traveling (okay well no, but it sucked) like when I was robbed in Cambodia, or when I came down with a sinus infection and hellish fever while laying on a hot bamboo floor in a noisy village, hacking up whatever had been ailing me for four weeks.

Living on a budget and out of a backpack for months at a time takes a toll on one’s health. Especially when you’re one who has trouble exchanging sleep for excitement. I’ve shared my impressive archive of ailments below. Unfortunately, Medium hasn’t yet written code for Venn diagrams, so I can’t convey when certain ailments took place at the same time (hint: it was enough for me to want a Venn diagram).

It all started with:

• A swollen knee salsa dancing in Mexico
• UTI
• A weird bug bite that turned armpit sore which hung around for 4 weeks
• The creepiest, flakiest cold sore manifestation I’ve ever experienced
• Foot fungus
• Tuberculosis (just kidding, but I was coughing for six weeks after breathing Chinese “air”)
• A sinus infection
• Conjunctivitis, sort of
• A 48-hour-fever
• Traveler’s diarrhea
• Sprained foot from a motorbike incident
• Hangovers
• Violent food poisoning
• A cold
• Dozens of jellyfish stings
• Bruised bottoms of feet (from climbing)
• A mysterious two-week toothache (from God knows)
• Flesh wounds (at various points)

Seeing as I’m in good health and whatever the opposite of a hypochondriac is called, this is a pretty impressive list of ailments. I’ll go ahead and store this under a previously existing list: Reasons I Don’t Want to Save Traveling for Retirement.

For the moment, however, I am well. And my microbiome is dancing with enough colorfully exotic bacteria to be mistaken for Rio De Janeiro at Carnival. Groove on, microbes. We’ve made it!

Living and laughing to remember the bacteria, hellish roads, Vietnamese pot holes, language barriers, sweltering heat, blistering cold, Tibetan altitude, Chinese toilets, theft, motorbike accidents, road blocks, layovers, fermented fish paste, mosquito bites, reef cuts, sunburns, pollution, sleep deprivation and every other moment of struggle, joy, confusion and desperate need for inner peace and resourcefulness has made me feel like I’ve accomplished perhaps my greatest life achievement yet. And the craziest realization for me is that I’m not even done.

This is technically my first break (a ‘break’ being a time in which one can sleep in the same bed for more than two weeks) from the road since I sold my car more than half a year ago.

While the sixth month mark makes this my third half-year trip abroad, this is the first which has been spent primarily on the road, primarily alone. The thing about traveling alone is, you’re rarely truly alone. Company has a way of finding you — whether in the form of a friendly Filipino jeepney driver or a former Tibetan prisoner, there will always be someone to share a laugh with and catch a cold from. Plus, friends come visit once they realize you’re never coming home…

I can’t say all that I’ve learned. Partly because I just don’t know yet and partly because it would bore readers. But there are some things on the tips of my fingers.

I’ve learned that kindness is the quickest way to get what you need, and impatience is the quickest way to lose it.

..that a smile knows no color, class or language.

..that the best place to be one of the locals is on public transit, and the best place to get ripped off is in a taxi.

..that happy dogs come from developed countries.

..that suffering is relative for all beings in all places. Children, men, women, puppies, pigs, cats, roosters and goldfish all seem to suffer more in poor countries than they do in rich ones.

..that wearing holes into my shoes makes me feel accomplished, and that the pancho covered in Diego Rivera murals I bought in Mexico was a shockingly wise travel purchase.

..that people are willing to share their home with those open enough to enter it.

..that Couchsurfing is quite possibly the greatest and most rewarding advent to modern travel that I can think of.

..that I can’t exempt myself from my own advice to others to face their fears.

..that if you don’t got a full-face helmet in Vietnam, you don’t got shit.

..that extreme income disparity is particularly heartbreaking when you see it affect someone you’ve come to know as a friend and intellectual equal.

