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…
My taxi from the airport overcharged me by maybe sixty yuan and I knew it at the time. The driver had refused to start the meter, said something I did not understand, made a circular hand gesture that I read…
A narrative log of two weeks traveling in China during peak summer: the heat dome in Chongqing, the 6:43am escape train, and the highland air of Kunming.
The bus dropped us at a parking lot that smelled like exhaust and steamed corn. A woman at a folding table was selling gloves for ten yuan. I bought a pair even though it was April — my hands were…
I walked out of the bar in Chengdu at 1:17am. I’d been in the city for exactly two days. The bar was on a side street near Chunxi Road, and my hotel was a 25-minute walk north, past the main…
The queue outside the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in London already stretched to the corner of the building when I arrived at 7:45am. I was holding a coffee I didn’t want, wearing a jacket that was too thin for…
Lost in Shanghai with Google Maps Showing a Blank Screen I landed at Shanghai Hongqiao at 9pm, tired, carrying a backpack, and confident that Google Maps would get me to my hotel the same way it had gotten me through…
The Ticket Counter Where Nobody Spoke English and Neither Did I I stood at the Chengdu East Railway Station ticket counter at 7:15am, trying to buy a ticket to Jiuzhaigou. The woman behind the glass looked at me, I looked…
The Moment My Phone Died and So Did My Entire Trip I landed at Beijing Capital at 6am on a January morning, switched on my phone, and watched the signal bars cycle through every carrier on the planet before settling…
The Night I Could Not Pay for Noodles It was 10pm in Chengdu and I was standing at a street stall with a bowl of dan dan noodles in one hand and my Visa card in the other, watching the…
6:45am and Already Queuing I got to the Jiuzhaigou entrance at 6:45am on an October Thursday. The gate opened at 7. There were already maybe 500 people ahead of me, standing in rows behind metal barriers, watching staff in orange…
The Bus to Huangguoshu The bus left Guiyang at 7:10am, which in Guizhou terms meant 7:25. I’d booked a ticket online the night before — 55 yuan for a two-hour ride to Huangguoshu Waterfall — and the station was the…
