China 2026

December 22nd, 2025 - January 9th, 2026

Monday, December 22nd

    International flights don’t really phase me anymore. I’ve gotten really good at existing in that disgusting state of half consciousness, not really hearing the same playlists on repeat, watching the flight map on my monitor rotate as we pass over bland, infinite ocean. As always, I brought too much entertainment– podcasts, albums, downloaded seasons of anime, two physical books and three digital ones. I didn’t touch much of that. I just let my mind go out of tune. At some point, breakfast arrived. My vegetarian meals are always delivered first before the cart comes down with everyone else’s food.
    “That looks like prison food,” Mister Winkles commented. “Are you happy to eat that? No, right?”
    To Mister Winkles, ‘right?’ is not just an enclitic you tack on for emphasis. It’s a request for agreement, for justification that his jab is deserved. But I was irritable and delirious and without coffee for far too long, and I was not willing to follow my usual agreeable cadence when my warm meal was on the line.
    “It’s food. It’s not gross, and it’s warm, so I don’t know what to tell you. It’s enough for me.”
    Mister Winkles blinked.
    “Yeah, but…”
    I ate my soggy vegetables with relish. They were hot, and that was enough.
    Before I proceed, I’d like to give a brief introduction to the trip and the players upon the stage. About a year and a half ago, I was doing research on Tunguistic languages, of which Manchu is the most famous. Only a dozen or so native speakers remain in Manchuria, but the language survives in several place names– most notably, the Chinese city of Harbin.
    For this reason, and this reason alone, I jokingly proposed a Harbin venture that evening to Andrew Huynh and Andrew Deng at our usual bar. Andrew Deng, ever the straight man to my absurdity, degraded the idea, pointing out how obscure the northern city is. Andrew Huynh, on the other hand, already tickled by the idea of a China trip, pulled up a map and began throwing out cities. Andrew Deng began rating feasibility. And we were off. Three week trip? I begged for two. Beijing? Too tired, too polluted– maybe Xi’an instead. Head count? Four seemed safe– we’d invite Jerry along.
    And so a year and a half later, our foursome was bound for Hong Kong. There’s one other point of clarification I’d like to make– two Andrews is a lot of Andrews. So to keep things from getting confusing we refer to Andrew Deng as Mister Winkles. This is not confusing.
    We landed and went through immigration. My nerves were high from the poor sleep, the feeling of dirtiness, and the actual dirtiness. Immigration stresses me out, cause it always feels like an interrogation. I tried to memorize my hotel address, and worried if I’d also have to memorize my passport number. Do they quiz you on that stuff in China? Mister Winkles had mentioned it’s harsher than elsewhere.
    While I was swallowing my nerves, the rest of the team seemed excited. I listened in on their conversation for a second, and realized they were giggling over some highly inappropriate joke.
    “Is this your group?” The lady asked.
    “I’m alone,” I lied, and she sent me through immigration.
    Thankfully, it was easy. They flipped through my passport, glanced at my ugly mug, and sent me on my merry way without a word. Once everyone was processed, and after a brief war with a ticket vending machine, we took the subway to Kowloon.
    At 6am, the streets of Kowloon were surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) empty, with the exception of the geriatric community practicing their morning calisthenics. As we emerged from the subway, a wave of steamy humidity plastered itself to my already oily face. Lovely.
    “The air feels like Vietnam here,” I mourned.
    “Yeah, well. Welcome to Asia,” Mister Winkles replied.
    “Yes, that’s… exactly where Vietnam is.” Is what I didn’t say, cause I didn’t have the energy to argue.
    For some perspective, all of Hong Kong is divided into three parts. Were I Caesar, I’d have opened with that. Instead, you get it here in the narrative. Hong Kong Island is the Hongiest and Kongiest part. It’s very metropolitan and divided by water from Kowloon, the more working class half. For completion’s sake, I’ll mention the final part, the New Territories, which is mostly undeveloped land north of the city proper. Because so much of Hong Kong is mountainous, the few areas suitable for land development see extremely dense and vertical structures. Kowloon, being the poorer side of the city, had much more dead space. But that in itself was interesting— massive high rises the size of an Austin block jutting out where mountains were not. Mister Winkles explained the geography on the train ride, and the inflow of information elevated my morale tremendously.
    We checked into the hotel, and asked if we could get our rooms early to shower and drop off luggage. The desk laughed and said we could absolutely do that if we came back in eight hours. At the very least, the clerk was good for a dim sum recommendation, so we navigated a few streets east for breakfast, or dinner, or whatever meal my body was expecting.
    Vegetarian dim sum is hugely hit or miss, and that’s in the United States, where vegetarianism is relatively common. Asia is a different beast. My heart sunk as I flipped through the menu, eventually finding nourishment on the final page. And therefore breakfast for me consisted of two custard buns and a Malay sponge cake.
    Having too much time to kill, we wandered. A mall on Hanoi Street seemed to be a promising option for boba, but that early in the day, not a single open store was open. I looked for cool shots of buildings, but nothing really tickled my imagination.
    “Hang on, wait! Chungking Mansions!”
    I looked up.

    Jerry checked his watch. “I guess we could go in there and eat expired pineapple.”
    Mister Winkles looked nervous. “We probably shouldn’t go in there.”
    “It’s okay, only a few tourists have died in there. None recently,” I reassured.
    I led the team through the front door. Inside felt like a cramped, smoky strip mall of tiny shops and eateries. There weren’t too many people inside, but the ones I did see looked unkempt and eyed us suspiciously— some Pakistani men sat on plastic stools in front of a filthy board with ‘FOOD’ written on it, a Malay looked high outside of a stall selling unpackaged phones. One or two elderly people walked around with no obvious destination in mind.
    “Shall we go up a floor?” I asked the peanut gallery.
    “Shall we get the fuck put of here?” Andrew did not wait for a reply.
    It’s said that Chungking Mansions is the closest thing left in this world to the old Kowloon Walled City. So naturally our next stop was the park built on its ruins. We took the subway, and passed through the old gate. It was swarming with homeless people.
    “It’s great that they have no homeless people here,” Jerry said.
    Mister Winkles looked confused. “Jerry, what do you think these people are?”
    “Uh. Locals?”
    “…Jerry, please.”
    It turns out there isn’t much to do in the Walled City park. After spending all summer reading about the Walled City, I expected more, but it was just some trees and paths and old people. One wouldn’t even know it was built on the site of the old neighborhood if not for a small model of the city at the entrance to the park. I put my face up close and tried to imagine it was the real thing. I wasn’t very convincing.