..that religion and tradition are beautiful, yet partially to blame for global poverty and a myriad of other social problems.

..that you don’t, for any reason, need a smart phone to travel.

..that not having a smart phone makes you more resourceful, better at navigating and better at asking questions.

..that a pocket spiral bound notebook is timeless and essential.

..that the opportunity to have had the most basic levels of education should really not be taken for granted.

..that making jokes with yourself makes food poisoning less painful.

..that having a guide is sometimes a complete waste of an experience, other times it means not falling off of a cliff.

..that the line between being adventurous and being cocky is sometimes fine.

..that haggling over the difference of a dollar with your impoverished rickshaw driver makes you little different from a CEO who cringes over giving his entry-level employee a 1% raise.

..that the feeling of being price gouged based on a perceived ability to pay more will still drive you to haggle over a dollar, even if it’s with a guy who just wants to buy rice for his kids.

..(per above) that capitalism can be cruel on even the most primitive of levels.

..that finding the balance between being a smart traveler and being an asshole is sometimes difficult.

..that traveling brings you the best of what humanity has to offer.

..that aside from thinking you’re crazy, local people everywhere seem to respect you for traveling alone as a female.

..that most people, after learning you’re traveling alone as a female, go out of their way to answer your questions and help you reach your destination, making solo travel for women ironically a lot easier, and perhaps in some cases, a lot safer.

..and finally, that if most people in most places were indeed rapists, murderers or thieves, societies would crumble and the entire world would be at war with itself. And because that’s not the case (at least for now), fearing horrible outcomes from chance encounters with such people is really irrational, and should never discourage someone from traveling more than it discourages them from getting on the freeway.

Ultimately, I’m left with more questions than answers, of course. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word “ultimately,” because nothing is over. Unanswered questions are what continue to make life more interesting with each whim. I look forward to the road again in coming months, to discovering more questions I never thought to ask.

“It’s worth remembering that the act of discovery does not require that you understand, either in advance or after the fact, what you’ve discovered.”

— Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Space Chronicles

“If I went on a date with a girl and her car was as messy as yours, I’d be OUT of there.”

“Well, lucky for you and I, we aren’t dating.”

“I’m just saying, it’s a reflection of character.”

“That is absurd, it isn’t. A reflection of character is you getting mad at me for not closing your car door with the palm of my hand to avoid finger prints.”

“What if a man just wants to take care of his car?”

“Your car tells me that you’re anal and attached to meaningless, external subtleties; my car says that I’m too busy enjoying life to give a fuck. Either way — we’re never dating.”

Above reads a near verbatim conversation between my father and I. Though the last line may have been slightly less eloquent and with one less F-word.

If a girl marries her father (as they say), she would also most certainly divorce him. At least in my case.

Perhaps Dad was onto something, however. Perhaps your vehicle says a lot more about you than you’d like to admit. Right now, mine says that I go through way too many plastic water bottles, that I had a parrot when I was 7 (as revealed by old photos scattered about the trunk) and moreover, that I really do live out of my car — shoes, bathing suits, a suitcase and half-empty bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey hinting at my lifestyle.

In the end, a vehicle is nothing more than a tool to help you reach where you want to be. Why not be ready for everything when you get there?

That’s my excuse for now, at least.

The trek up Emei Mountain was, in a word, humbling. Humbling because you never realize how out of shape you can truly feel until you climb a 10,103 foot mountain… of STAIRS. Humbling because of breathtaking, foggy cliff drops next to temples. Which, I’ll note, are built into the path of the climb and only accessible by foot. They seem to magically appear out of the foggy abyss, offering refuge from the thick of bamboo and deciduous trees. My knees fall to Buddha each time. Mostly because they can’t take anymore stairs.

Reportedly, this mountain has 150 monasteries. 150- and we must have passed through only 10 during our two day climb. I question any piece of information about China, but it is a UNESCO world heritage site. So perhaps they’re close to being right. It’s funny how this civilization is so goddamn old that seeing “UNESCO world heritage site” feels more like a “Since 1912” sign that you see over an Irish pub.

