My time back in the United States came to an end quickly. The amount of time I stayed lasted just a couple months short of a full year,
from October of 2006 until August of 2007. Over the months that I was home, I visited as many of my family and friends as I could and made a
few new friends from my school, WESLI, and also made friends with some people my father knew since I was hanging out with him quite a bit. I
always come back to Madison, yet it seems like a different place each time with different characters and a different mood. It’s hard to measure
how much of the change is because of me and how much is because of the environment itself. Some of my family were a little surprised by
what they saw when they saw me again after so long. One of my cousins looked me in the eyes as though he could see everything that I had
been through in that year that I was gone in that faraway place and how it affected me, like he saw the whole story all at once.
       Sometimes it’s easy for us to get comfortable in our lives and we forget what else is out there, and even what’s inside of ourselves. People
can imagine what they want to about the world, but it’s one thing to imagine, and another thing to experience. There is no way I could have
ever predicted everything I went through in that one year from beginning to end. China was an entirely new world I had never seen before.
There is almost always some popular notion about the origins of people from foreign countries and what life and the people are like in that
country that usually isn’t so accurate. One thing that aids in the illusion is the portrayal of the people by the small groups of foreign actors that
star in American movies. Certainly we all know everyone in the United States doesn’t look and act like a Hollywood movie star. The same is true
of people from other countries. In many American movies, I have seen Chinese movie stars portrayed as suited up members of the Chinese
Mafia, kung fu heroes, and old wise men who live in the mountains. It’s true that there is a Chinese Mafia, and some of them can look quite
professional, but that accounts for a very small fraction of what Chinese people are. There are close to two billion people in the whole country!
Even a thousand or a million actors could not represent the entire place! I haven’t seen any kung fu heroes in China in real life, so I have no
comment on that one. Actually, the number of people who do know kung fu in China I’m estimating is probably one in a thousand, more or less.
I never saw anyone using it out on the streets, except one guy who was beating up his own friend at the bus stop in my old neighborhood Hu Po
one morning as he was laughing about it, alternating between kicks and punches at close range in very well coordinated body torque
movements. I was surprised, because he seemed a little old to be playing around like that. I think he was trying to impress me for some reason. I
didn’t see any real fights, but I heard about some of them. It probably wouldn’t be one kung fu expert defending himself against a bunch of
street thugs, but rather a bunch of street thugs attacking one person who doesn’t know how to defend himself properly, and most likely there won’t
be any fancy kung fu involved, just kicking, especially when he’s on the ground. And I mustn’t forget about the bottles, chairs and knives. There
is no such thing as a fair fight in China. People play to win, and that’s all.
       There definitely are some wise people around in China, but it’s not the same kind of wisdom as the old man on the mountain. Facial hair is
no longer such a desirable thing in the country because they often think men with facial hair are “bad men,” and old men don’t wear those old
cloaks of ancient times. Instead, they wear Mao suits and hats and walk around the cities slightly hunched over with their hands behind their
backs and have quite modest expressions on their faces. There are many old men, even in different cities stretching across the country that look
exactly the same in the way they do that. I’m guessing it was something that developed specifically during the hardcore communist days of
China and Mao Ze Dong’s rule. Nowadays, the place isn’t exactly communist anymore. Now it’s sort of a blend between communism and
capitalism. There are many privately owned businesses and people earn varying wages, but the government still has a control over the people
that is present in communist countries, though the grip has been loosened somewhat.
       The kind of wisdom people have, older and younger, varies between positive and negative uses, just as anything does. From what I have
observed about the negative side, people are very good at putting up a façade to get what they want out of other people like they know exactly
what will work with that person (never ending smiles and extremely polite behavior), and what they want is usually more money or property or for
others to provide services for free or for a fraction of the true cost. But on the brighter side, they can be very good at analyzing people’s true
intentions and can sometimes make some very insightful observations and have many interesting remedies and solutions to problems.
       Towards the end of August, my father drove me down to Chicago so I could get on my plane that would depart from O’Hare International
Airport that evening. This flight was not nonstop to Nanning. First I had to stop in Las Vegas, and then in San Francisco. My next stop after that
was Taipei, Taiwan. On the plane to Taiwan, I sat next to a woman from somewhere in Asia who had her head shaved and was wearing some
orange religious garments similar to what the Dalai Lama usually wears. She was on her way to Kuala Lumpur for some kind of Buddhist
religious ceremony after living in San Francisco for some years. We talked for a while, but then I tried to get some sleep, hoping that the thin
layers of machine was enough to protect me from the ocean below as we cruised across it at a great height across the Pacific.