    The park has a somewhat high elevation, so it affords a decent view of the Kowloon skyline. Those sparse, ricky-ticky-tacky high rises looked soulless as is, but their pastel color schemes of toothbrush green and light pink made them also look rundown and cheap. The laundry hanging on balconies forty floors up made them even sadder, adding a human element to a building that otherwise appeared abandoned.
    With more time to kill, it was time to go shopping, and Andrew was already starting to perk up. On the 17th floor of a thin building with a slow elevator we found a camera store. Andrew asked for a battery while Mister Winkles translated. Jerry inspected some merchandise on a shelf using his hands. We all turned when we heard the crash of something falling– the only one who looked surprised was Jerry himself.
    “...Jerry, please,” Mister Winkles sighed.
    At the Uniqlo down the street, I found a pair of Roger Federer approved base layer leggings, something I sorely needed for Harbin and possibly Xi’an. After grabbing a few pairs off the rack, I very quickly learned that the Uniqlo was only one story, when I tried the escalator and triggered the theft alarm. Getting arrested on my first day in China was a bad look. Fortunately, I was able to get back inside the store and pay before they chose an appropriate jail cell.
    We also checked for batteries at a Xiaomi store. Mobile batteries in China need to be CCC approved to be taken on planes and trains, so we fiddled around and looked for something with the required label. I played around with a tablet that looked suspiciously like an iPad. Jerry busied himself knocking things over on a display shelf.
    “Je– never mind.” Mister Winkles turned back to his battery inspections.
    Once everyone had been appropriately disappointed by the battery options, it was lunchtime, or so the clock insisted. I subtly convinced them we should consider my favorite restaurant, Coco Ichibanya (“if we don’t go to Coco Ichibanya I’m killing myself”) and I did not kill myself. It was delicious. While we waited for the food, Jerry opened a dating app.
    “Hey this girl’s only requirement is to shower every day!”
    “Jerry, none of us have showered for 48 hours. We don’t even meet that.”
    “Fuck.”
    “Fuck.”
    Finally, it was time to go to the hotel, change, brush teeth, and most importantly, meet that girl’s dating requirement. I was paired up with Mister Winkles. He disappeared into the bathroom. After twenty minutes, he came out with his shirt almost soaking wet.
    I gestured to his wet shirt. “Did you just shower?”
    “No, I took a shit.”
    “On— on your shirt?”
    He looked down in confusion.
    “Oh. Sweat.”
    When I had finished adding the ache of laughter to my list of physical grievances, I showered as thoroughly as I’ve ever showered before. I felt light and fluffy.
    Mister Winkles was a bit too tired to go out again, so Jerry, Andrew and I went down to the water that splits Kowloon from Hong Kong Island and consequently bisects the skyline. It was a genuinely gorgeous view of the skyscrapers and mountains dazzled by the setting sun. The temperature was perfect with the harbor breeze. A few old fashioned junks floated by, adding some historical spice to my photography, and Andrew pointed out various buildings and explained what they were. Despite my exhaustion, I was happy to be in Hong Kong.

Tuesday, December 23rd

     7/11s are plentiful in Hong Kong, and are the only place you can find breakfast before 10am. Hong Kong is a nocturnal city, and as a coffee enjoyer, that kills me. The US is the only place I’ve been to where you can get fresh coffee at sunrise– everywhere else makes you wait. And so as a consequence of my geography, my day started on the sidewalk outside the famous convenience store. I gnawed on a vapid bun while Andrew wolfed cold dim sum. Today we were leveraging our jet lag to catch the 7:30am hydrofoil into Macau.

    “It’s not a hydrofoil, that’s not a thing.” Mister Winkles explained at the boat terminal.
    “I’m literally an ocean engineering PhD, I think I know my boats, if that makes sense.”
    Andrew pulled up the Wikipedia page for the exact boat we’re taking. “Hmm, okay, I see. But the only thing is that IT. SAYS. HYDROFOIL!”
    “No, okay but what that really means— I mean so here’s the thing— okay actually—”
    Andrew struck a grand victory pose.
    We boarded the hydrofoil. It was a bit grimy inside, fitting for the boat to take us to Macau, land of casinos. The ride was a seasick nightmare as we bounced over the waves. Going over land by bus would have been possible, but unfortunately would mean crossing into China before crossing into Macau, which would have been too inefficient with immigration. But nobody threw up, and the hour passed.
    Andrew has been training to become a hobbit, so the first order of business was seeking out second breakfast. We found a small Portuguese style pastry cafe in the business district.

    “Can I get a rose coffee?” I ordered, desperate for caffeine.
    “Okay, do you want it hot?” The lady behind the counter asked.
    It was hot outside already with the tropical humidity, but I couldn’t imagine ordering cold coffee. I’m lifetime hot gang.
    “Yes, hot is perfect.”
    “We can’t do hot. We also don’t have ice. Is room temperature okay?”
    I had room temperature rose coffee and watched a brief shower of rain come and go.
    Macau, like Hong Kong, is a representative of China’s ‘one country two systems’ model, and therefore uses its own currency. Thinking it prudent to acquire a bit of cash, we hit an ATM. Jerry extracted a crisp 1000 MOP bill.
    “This should be enough to gamble with.”
    We headed to the casino district. I cannot stress enough that this area is a monument to the wealth and arrogance of man. Casinos in the US, namely Vegas, are massive structures. Macau takes away American zoning laws and replaces ‘building’ with ‘neighborhood.’ We passed 1:1 replicas of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, as well as complexes of solid gold that stretched into the foggy horizon that would have made Trump shit his pants. Our injection point to the city-state of sin was a vaguely British themed casino called the Londoner.

    The Londoner is approximately the size of London itself. We entered, circumnavigated the lobby, passed through a few stores at the entry to the mall section, and made acquaintance with one of the gambling floors. Upon ingress, Jerry immediately took a photograph. An attendant approached.
    “Nihao,” he said.
    Jerry stared at the man vacantly. The attendant assumed this meant Jerry didn’t speak Chinese. It really just meant he was talking to Jerry.
    “Please delete that photo. There’s no photography in here.”
    Jerry continued to stare vacantly. The attendant squirmed. Eventually, Jerry shrugged.
    “Okay okay, I’ll delete it.”
    The attendant stared at Jerry, who made no move.
    “You need to delete it now. Let me verify it. Please go to your photos app?”
    “No no no it’s okay, I’ll delete it later.”
    This went on. The attendant tried to get Jerry to delete it, Jerry Jerry’d. Andrew, Mister Winkles and I looked on in horror. Eventually, Jerry pantomimed deleting it from the recently deleted folder, and the man, probably thinking about exactly how much he makes to have this argument, prudently left.
    “Jesus fuck, Jerry.”
    We found a slots machine. Jerry inserted his crisp 1000 MOP bill. The machine spat it out. ‘Currency too big,’ the error displayed. He tried again, getting the same error message.
    “Here, try this,” Andrew said, giving Jerry a 10 MOP bill.
    ‘Currency too small,’ said the machine.
    “Are you kidding me,” Jerry moaned.
    Andrew pulled me aside as we continued to explore the casino.
    “Mister Winkles mentioned this, but do you feel… uneasy here? There are about two hundred cameras on the ceiling, and all these attendants keep staring at us. It’s very dystopian.”
    “I imagine this will be what China is like too.”
    We could not find a machine that would take Jerry’s bill, so I requested we go get egg tarts, a classic Macanese food. We found a line for them in the Londoner’s mall.
    “So, do you like egg tarts?” Mister Winkles asked me.
    “Not really. But when it Macau, you know.”
    “You— wait, what. We are waiting for something you don’t even want?”
    “No I want them, I just don’t like them. But I wanted to eat Macau’s most famous food while we’re here.”
    Mister Winkles sighed.
    The egg tarts were honestly quite decent. Warm, sweet, and not too soft. Not amazing, but quite palatable.