Mt. Emei is one of the tallest in China, its peak resting literally above the clouds, harboring the most massive and impressive Buddha statue I’ve ever seen.

Crazier than climbing 10,000 some stairs to the top when there is an option to take a bus, is the fact that, thousands of years ago, crazy people actually built these stairs into a mountain. They cleared places among the cliffs and forrest to build monasteries in the middle. of. nowhere.

And people live on this thing — today! Amidst foliage, fog and wild monkeys, they make their money off the occasional hiker or monk/monkey that is desperate enough to spend 15 RMB on a Snickers bar. (*Note: neither the monkeys nor monks pay for the food.) Prices irked me until I saw human beings carrying loads of commodities up the stairs that were as large as what you’d see on your average burro.

Perhaps the most fascinating insights from this trip were less about Mt. Emei itself, and more about doing it alone with a Chinese girl. Hiking a quiet and grueling trail with someone for two days brings you pretty close to a person.

The Chinese girl is Phoebe. And she’s my best friend in China. Probably one of my best in the world. She’s left the mainland only once to visit Egypt, and somehow speaks better English than any other non-native speaker I’ve ever met.

She’s also the hardest working person I’ve ever met.

Pheebs descends from a poor family — even by Chinese standards — but with grit and determination, studied herself into college. Albeit, the horrifically unfair gao kao (standardized test for high school students) cornered her into studying only one major, which wasn’t at all what she wanted: English. She’s told me on more than one occasion, in a tone all too numb,

“In China, we say that 70% of your success depends on how much money your family has. I studied English because I had no other option. I wanted to be a doctor, but my score wasn’t right.”

Can you imagine not even being able to choose your major in college because of one test? A test completely unrelated to medicine, on top of that? The Chinese education system and how the gao kao is eroding this society is a topic I can speak at great length to, but something I’ll save for another Medium post.

All things considered, Phoebe has done quite well for herself — extraordinarily well, actually. She’s probably one of the best English teachers in Chengdu, out performing her peers and making more money than most of them since her three years of graduating college.

Sadly, teaching English as a native Chinese doesn’t quite afford the lifestyle above the very average middle class. Even if you’re the hardest working person you know who spends nine hours teaching somedays. Quite positively, however, it really is Phoebe’s only option in China.

She’s strong and independent, and unlike any other Chinese I’ve met. She admits the same. Most Chinese women assume the role of subordinate, don’t speak up, and do their best to look helpless and “cute.” This attitude simply isn’t in Phoebe’s nature. From my perspective, the reality that she might soon become a sheng nu in China’s eyes (literal translation: left-over woman) is quite high. Sheng nu is a slang term that has been invented for women over the age of 25 who are unmarried. They tend to be too smart, sexy, successful and confident for most Chinese men. What a tragedy — to be too incredible for your society’s demands, resulting in alienation from your peers, while in other countries you’d be cherished for your accomplishments and extraordinary nature.

I talk to Phoebe just like I would any of my other female friends. But where we come from couldn’t be any different. There are some similarities, however: strong yet turbulent relationships with our family members, no presence of siblings, broken family dynamics, a semi-involved father figure and a mother who sacrificed everything to raise a child whom she fears is too independent. These dynamics are true for both of us, relative to our respective cultural backgrounds.

In spite of how alike we are and how our values may align, she is, at the end of the day, Chinese. Traveling revealed a lot not only about her, but about the direction of China, as an economy and society.

Phoebe’s father worked in Chinese a factory until he died. She’s comfortable admitting that she grew up very poor, and makes fun of herself for having terrible Mandarin as a result of attending a lousy primary school.

Despite this, she was a little picky about our accommodations, pleading with me to stay in a private room rather than the dorm with the monks and nuns, and insisting that we had separate beds as to feel more comfortable. She spent four hours trying to fall asleep, passing the time on her new iPhone 6.

