Why Traveling in China is so Great

Right now I am on a train from Dali to Kunming and I can't get back to sleep. We stopped at a station a while ago, but I have not been able to get back to sleep since then. I started thinking about everything we have done for the past couple days because I want to remember it. I want to write it down before Iforget. The biggest thing that has stood out has been all the people we have met along then way.

I think some of my best memories from this trip will simply be the ones where my friends and I talked to people. It all started at Tiger Leaping Gorge. We reached the halfway point of the hike pretty early on day, but decided relax that evening and stay at the halfway house. I am super glad we did because we met with people from all over Europe. We all ate dinner together and chatted in front of the gorge. The scenery was amazing and the mood was great.

Even more fun than chatting with people from France, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Israel was chatting with the owner and employees of the hotel right before bed. As we were heading towards bed we noticed the hot coals the employees were sitting around and decided to hang out and chat with them for a while after they invited us to sit down.

One of the people that was chatting with the employees and us in the evening was also eating breakfast in the same place the next morning, so when we wanted to take a picture with everyone we of course asked him. Later in the day we saw him again and decided to take a cab to the closest city where we would hop in another car back to Lijiang. After some great haggling done by the man's lady friend the six of us then hopped in another car and drove down to Lijiang. On the way back home we decided to eat dinner together in the Old Town in Lijiang. We spent about three or four hours just chatting by the side of a small canal in Old Town.

After checking Old Town in Dali this afternoon we were riding the bus to train station when Aaron struck up a conversation with the young girl next to him. We talked about the classes she is taking. It was great to hear that she would rather go to school than not go to school. That comment made me smile inside. She also ended up telling us the history of some of the pagodas that we saw during the afternoon, so it was a very fruitful conversation. Aaron and I told her that we could be her teacher since she was our history teacher. She wanted us to teach her English, so we agreed to be pen pals, but not in so many words.

Right now I am sleeping across from a twenty five year old woman from Xi'an. She originally studied computer science in school, but now her work is not related to computers. She decided she would rather interact with people than computers, so she changed her industry. She also has a few companions on the trip that we talked to for a while as well. They showed a lot of interest in the little red books of Mao Zei Dong's essays that we picked up today. It was fascinating to hear them talk about their experiences with the books. Some of them were older, so they mentioned how they would spend all their time outside of class studying these books, but the young lady does not know much about the books. It was apparent in her comments and the ones of her older friends. It was a great expression of the changing mindset of Chinese people.

As I was thinking about all these experiences I could not help but be reminded of a TV show my dad used to watch. I cannot recall the name, but it was a show hosted by a English or Australian man who would ride trains around the world and document his journies and turn them into documentaries shown every week or so. I did not really understand what was so compelling about a journey like this, but now I can understand. You might meet a person one day and say 'hello' to them. You might see them that evening or the next day or maybe never again, but it is great for the short amount of time you are together to share your experiences. It doesn't matter where you are from, what you like to do or how old you are, when you meet someone traveling you have a chance to learn something new and make a new friend. Hopefully it will end up being an experience that neither party forgets and if so, it is not a big deal because you enjoyed the time you were together.

I am not really sure where this thought started, where it ended up or where it was supposed to go, but essentially I am thrilled to have this last experience traveling because it gives me so many chances to meet new people and connect with a culture that is not my own and gain experiences that not a lot of other people get the chance to experience.