    “Is it boba time?”
    I checked my watch. After accounting for the time zone correction I forgot to make yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to note it was indeed boba time.
    The malls in Macau are about the size of Avery Ranch, so after wandering for another twelve hours we found a place. I ordered some blue nonsense. I can’t resist ordering nonsense. I really can’t. While we were waiting, Jerry squatted down on the floor, resting his legs. An attendant walked up.

    “Nihao. Please don’t sit down in the middle of the floor please, there are benches and tables down that way.”
    Jerry stood up slowly. Andrew rubbed his forehead.
    “Jerry if you get us deported, that’s a party foul.”
    We went back to the northern part of the city. “粤语怎么说谢谢吗,” I asked the cab driver.
    He did react.
    Deng turned to me.
    “Nobody here speaks Mandarin. It’s Cantonese or nothing. We’re genuinely out in the sticks.”
    I resolved to figure out enough Cantonese to be annoying.

    The stench of degeneracy instigates an appetite, and Jerry was interested in hitting up a certain Portuguese restaurant. I lived in Portugal for a summer, and spent every night at an outdoor bar sucking down Super Bock. I can’t emphasize how happy I was to reacquaint myself with my old drinking buddy to the tune of some offensively boring veggie fried rice. I tested my Portuguese while ordering. The waitress giggled but did not reply. Frankly, this was preferable to her replying in Portuguese in some way that I didn’t understand. The rest of the team enjoyed the more meat based delicacies that Portugal is known for.
    By now the sun was out, the sky was blue, and somehow the air had found more ways to contain water vapor. We walked to the ruins of St. Paul, a gorgeous two dimensional church facade in the middle of the city. It was on my bucket list, but I didn’t expect it to be on every single person in Asia’s bucket list. I took a few pictures, trying to time them in between the trillions of people swarming the old monument like bees.

    And then we went to the lighthouse. Up on the hill in the northern part of town, not far from the harbor, an old Portuguese lighthouse watches over Macau. The Farol da Guia is one of the great lighthouses of mankind, as it’s the first in Asia, on a continent where classical lighthouses never really found a foothold. It feels distinctly Iberian, with a shocking buttress that flares out to support itself on the three hundred meter hill. A chapel from the 1600s stands adjacent to it, filled with decaying frescos. I ran around the fort, inspecting the tower from all angles while everyone else melted in the shade, waiting for me to finish.

    Unlike all bad things, our time at the lighthouse came to an end, and we retired to the ferry terminal soaked in sweat. This time around, the waves were about twice as turbulent, and Jerry eventually abandoned his mobile game of chess. He set his phone down in agitation, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back.
    “Whoever invented boats needs to kill themselves.” He moaned.
    I looked up from the horizon. “Are you okay, Jerry?”
    “Fuck boats. Fuck this, ughhhhhhhh.”
    Jerry was apparently not okay. He squirmed in the seat, pinching his eyes shut, falling into the seat beside him.
    “If I had a button on my shoulder and if pressed it I would die immediately, I’d press it a hundred times right now.”
    Mister Winkles turned around. “If you don’t stop kicking my seat, you’re gonna actually die.”
    Jerry acted like he didn’t hear him.
    “If there are ocean engineers, why don’t they engineer better boats?”
    Mister Winkles began a tirade on boat design that I suspect Jerry did not listen to. I was struggling myself, counting down the seconds until we reached Hong Kong. Jerry was still grumpy when we arrived.
    “I want to meet the man who invented airplanes so I can buy him a beer, and then meet the man who invented boats so I can piss on him.”
    Despite us covering an immense amount of territory in Macau, we still had one last plan for the day. Over the summer, a Japanese horse racing game released that stole the attention of all of my friends. This addiction caused some notable butterfly effect, and the final domino propelled us to the Happy Valley Racetrack, a horse racing sanctuary in the middle of Hong Kong.

    The track sits in the center of Hong Kong, with a panorama of skyscrapers hugging it from all sides, hazy in the shadows of the night like some kind of cheaply-rendered video game horizon. Massive lights lit the grassy course, and the promenade surrounding the track proper contained stalls hawking food, box seats, betting stalls, and a grandstand. People leaned against the rail as horses charged by, a new race starting every half hour.
    I packed against the rail, and the others joined me. Andrew found a beer. Mister Winkles tried to guess which horse would win the next race. The horses thundered by. His pick was in the top three.
    With much higher spirits, we found dinner at some pizza restaurant. We ordered four large pizzas for four people, as well as garlic bread.
    “This garlic bread was made with garlic watching from the cuck chair,” Jerry observed astutely.

Wednesday, December 24th

    When in a new place, under duress of a bunch of new stimuli, sometimes it’s best to fall back on something comfortable. And for this reason, Christmas Eve breakfast: Hong Kong edition consisted of an egg burger, a hashbrown and some black coffee from McDonald’s. It wasn’t terribly different from home– replace the biscuit with a hamburger bun, water down the coffee, and we’re basically at the Parmer location. Then, with Octopus metro cards in hand, we took a combination of metro lines up into the New Territories.
    It’s not a trip without a cable car, and so we queued up for one that would take us into the mountains to see a daibutsu. The weather wasn’t good, but it wasn’t terrible, which made for the most unexciting viewing conditions, and we inched our way through the line until we were crammed into a glass-bottomed cable car along with a small Chinese family speaking the most clear, accentless Mandarin I’ve ever heard.