That girl… poor? What became all to obvious to me is the place of China’s emerging middle class. You have people who’ve acquired more wealth and development faster than ever before in history. They’re exhibiting the classic qualities of the nouveau riche, preferring the comfort of a private room, perhaps if nothing else, to convince themselves that they have class.

Obviously, Phoebe’s character is more outstanding than any measure of class. And true class is found in your actions, not your dorm preference at a monastery. But not for the nouveau riche, of course.

She laughed at my romanticized reaction to being in a monastery and turned her nose up to the “shabby” cafeteria-style dining (her word choice, not mine). She said something along the lines of, “this is something about you foreigners that we never understand…” as she often did.

None of Phoebe’s friends could believe that she attempted the climb. For 99% of Chinese girls, it’s simply out of the question. They’re far to fragile, and frankly, they’d like to keep it that way. Perhaps another expression of the nouveau riche — only peasants spent six hours a day climbing steps. Duh.

Chinese millennials are chasing development and material goods, and in the West we’re chasing authenticity. What a fascinating reaction to over-development and the realization that handbags don’t make you happy. Experiencing these differences first hand on a very isolated trek with a Chinese girl was certainly a site for social psych nerds. And for every Chinese who did a double take at Phoebe’s English along the way.

I love sleeper trains. In what other setting would a Chinese cop, a mattress salesman, an engineer/backpacker from New Zealand and myself be brought together, playing cards and drinking vile rice wine while stumbling over language barriers and cultural divides?

“By Chinese standards, your boyfriend looks like a beggar,” the cop said when I showed him a picture of Mateo. Compared to my hair, Mateo’s is nearly as long and twice as thick. The reactions are simply unparalleled.

Step back about three hours, and my new kiwi friend and I were just leaving the dining car to squeeze our way through several narrow, slowly-rocking train cars on the way back to our beds. I stopped when I noticed a few 30-something-year-old men huddled around a table between two bunks. They were playing a heated round of Dòu Dìzhǔ — the classic Chinese card game that translates to “fuck the landlord,” earning its name from class struggles between wealthy landlords and Chinese peasants during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

I glanced at the pink, hundred yuan Mao bills strewn around some cards on the bottom sleeper bunk when I realized that the men were, indeed, sitting on my bottom sleeper bunk. They casually asked if it was alright that they were there. I responded politely that it wouldn’t be a problem… so long as they let me play a round of Fuck the Landlord, that is.

They chuckled, but weren’t exactly agreeing with the proposed idea. I reminded them that they were on my bed, thereby making me the landlord. They laughed much harder this time, either because of my pronunciation or because they thought I’d made a clever joke — I will assume the latter to feel good about myself.

My kiwi friend and I took a seat to watch them aggressively throw down cards and money, round-after-round. I’ve always been amazed by the role which card games play in Chinese culture. Although today I learned that the Chinese invented playing cards somewhere around the 14th century, so I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

This fact also makes some sense of how frequently I saw the Chinese gambling during my childhood years in Las Vegas, and why so many casinos have been made to accommodate their cultural preferences. In 1998, the MGM reconstructed their entire grand entrance because the Chinese found it unlucky to enter the mouth of a lion.

Before knowing the card-playing cop and mattress salesman, Mark and I were sure they were old pals. The cop soon revealed to me that their relationship was actually nothing more than yuán fǎ.

Mark and I, the only two foreigners on the entire train, spent some time hunched over my phone as we marveled at the definition of yuán fǎ in Pleco, the only worthwhile Chinese translation app. According to Pleco, yuán fǎdescribes the serendipitous encounters between strangers, translated as “lot or luck by which people are brought together.” We were impressed by the existence of a two-character expression that encompasses such an ideal, and laughed a bit about how romantic it sounded for a Chinese cop and mattress salesman that were merely strangers about six card games ago.

