The rain started before I did. I opened the curtains in my hotel room at 6:30am and West Lake was a grey sheet of water falling on water. The willows along the shore bent under it. A single umbrella moved…
I set my alarm for 4:50am because a Chinese friend told me that Lijiang Old Town was worth seeing before the tourists arrived. “Before 6am,” she said, like it was obvious. I did not believe her. I set the alarm…
I needed to get from my hotel near the Bell Tower to the train station in forty minutes. The subway would take twenty-five if I walked fast and caught the right line. A taxi would take fifteen if traffic cooperated.…
The cough started on the train from Chengdu to Kunming. A tickle at first, then a full rattle in my chest by the time I checked into my hotel. By the second morning in Kunming, I was coughing hard enough…
I had 24 hours in Xi’an because the train from Chengdu got me in at 6:47pm and the one to Beijing left at 7:12pm the next evening. That was the plan, anyway. Twenty-four hours, the Terracotta Warriors, the city wall,…
The Table Had Three Players and a Gap I wasn’t looking for a game. I was cutting through People’s Park in Chengdu — the same park where I’d spent an afternoon doing nothing a few days earlier, as described in…
The Table Was Set Before Dinner Was Finished We were still eating when the uncle started clearing dishes from one end of the table. Not stacking them in the kitchen — pushing them to the side, making room, wiping the…
6am and the River Was Already Loud I could hear the drums from the hotel room. Not a steady rhythm — more like someone testing a heartbeat, inconsistent, stopping, starting again. It was 6:10am and I hadn’t planned to be…
The Forecast Said 60% Chance of Rain I should have checked the 40%. That was the part without rain, and it lasted exactly until I got off the cable car at the top of Tianzi Mountain. Then the clouds came…