    The car set off, carrying us over a lake and past the airport, providing a wonderful, misty morning view of Kowloon apartments rising out of the trees off the port side, and the airport’s pavement plains where planes park on the starboard. The bridge to Macau stretched along the water into the distance. The family chattered and I picked up a few words– airport, building, high, scary, not scary. Andrew held his camera, and took advantage of the linguistic gulf between us and our cabinmates.
    “God, Jerry, I want to see your feet against the glass so badly. Slap your bare dogs down and let me get some freak shots.”
    “Absolutely freaky,” Jerry replied.
    “I want to see you take those socks off.”
    “Absolutely FREAKY!” Jerry replied again.
    “We’re really up high,” the Chinese girl said, switching to perfect British English and staring pointedly at Andrew.
    Andrew and Jerry quieted immediately.
    At the top of the mountain, a small little tourist trap village of souvenir stores and food shops awaited us. Mister Winkles bitterly complained about the commercialization component– I didn’t say anything. Sure, some kitchiness like this is an eyesore, but its also not unexpected. Tourism is an industry. If there are tourists on a mountain looking at a daibutsu, maybe they want ice cream while they’re doing it.
    We climbed the infinite staircase up to the daibutsu.
    I figured I’d poison the atmosphere with monotonous drivel.
    “Wow Jerry, you’re really great at walking up stairs. Did anyone ever tell you that? You’re such a little ascender.”
    Jerry nodded. “They call me Ascending Jerry.”
    “Ascending Jerry!”

    We wandered around the base and took pictures. There was no public access to the statue itself, so we didn’t stay long, and we descended (“Descending Jerry!”). After poking our head into the grounds of a small temple adjacent to the daibutsu, we headed back to the cable car. This time, we had the car to ourselves. After about ten minutes, Andrew removed his shoes and socks and slapped his sweaty feet against the glass floor. He took a few pictures of them at point blank range.
    “They call me Footsy Andrew.”
    China happens to have a gigantic island in its south sea called Hainan. Geographically, it’s even further south than Hanoi. I’ve always considered it one of the more obscure areas of the world, but apparently it’s famous for its chicken rice. I learned this at lunch while I enjoyed some sort of tomato and scrambled egg stew that was quite delicious, alongside some lemon water. But the remainder of the party ate their Hainan chicken rice and drank their lemon water. It was a delightfully filling meal, and it was enough to put Andrew and Jerry out of commission. They returned to the hotel.

    “What is bolo bao?” I asked Mister Winkles.
    “There is nothing called bolo bao, I have no idea what you mean.”
    “It seems to be some kind of pineapple bun that Hong Kong is famous for.”
    “Oh, you mean bolo bao,” he said, pronouncing each tone correctly.
    “Exactly, bolo bao.”
    “No, bolo bao– never mind. Do you want to go find some?”
    I very much did. We rode the subway to northern Kowloon and emerged onto the street. Earlier, I’d found Kowloon to be somewhat barren outside of the obvious touristy areas. Apparently, it was because all the people were here in northern Kowloon.
    The buildings were like everywhere in Hong Kong– amazingly tall and appearing very run down from the outside, with laundry and rusted AC units clinging to balconies and windows. The streets were densely packed with small shops and alleyways, as many of them selling odd trinkets as food. Raw meat was placed directly on the sidewalk with small cardboard signs labeling the price per slab. Fruits I didn’t know existed lay in piles lorded over by old ladies who chattered in Cantonese with passerbys and neighbors alike. There was a lot of energy, and it felt very alive.
    “Do you want to go through that alley?” Mister Winkles asked.
    “Not really,” I said, looking down the filthy alleyway that cut between two buildings.
    “You might never go down a Hong Kong alleyway in your life,” he replied.
    “Fair,” I said, and we went down the alley.
    Finally, we came across a traditional bakery selling bo lo bao. I sent Mister Winkles up to order in Mandarin, while I focused on keeping the sidewalk pinned down.
    Bo lo bao are described as pineapple buns, but they’re called that because the texture of the breading resembles a pineapple– it has nothing to do with the flavor or the contents. It’s functionally a melon pan, but instead of melon flavor it has a slab of literal uncooked butter in the middle.
    “Don’t eat that,” Mister Winkles advised me when I accidentally grabbed the entire slab of butter as we ripped apart the bun on the sidewalk.
    We finished the bun and it made me feel somewhat Hongy and quite Kongy– mission accomplished.
    “There’s another Hong Kong dessert we should get,” Mister Winkles mused as we walked back to the subway. “Have you ever had a bubble waffle?”
    “Yeah, at Lemon Party.”
    He squinted. “Lemon… Oh, Happy Lemon? Yeah, those don’t count. Let’s go get the real kind.”
    At the southernmost part of Kowloon, sandwiched between the water and a bus station, we found a sweaty shop selling bubble waffles. We ordered a banana flavored one. It took a while to make, but it came out hot.
    If you’ve never had a bubble waffle, it’s what it sounds like– a waffle taking the shape of bubble wrap. However, each ‘bubble’ is filled with some kind of flavor, and in this case, it was fresh banana mash. We ate it as we walked north along the water, tearing off bubbles at a time. It put the bolo bao to shame.
    “We might as well get boba if we’re already out here stuffing our faces. No Zach and Winkles Food Adventure should go without boba,” Mister Winkles mused.
    I concurred, and we went back to Hanoi Road. One of my goals for this trip was to try a bunch of different Chinese boba brands, and Mister Winkles had recommended Naixue since those are tougher to find. I ordered an orange jasmine fruit tea. The fresh fruit was stellar, and the tea wasn’t sweet at all despite me not adjusting any of the levels. Mister Winkles ordered tea for Andrew and Jerry as well, and we brought the Zach and Winkles Food Adventure to a close.
    Both Andrew and I are avid cocktail enjoyers, and the combination of British history and proximity to Japan ensured that Hong Kong’s cocktail scene was part of our core itinerary. Andrew had a reservation at Gokan, one of the most famous cocktail bars in Asia, and when the door unlocked at the top of the hour we filed into the dark, classic speakeasy vibe and led to a table in the corner. It was straight out of the anime Bartender.