It’s possibly the greatest thing I’ve learned after jiāyóu — a phrase which literally means “add oil.” Metaphorically, it means to keep going when the going gets rough. Or dry, apparently. For the Chinese, adding oil solves life’s toughest problems… like the questionable pork in found in each and every flaming wok.

Back to yuán fǎ, the perfect two-character expression to explain so many of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had while traveling around the world, like the one on this 18-hour sleeper train where I got to share a lot of baijiu (aforementioned vile rice wine) with a kiwi backpacker and a couple of Chinese guys who wouldn’t associate with one another otherwise due to the implications behind their respective careers and social classes.

Yuán fǎ is hitchhiking. It’s exploring Tibet with a Tibetan ex-convict who your gut tells you has a pure soul. It’s the kindness of a busy bank employee who walks you to your hostel. It’s giving a Polaroid portrait to the nomadic yak herder.

More than breathtaking mountains, gargantuan waterfalls and exotic locales, the root of why I go anywhere is — without question — yuán fǎ.

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

How time has taught me to unravel the safety adage imposed upon American children.

My mixed emotions swirl like a tornado — one moment hating Chinese people for their utter unconsciousness and lack of respect for human beings, the next moment hating myself for complaining. After all, I chose to come here. What’s worse: I chose to return. “It’s the challenge,” I’ll tell myself. But at what point does challenge become an act of masochism?

Maybe it’s that abusive boyfriend thing — the feeling of being manipulated by this country. Winning my heart over and over again with cuisine, customs and history, tearing me down with corruption, senselessness and general misery. It’s not just the elevators that always break or being nearly blindsided by motor scooters and buses at every crosswalk. It’s not having to shoulder check people who unconsciously deny my existence by stepping two inches in front of me in line. It’s not the putrid smell of squatty potties nor the babies who poop on the street. It’s not the shitty, unpredictable internet connection or the Great Firewall. It’s not the dark, brutalist architecture, rampant materialism, hack-inducing pollution or lack of infrastructure and public sanitation. It’s all of these things — together.

What blows me away the most is that I made the decision to return here, as many foreigners do. Of all the places I’ve visited and lived, I’ve never seen more expats leave come back to a place. I personally have never been back a second time to most of my favorite countries in the world. But here I am for round two in the most difficult one! The argument that it’s only economic opportunity that draws foreigners to come here and stay here is not quite strong enough.

Maybe it’s that we’re all a bunch of masochists. Or maybe the torture of feeling boxed into our picket fence reality across the pond (or wherever) is harder to bear than all of the aforementioned annoyances. Whatever it is, we choose to be here. And we choose to complain. Is shoulder checking the bitch who steps in front of me going to solve the problem of 1.7 billion? Is shouting “FUCK YOU!” at the careless moto driver who doesn’t speak English going to make him reconsider the next time he almost runs someone over?

No. It’s not.

What do you do when you feel powerless and swallowed by such an orderless, immensely-populated society? You stay inside, watch episodes of It’s Always Sunny, order pizza and fall asleep. Albeit completely out of my character to do something as this, I’ve had to learn to accept defeat in this place from time to time. Tomorrow will be different.

It’s baffling and entirely unpredictable to say where China will end up in the near future. Never, arguably in recorded history, has a society of this size developed or obtained wealth so quickly. How will a population of 1.7 billion (largely) uneducated people catch up to its trillions of newly acquired RMB? There are now more billionaires in China than in the United States of America.

And the elevators don’t work. I hack smog as I edit this piece.