       I arrived in Taipei early the next morning before the sun had come up. Looking down on the city streets that still had lights on, I wondered
how exactly Taiwan was different from the mainland. Taiwan is a somewhat taboo subject in the country. Chinese people feel very passionate
about it, and they are very protective of the idea that Taiwan is a province of China and not a separate country. However, I know there are many
people who do not feel the same about it. My plane would leave Taiwan in just two hours, so I had no time to leave the airport and explore the
city. The next plane took me to Hong Kong. While I was still flying through Taiwan, I noticed many tall and beautiful mountains just north of
Taipei almost seemingly above the clouds. I always loved the majestic yet peaceful mountains no matter where I was. The plane finally came
down into Hong Kong, and I just waited five hours or so for my next flight. The last time I had been in Hong Kong was when I got a travel visa to
go back to the mainland when I still didn’t know I was working illegally in China. I didn’t have such a strong impression of the city, so I was not
tempted to look outside. The final flight of the day would bring me to the small airport of Nanning.
       Nanning isn’t geographically distant from Hong Kong compared to the whole country, and it took about two hours or so to reach by plane
flying over the sea. As the plane began its descent into Nanning, I was able to make out some green areas and some interesting mountains that
I had never seen anything like before. They were extremely steep but not so tall, and there were many of them. A friend of mine likened them to
a set of animal teeth. What was most surprising was that I was able to see the ground clearly from the sky. Is this China? I remembered there
being a lot of pollution in the air. I shouldn’t be able to see the ground like this, I thought.
       The plane landed in a small airport just within the city limits of Nanning. Nanning translated to English means “City of the south.” There
are four cities that correspond to the four major directions. Nanning in the south, Beijing in the north, and Xi An is the city of the west. Dongjing
is the name of the city of the east, but actually it is Tokyo, and not a Chinese city at all. I was a little nervous after what happened before in
Hefei with the police, and I was expecting someone to stop me as I was passing through customs and summon security, but no such thing
happened. I guess the Chinese government truly had forgiven me for accidentally breaking the law last time. I knew someone was waiting for
me to arrive, but I had no idea who it would be. After I went near the entrance, I saw the ones who had been dispatched by the company to get
me. They were three young women. It was obvious to them who I was, so they approached me and then escorted me to a taxi that was waiting
outside. Looking around for a brief moment, I could tell that this place was much different than it was in Anhui province. The feel of it was not
the same. It almost had the same feeling of the countryside back in the United States, and it didn’t have that ancient mysterious quality that was
being built over by the modern world of increasing interest in economic development and modernization. The four of us got into a taxi and
headed down a long highway into the city that had many flowers and plants in the median and on the sides of the road. The three young
women’s names were Joyce, Maggie, and Chen Hui. They had no problems speaking to me at all, and all of their English skills seemed to be
well developed. They still had no idea what kind of life I had back in the states, as I also knew nothing about their lives, but there was an
atmosphere of no worries between us. We just shared some general information about ourselves as we got closer to the city.
       We entered the higher populated areas of Nanning and headed straight towards the center of the city. I felt like I had never left China, and
at the same time, I felt almost like I had just now returned home. In the city, I noticed there were a lot more personal cars and less taxis than
Hefei, and comparatively, the drivers didn’t seem as crazy. The air was very clean too. The city was not blanketed by a thick layer of color-
draining and health-threatening smog. Maggie, Joyce, and Chen Hui were taking me to a small hotel on a street called Gucheng Lu (Goo
Chung Loo), or Gucheng Street. I got situated there, and then they assumed I was hungry, so they took me up the street to a small restaurant that
had the English name “Best Food”. Sometimes Chinese English is very interesting when they translate it directly into English from Mandarin.
The workers behind the counter were all wearing their uniforms of light-blue short-sleeve collared shirts and blue work hats, and the restaurant
itself was dimly lit with a very laidback atmosphere just as the sun had begun to set. My three new coworkers ordered the food for me and I sat
down at a table and began to eat. The food came on a tray with several metal bowls that were surrounded by hard thick plastic on the outside
for insulation and there were lids on top of each bowl. My meal was small pieces of meat and vegetables with rice on the side and a large bowl
of soup that was taller than it was wide with many things I did not know about floating inside. Joyce and Chen Hui said goodbye to me and
walked out of the door, but Maggie hesitated. “Do you want me to stay with you until you are finished?” she asked. “No, you don’t have to. I think  
I’ll be OK.” I replied. “OK. If you need anything, you can just call my mobile phone. We will come back to the hotel and meet you tomorrow.”
She said goodbye, and then disappeared out the door as well. It’s not that I didn’t think Maggie wasn’t pleasant to be around. Though there was
a certain sharpness within her eyes, she seemed very straightforward and a caring person in a very genuine and human way. I’m just to the point
where I will not ask for help unless it’s necessary. I was in the middle of a restaurant in a city in a foreign country I didn’t know so much about,
yet nothing felt wrong. Seeing all the people through the windows walking outside and all the other customers eating inside of the restaurant, I
knew there was no way for me to communicate with any of them, but I didn’t really feel like a stranger. And so it begins … again.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling

On my way to Nanning