    A waiter came up and in vaguely American english explained the menu, flipping pages and pointing to items on both menus on each side of the table simultaneously.
    “Gokan is named after the legendary Japanese mixologist, who focused on delivering cocktails that sparked the five senses. In that spirit, we have five different classifications of cocktails– spicy, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. We also have some food items here, so let me get you some water and I’ll be back in a second. Let me know if you have any questions.”
    He disappeared. I flipped through the menu, but everything felt a little too avant garde to get me excited. I ordered the banana chu-hi, and we got a mango shaved ice for the table. The shaved ice came first, towering precariously high out of its small bowl. The cocktails followed.
    “I’m doing the no alcohol Twice challenge,” Jerry announced, referencing some Kpop thing I don’t fully understand, and he sipped his juice and dug at the shaved ice. My banana chu-hi was alright. I sipped it quietly and stared at the people at the bar, wondering if they were tourists. Probably. Suddenly, the tower of shaved ice came crashing down, slapping wet ice against the table. Jerry stood frozen, spoon in hand where the tower once was. He grinned sheepishly.
    “This is a bit awkward, but I scheduled our next reservation only an hour after this one. So we should probably pay the tab now and head out,” Andrew apologized.
    I murdered my chu-hi and we settled up, leaving a sticky mango slush on the table.
    The next bar was one I had personally been interested in– another highly lauded joint, this one Hemingway themed. We arrived at The Old Man Bar and they shuffled us into an uncomfortably small table. A similar ritual occurred where the menu was explained and we were allowed to peruse.
    “Is it just me or do all of these cocktails seem… strange?”
    Everything on the menu seemed to be composed of spirits I’d never heard of in combinations that did not seem the least bit appetizing. Each cocktail was referenced after a Hemingway work– most seemed to be short stories I’d never even heard of, or at least references to them. The only one I recognized was The Sun Also Rises, which happens to be a favorite book for both Andrew and me. I conceded the right to the cocktail to Andrew, and I ordered some other nonsense.
    The drinks came. Mine was a rancid pink with a green sour gummy straw floating in it. It reminded me of a mezcal worm. The bartender explained in some eastern European accent that it represented seaweed and provided an integral flavor balance to the drink. I thanked him and choked it down. Andrew didn’t seem to be having a great time with his. I took a sip– it tasted like bourbon bolstered with grain alcohol. Half of Mister Winkles’ drink was sealed in an ice cube that was supposed to change the flavor and color halfway through the ‘experience.’
    We finished our cocktails as quickly as possible and bounced. I think I’m done with famous cocktail bars. Drinks shouldn’t be made with ego, alcohol is more than enough.

    Andrew was a man on a mission, and I followed him blindly through the streets of downtown Hong Kong. We went up and down streets with sidewalks about a brick wide, dodging traffic and pedestrians alike, and finally arrived at a 7/11.
    “Here we are!” He said proudly.
    “A 7/11?” I asked.
    “Not just any 7/11,” he corrected me.
    “Perry the 7/11?”
    “This is the Midnight Express from Chungking Express. They turned it into a 7/11 a while ago.”

    I stared at the 7/11, and tried to superimpose it against the little food store from my favorite movie. It proved a challenging task.
    We didn’t stop for more than a minute, cause suddenly Andrew was back on his beat, and soon we were at the Central-Mid-Level Escalators, another key scene from Chungking Express, and also the longest outdoor escalator system in the world.
    “Jerry, assume the Faye Wong position!” Andrew ordered.
    Obediently, Jerry crouched down. Andrew took a photo that came out pretty close to Wong Kar-wai’s shot.
    From the top of the escalators, we found the tram to Victoria Peak. Andrew explained the engineering. The tram is a hundred fifty-ish year old funicular railway that the British put together, that involves two trams in perpetual motion against each other– one goes up the peak while the other goes down. Andrew gesticulated excitedly, throwing around terms like ‘the absolute pinnacle of British engineering.”
    The tram itself was cozy. Everyone sat on green wooden benches, and Christmas decorations hung from the ceiling and little Christmas lights lit up the tram’s rafters. People murmured excitedly. We climbed towards the peak at a ridiculous 45 degree angle, letting me really feel the gravity of the experience.
    “Do they call you Ascending Zachary?” Jerry inquired.
    At the top of Victoria Peak we found a lovely view of the skyline and took a few pictures. Andrew diagnosed that the fog was a bit thick, causing the city lights to appear less sharp in photos than the ideal, but I think I captured the scene decently. I thought specifically about Han, and Proust, and the concept of lingering. I let my mind linger on the skyline until I was certain it would stick.

    For dinner, we went to Ichiran, which is a tough sell for vegetarians. Ichiran’s setup is such that you scan a QR code on the table, then tap order, after which the food arrives. I ordered the Lenard special– four hardboiled eggs. The rest ordered ramen. Andrew’s arrived first, and then Jerry’s. Both began ravenously eating while I stripped my eggs. After about ten minutes, a hungry Mister Winkles flagged down a waiter.
    “I’m sorry, I ordered my ramen a while ago, and theirs came, but not mine. Is something wrong?”
    The waiter apologized and disappeared momentarily. He returned with a slip of paper.
    “Can you tell me the number on your digital receipt?”
    Mister Winkles read it out. The waiter stared at the paper in his hand and then pointed at the receipt that came with Jerry’s ramen.
    “Ah, that would be your order, sir. You can, um…” he made eye contact with Jerry, who innocently slurped the ramen despite the conversation.
    “I’ll leave you to sort it out.” the waiter disappeared.
    “Jerry, are you eating my ramen?” Mister Winkles asked, his voice coated in exasperation.
    “No, this is my ramen.” Jerry replied, his mouth full of noodles.
    “Jerry, can I see your receipt? Cause that means we didn’t get your ramen.”
    Jerry stopped slurping.
    “What do you mean, receipt?”
    “Jerry. When you scanned the QR code… did you click order?”
    “No.”
    “Then how do you expect them to know what you want if you don’t click order.”
    “I… hmm. I guess this is your ramen.”