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

I take a drag. I feel the head rush, but it isn’t pleasant. I remember why I don’t breathe here. The inside of a bus has little air to offer apart from its polluted domain: the industrious, overpopulated city of Chengdu. Another drag. I witness a Chinese girl nearly broadsided by my bus and the one next to it. She stumbles to and fro to evade the honking robots around her. She walks on, unfazed by her daily commute. Another drag. The deceptive yet ominous melody blaring from a street sweeper vehicle descends upon my bus, accompanied by an unpleasant symphony of horns, squeaky breaks and the rugged, guttural Sichuan dialect of fellow passengers. More honking, more brake slamming to avoid hitting cars, scooters and pedestrians. Vacantly swaying back and forth, I take a drag. My bus has arrived. I force my feet off and pass the teahouse, a streak of joy shooting up my spine, leaving traces of a smile across my face. The thought of encountering the eight-week-old Chow Chow that lives outside of my apartment complex lifts my spirits against all odds. In this smoggy, soulless mecca, the innocence of a puppy leaves me glowing like the moon I used to be able to see before coming to China. I hike the six flights of stairs to my apartment, accidentally brushing the sides of my jacket on our chalky, lead-painted walls. I take a few drags this time… winded by my exercise and decision to smoke a pack of Chengdu air on my way home from class. My head rush persists as I enter a dusty-floored apartment. I hear drills, I hear jackhammers, I hear car horns, I hear my neighbors. I hear the Ministry of Truth from a street vendor’s megaphone. I am indifferent. Numb like the blind sea of people I brush past daily. Returning to consciousness, I drop my backpack and consider opening the window on one of my first sunny days in Chengdu- but I resist.

I’ve had more than enough fresh air today.

I’m never caught up, really. On sleep, on work, on postcards… I think it’s the tax of living everywhere and having a plan so little of the time. I read a questionably attributable quote once that said something like:

“To do great things you need a plan and not enough time.”

I’m not sure if I have much of either. But in the spirit of trying, I plan to catch up on my writing and put it somewhere. Some things I intend to share are long after the moment has passed, and have simply been collecting cyber dust on my google drive. People seem to get confused when what we share isn’t congruent with what we’re doing right NOW- the poison of instantaneity. But some of the best things I’ve ever written come after I’ve had some time to digest... You should never run a marathon after eating.

The worst creative block I’ve ever had came during my first five months of living in China. The experience was too foreign and too harsh for me to be able to translate what was happening to anyone back on planet earth (no, China is not planet earth). The heart of what I learned came after my return West.

Travel writing is a hard game to play, anyway, because many things aren’t worth sharing in the age of information saturation. Sadly, giving the play-by-play of my earth-shattering trek through a no-name village will likely fall upon deaf ears, even if it meant everything to me. But if I can somehow mine the ore out of these experiences and make it relatable to others, maybe that is worth sharing.

A ramble of iridescent word vomit about sunrise at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, for example, is not worth sharing, and sounds more than globo-hipster babble than anything else. Plus, it omits altogether the part about how many other people with SLR cameras were doing the exact same thing. It’s not the sunrise over Angkor Wat, it’s getting lost on your bike in the dark, missing sunrise altogether and realizing that what you were fighting to see was really quite trite. And that thousands of photos of Angkor Wat at sunrise already exist. This is the plight of the modern wanderer: information in abundance- readily available to cheapen your experience in a fraction of the time it takes you to brush your teeth every morning (depending on your dental hygiene routine).

A bit sad, yes. But it’s also why I have such a peculiar mix of abhorrence and love for a place like China. Jumping the Great Firewall to use normal websites here is a real pain in the ass, especially when you’re trying to research your next destination. There is also a heaping, China-sized pile of bull shit and mis-information on this frustrating-as-hell country. From the government, the media and Lonely Planet alike. The truth is, no one knows what’s true about China. Not seasoned expatriates, not the Chinese, not BBC, not Chinese government officials themselves.

From a traveller’s perspective, the mystery is just the fun of it. Because really, what’s fun about knowing the end of a movie before you’ve seen it? I don’t want the answers to China’s many riddles, I want to find them myself. No matter how disgusting the sound of my pollution-induced hack in Chengdu is, being back here forces me to be more improvisational and presents me with a new challenge everyday. Which is something I value.