Thursday, December 25th

     ‘Come over when you’re awake,’ my phone informed me when I rose.
    “I’m going over to the other room. You coming?” I asked Mister Winkles. He made a noise through his pillow that sounded like ‘no.’
    The maid in the hallway smiled at me and wished me good morning. I replied by wishing her in Mandarin. She grinned widely and said something back in Mandarin. It sounded along the lines of ‘the morning came too soon.’ I laughed awkwardly and slipped into Andrew’s room. Our morning mission was simple– acquire congee and dough sticks for breakfast. We hoofed it to a small little diner called Catch a Congee that felt more like Hong Kong than anywhere I’d been thus far, with perhaps the exception of the Chungking Mansions. I was confident nothing in it had changed since 1995. The menu was aggressively Chinese, and Andrew and I were at Jerry’s mercy. He flagged down the waitress and ordered everything. Andrew looked absolutely baffled.
    “You know… Jerry can actually be kinda reliable sometimes.”
    The food was excellent. Congee, or zhou in Chinese, is a pretty simple rice porridge that’s not exactly famous for flavor. I’m told it’s quite good with certain meats or seafoods imbued in it, and goes well with these soft, fried breadsticks Andrew and Jerry referred to as ‘dough sticks.’ But the meal was hot and the flavor subtle, and the bright cafe in the early morning light felt very friendly, and despite my scalding tongue I was delighted.
    Mister Winkles was ready to get moving, and seemed antsy that we’d left him for this long, so we paid and left.
    “The morning came too soon!” the waitress called after us as we passed through the broken door.
    “Jerry, the maid in the hall said that to me this morning too. Is it some kind of joke?”
    “It’s not a joke, she’s wishing us Merry Christmas.”
    I had completely forgotten it was Christmas. What an odd feeling.
    We checked out of the hotel. The original plan was to take a bullet train to Chongqing today, but tickets had sold out fast, and now we were relegated to taking a plane. Air travel in China is not quite as convenient as other places, as commercial aircrafts constantly need to adjust routes due to the Chinese military’s sky priority. Our flight, however, was deep in the evening, and we had a day to kill with all of our luggage. We went to K11, one of the more famous malls in Hong Kong.
    Andrew and I are diehard one-baggers. No matter how long the trip, no matter the weather conditions, we travel with a backpack and nothing else. Historically, Andrew has impressed this creed on other people we travel with, and so generally our travel groups are lightweight and versatile. Mister Winkles and Jerry were hugely resistant to this idea, and the best Andrew was able to do was convince them they didn’t need a checked bag as well as a backpack and carry-on. We weaved through the Hong Kong streets in this formation, with Mister Winkles and Jerry tugging their rollerboards, complaining about the inconvenience. Andrew pulled me aside.
    “So, uh… how smug do you feel right now?” He asked me, glancing at my backpack.
    Pretty freaking smug.
    We posted up on floor B2, where the K11 food court lives, and Mister Winkles got his breakfast. Andrew and I got coffee.
    “The morning came too soon,” I wished the barista festively.
    Despite having a lot of time to kill, we didn’t stay at for K11 too long, as Mister Winkles proposed we take the train to Quarry Bay. Quarry Bay is a pretty legendary area on Hong Kong Island known for its ridiculous Hong Kong residence blocks.

    The train ride was maybe half an hour, and it took us to a rather remote part of Hong Kong, but it was absolutely worth the journey. If Chungking Mansions holds the feel of the inside of the old Walled City, then Quarry Bay maintains the spirit of its facades. Massive, faded apartments scraped the sky, as long and wide as city blocks with units crammed together so tightly that living conditions inside could be nothing but inhumane. Winkles assured me that many of the insides were renovated, but from the outside it looked like quintessential urban hell. The aesthetic was unmatched from my privileged photographer vantage, but I would not survive a month living in Quarry Bay. We were not the only tourists wandering around the neighborhood. Several others took photos of some of the larger buildings, while residents for the most part scurried by, headphones in, off to work or class or the many markets packed between (and often inside) these megastructures. It was my shitty undergrad apartment building, but the size of a neighborhood, gone super-plus-ultra.

    “What do you guys want for lunch?” Andrew asked.
    “Shake Shack,” I said immediately.
    Mister Winkles blinked, stupefied at my suggestion. “There’s no way we came to Hong Kong for you to eat Shake Shack.”
    My veggie shackburger and fries were delicious.
    The ancient laws demanded that we next find boba, so within the nearest mall we visited ComeBuyTea, which perhaps sounds more exotic to Cantonese speakers than those familiar with English. I had a pineapple jasmine tea that tasted like flat pineapple sparkling water with a very slight hint of tea. My friend Nanh likes all sorts of nonsense in her tea, so I ordered some coconut jelly and was pleased to find that Nanh is very much onto something. I drank my tea and watched the ice skating rink on the floor below for a bit, which was an unfortunate mix of first-time ice skaters and very talented figure skaters taking private lessons. Clusterfucks are fun to watch from the periphery.
    We’d killed enough time to justify going to the airport, so I cashed in the remainder of my Octopus card balance on a ticket for the airport train (another ‘absolute pinnacle of British engineering,’ Andrew pointed out.) Security was straightforward, and we went to rot away in the Chase lounge for the next three hours. Jerry scrolled Instagram reels. Andrew got smashed on gin and tonics.

    “Do you want to play a card game?” Mister Winkles asked.
    “Yes. Pokemon.” I said evenly.
    He looked at me like I had just proposed to play Pokemon with a deck of playing cards. “These are… not… what?”
    “I want to play Pokemon,” I repeated.
    Together we came up with a version of Pokemon that involved adding cards together to create a 3 digit number, which we indexed into the Pokedex to decide which Pokemon we were using, and then attacking and defending with it. It wasn’t too complicated, and it wasn’t too fun, but the absurd stupidity of it all was entertaining.
    We boarded the flight.
    “Welcome aboard,” the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life greeted me.
    I didn’t know it was possible for a flight attendant to have a perfect name, but Ariel was perfect in every other way, so I didn’t question it.
    “That is, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman in Hong Kong.” Andrew independently confirmed when he sat down next to me and buckled up.
    “Quick, hit the flight attendant call button,” I murmured.
    “You guys are absolute monkeys,” Mister Winkles groaned.
    Jerry looked to be about dead on his feet, and collapsed into his seat across the aisle. I knew it was bad when he asked me for a mask, which I gladly procured to keep us all from dying too.
    “I’m worried they’re not going to let Jerry into China if he’s sick.” Mister Winkles whispered. “He just looks so haggard. They might lock him in a shipping container for two weeks while he quarantines. That’s what they did to my friend during the pandemic.”
    Andrew nodded solemnly. “They call him Haggard Jerry.”
    The flight felt longer than it should have on account of every East Asian domestic carrier keeping their cabin at 85F. I mostly just dozed against the window and listened to Lizzie McAlpine. I was basically asleep by the time we landed in Chongqing, until my adrenaline spiked at the realization that for the first time, we were entering China proper. This was going to make Hong Kong immigrations look like a joke.
    “Zach. Whatever you do, do not tell them you have a Chinese name. If they ask you, you don’t have one. Okay?” Mister Winkles looked very serious.
    “What if I tell them I don’t have one yet? Do you think they’d give one to me?”
    “If you tell them you have one then I’m leaving you in a CCP prison. You’re never gonna get into China if you tell them you have one. Just trust me on this.”
    “Okay… So you’re saying I need to come up with one now so that we can all get our story straight. How does Huan Yi sound?”
    “I’m gonna kill you.”
    Jerry somehow got sent to a different immigration line, while I was with Andrew and Winkles. We slowly trudged up, getting closer and closer to the immigration officer. A pair of Spaniards loudly discussed a bomb in Spanish. I wondered if Spanish was common enough in China for anyone to realize it. I felt uncomfortable. I wish they’d stop talking about bombs with the Chinese army a few feet away. Andrew was taken up to be processed. He scanned his face and his fingerprints. I watched the guard flipped through his passport. I thought about my Taiwan stamp and it made my hands shake a little. Andrew was sent through. Now it was Mister Winkles’ turn. A similar interaction occurred. The immigration officer didn’t seem very engaged. I flexed each muscle in my legs, one at a time. I wiggled my toes. Mister Winkles was through. He beckoned for me to approach. I did.
    I handed him my passport and he flipped through it rapidly. He scanned it, and looked at me, and frowned, and then looked back at my passport. He spoke some Chinese to the other immigration officer. He had me to do the face scan. He had me give my fingerprints. Then he cleared his throat.
    “Where is your passport?”
    This is not a question you want to hear from a Chinese immigration officer holding your passport. If I had to rank all the questions you’d want to hear from a Chinese immigration officer, I would probably put this one in the bottom five.
    “That is my passport,” I said dumbly. I didn’t know what else to say.
    “This is not your passport. Where is your passport?” He asked again.
    “That is my passport,” I said again, gesturing to my passport.
    He sighed, and said some things to the other officer. At this point, my heart had fallen through my chest, down one of my legs and was rapidly digging a hole to America. If my cold sweat were not nervously hiding inside of my pores, it would have broken out.
    The silence continued, and then he gave a weak smile.
    “Sorry, this is your passport. Go ahead.”
    With hands too shaken to shake, I took my passport back and gave a slight bow.
    “Uhm, thank you. The morning came too soon,” I said, rushing to join my friends.
    “The morning came too soon,” he echoed, beckoning the next person to the desk.
    And just like that, I was through Chongqing immigrations. Just like that, I was in China.

Friday, December 26th

     We decided on a room rotation, and so it was my turn to sleep with Jerry. I woke up before him high above the city in the Raffles City building, a legendary skyscraper in Chongqing’s skyline right on the Yangtze. The hotel was one of the fanciest at which I’ve stayed, and my morning consisted of half getting myself ready, and half keeping Jerry on track. We would have gotten out the door a bit sooner, but he had to take a break mid tooth-brushing session to do his Esperanto Duolingo.
    Our hotel was about 40 floors above a rather impressive mall, and once we were dressed and brushed and educated we dropped down to it. We found a Starbucks to figure out the transit system. China has two government-approved payment systems– WeChat and Alipay. Andrew recommended we set up both. I set up WeChat and figured that was good enough, but Alipay was better integrated with the Chinese transit systems, so the setup process for Wechat was a bit tough. I could see the annoyance on Andrew’s face as he fought the urge to say ‘I told you so.’
    Once we got everything sorted out and our mediocre breakfast consumed, we stepped outside of the building to get our bearings. It felt deeply authoritarian, almost how I imagine North Korea. The sky was dark and overcast, not like it gets before a rainstorm but how it does on a day where you hate being awake, and a few people milled about silently looking out at the skyline. What was most striking were the dozen or so policemen standing here and there, keeping an eye on everyone. The silence was stifling.
    We found an entrance to the subway. Andrew is an avid collector of transit cards, and he’s put me on the habit too. My collection isn’t quite as extensive, but I have some neat ones, and we hoped to add a Chongqing one to the mix.
    “You want to take this one, Jerry?” Mister Winkles asked, probably sick of being the constant translator.
    Jerry approached the kiosk. “Four, please,” he said in Mandarin.
    “Four what? Tickets?” she asked.
    He scratched his head. “Yes.”
    “Okay, tickets to where?”
    Jerry turned around, confused, looking at Andrew for an answer. Andrew didn’t speak a word of Chinese, so didn’t realize what the issue was. Mister Winkles sighed and squeezed his way around Jerry.
    “He means subway cards, not tickets. Can we get four subway cards?”
    The interaction crawled. The attendant, annoyed, slowly loaded up four subway cards, backending them with a few yuan from Andrew’s alipay. The process was long enough that the line behind us began to give up and try their luck elsewhere. We got out subway cards. Our China collection had grown from the famous Octopus card of Hong Kong, the OG of transit cards, the M-Pass of Macau, and now the Chongqing card. We got on the train. For a metro, it felt extremely sterile, and the motion was smooth.
    Jerry’s family is from Chongqing, so he was able to teach me a few terms in Sichuanese.
    “Why can’t you just learn putonghua? Why do you have to learn all these stupid dialects?” Winkles moaned.
    “Mei de shi, mei de shi,” I hummed.
    Chongqing has recently become a pretty famous city in the west thanks to social media, and it’s lauded as the futuristic city with all this crazy technology and architecture. Some of this praise is predicated on the fact that Chongqing is built on hilly terrain, but prefers steps to inclines. Consequently, there is a pretty famous area where the street level drops some 20 floors at a random intersection. I peered over the edge. It honestly didn’t feel too crazy. In fact, it sounds cooler to write it out than to actually experience it. I wondered if the crowd of tourists doing the same also felt that way. Everyone was trying to take pictures that captured the 20 story differential in street levels. But the bucket list object was checked off, so we went to the next famous Chongqing requirement.

    One of Chongqing’s trains, this one elevated, happens to pass through a building. There’s a station on the tenth floor or so of the building, and this has gained a ton of notoriety online with videos of the train pulling into what appears to be an apartment building high above the river. We got on the particular train that takes part in the ritual.
    “Look out this window,” tour guide Andrew said.
    About two hundred people stood on the riverbank far below, cameras and phones all pointed at the train. And suddenly we disappeared into the building. The station was exactly like any other station. A few people got off, a few people got on. And then the train kept going.
    “So… that’s it, huh.”
    “...yep,” Andrew replied.
    “Cool.”
    “I guess. But don’t worry, cause our next stop is going to be, I think, much more exciting.” Andrew grinned, rubbing his hands together.
    We continued to take trains, transferring here and there, and eventually in a particularly cold subway station, Andrew turned around.
    “Everyone check if they have cell service,” he resounded.
    I did. Four bars of 5G.
    “Wow, impressive. Because right now, we are in, the deepest subway station in the world!”
    I looked at Jerry and Mister Winkles. They looked at each other. I looked back at Andrew. He was grinning. Mister Winkles broke the silence.
    “...oh… cool… which exit are we taking?”
    Andrew gestured in the way we were headed.
    “This one. Zach, would you do the honors of setting a timer?”
    I set a timer and we stepped on the escalator. It took seven minutes and fifteen seconds to reach the top. We were in some suburban area on the city outskirts.
    “Imagine if we just turned around and went back down,” Mister Winkles whispered to me.
    “Which way now, captain?” I asked Andrew.
    “Oh, we just turn around and go back down,” Andrew replied. “Look around, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
    We turned around and went back down.
    Jerry has a particular type of fashion that he likes. In high school, I would have called it ‘hypebeast.’ In college, I often heard the term ‘streetwear.’ The fashion bloggers I read now refer to it as ‘Asian softboy fashion.’ Jerry looks really good in it, and I often feel a shred of envy, since super baggy clothes only serves to emphasize my small frame. Adidas has recently been creating products specifically and exclusively for its China market, and one of these items is a series of jackets that fit the aforementioned aesthetic, but gently inspired by Tang dynasty clothing. It comes in about half a dozen colors, and is apparently extremely popular on western TikTok right now. Jerry pretty desperately wanted to acquire one of these for himself, and so we went to yet another mall to find the Adidas store.
    After trying on a few different sizes, it seemed like the clerk was about to make a sale, when Jerry decided he was only interested in the dark blue version, the one color they didn’t have in his size. We tried a second Adidas in the mall next door, but they lacked the dark blue as well. Jerry seemed annoyed. A woman approached and tried to sell Andrew something. I explained in Mandarin that he didn’t speak Mandarin. She seemed perplexed, albeit very friendly.

    Thoroughly malled out, we hopped into a Didi (China’s answer to Uber) and returned to Raffles City. Jerry crashed pretty hard, and I admit I was also feeling quite dead, but I rallied to join Mister Winkles and Andrew downstairs in the mall. The two of them were ordering boba, and Andrew ordered a comically large tankard of fruit soaked in tea.
    “Jesus, who the fuck ordered that,” he cackled, watching them prepare it on the counter shortly before they handed it to him.
    I requested Pizza Hut for dinner, so while Mister Winkles figured out how to order that, Andrew and I burned through some money on gachapon. We were each about twenty bucks deep when Mister Winkles came over.
    “I can’t turn around for one minute without you degenerates gambling all your money away,” he groaned. “Come on. We gotta go pick up the food.”
    “Okay. Wait. One more, I can get it in one more pull. If I don’t get it then we’ll leave.”
    “Fine. Hurry up.”
    “Ok one second. Also, duplicates don’t count!”

Saturday, December 27th

     “Once he starts sitting in his underwear scrolling on Instagram reels, you just gotta stop waiting for him and leave,” Andrew explained, after hearing me lament how hard it is to get Jerry ready in the morning. “He’ll come once he feels the pressure.”
    With eleven hours of sleep in the tank, I woke up with guns blazing. We were in the Starbucks from yesterday, finishing up our coffee.
    “Alrighty then, shall we?” Andrew made to leave.
    “Wait, I’m actually not ready. I’ll be back in… hmm, thirty minutes.” Jerry stood up and disappeared. Andrew sighed.
    Mister Winkles was starting to suffer. He had managed to acquire food poisoning, and the switch from no motion to twenty thousand steps a day (a baseline for an Andrew-designed trip) had taken its toll on his feet. His were covered in blisters, which he’d picked at to the point where a large crevasse had formed in his heel. Furthermore, he had a tendon strain above his right big toe.
    As we took a morning stroll along the Yangtze, he dramatically hobbled behind us. I tried to be accommodating and lagged behind with him.

    “You know dude, I don’t think we’re doing anything crazy today. If you wanna hang out at the hotel and rest up that’s fine. We have a long trip ahead.”
    He stared at me. “No. The problem is I haven’t been sleeping very well, because I had to sleep with you in Hong Kong. Your snoring was so annoying. I couldn’t sleep at all. I did the trick where I clap really loud or crush a water bottle to get you to shut up, but even then I was up half the night. I’d be perfectly fine if not for that.”
    I thought back to all the times I’d randomly woken up in the middle of the night in Hong Kong and struggled to fall back asleep, at the time attributing it to jet leg.
    “Oh,” I said, and increased pace to catch up to Jerry and Andrew.
    We climbed around Chongqing. The buildings downtown were fairly exciting, and it felt super urban and lively, like a more laid back, less commercial Times Square. Andrew excitedly got a meat bun from a street vendor, which he ate with relish.

    Shibati is a neighborhood in Chongqing that, despite being surrounded by high tech skyscrapers, has a very traditional Ming/Qing architecture. Wanting a drink, Andrew proposed a cat cafe. Jerry talked to the owner, who let us inside and handed us some cat food and kitty treats. Within a few minutes, the cats were all over us, more interested in food than affection. I had four of five cats climbing on me at once. Others lounged by the window in the corner. After we ran out of food, we stood up to leave, and the guy asked if we wanted to pay with WeChat. It occurred to me that this wasn’t a cat cafe– we just spent $30 to feed a guy’s cats. If anything, it was a cafe for cats. We got tea at Linlee instead, which is a top 2 boba place in China because every drink comes with a rubber duck.

    Lunch back at Raffles City consisted of mala tofu noodles and some corn gruel, while Jerry and Andrew tried practically everything on the menu. Cheap food in China was starting to become a recurring problem– in the US, $25 of food is enough to fill someone up. Here, $25 can feed a small village. The post lunch nap hit hard.
    Andrew has a rule for trips that everyone gets a ‘Make A Wish’-- each person is allowed to lobby that the group participates in some activity, no matter how stupid or irrelevant. Jerry decided his Make A Wish was to eat dinner at Pipa Yuan Shiweixian, the largest hot pot restaurant in the world, accommodating almost 6000 guests. We took a Didi.
    “Thank you auntie,” I said as she dropped us off.
    Mister Winkles waited until the door was shut and then turned on me.
    “Auntie? You did not just call her auntie. You don’t fucking say that. You don’t fucking say that to a stranger. Do you know how disrespectful that is?”
    I was stunned silent. Jerry and Andrew looked around awkwardly. The tirade continued.
    “Auntie is what you say to your friends parents. You don’t know this woman. Do you know what she’s thinking right now? No. You fucking don’t. Because you’re not Chinese. You’re white. You don’t know anything. Don’t fucking say that. Don’t fucking say that ever.”
    Quietly, I resolved to not speak Mandarin with strangers for the rest of the trip. Generally, mistakes like that are no big deal when a non-native speaker makes them. My resolution was more to keep Mister Winkles off my back. To be safe, I also texted Read asking him what his thoughts were. He replied back quickly. ‘That word is fine to use with strangers, it can be respectful.’
    Hot pot at the biggest hot pot restaurant in the world was incredibly mediocre, and doubly so for vegetarians. Apparently, an important part of the hot pot ritual is a sauce bowl that you dip your cooked foods in before eating them, and this place did not offer that. The vegetarian broth they had was water with a few vegetables floating in it, and I ate my boiled veggies without complaint. Hot pot is generally not my favorite meal anyway– I can’t say I particularly like having to cook my own dinner, especially if I’m paying for it.
    After dinner, Andrew found a park on the river with a great view of the Chongqing skyline, one of the most iconic skylines in the world with its sci-fi skyscrapers. Mister Winkles went back to the room early, so Jerry, Andrew and I walked along the Yangtze trying to figure out how to capture it appropriately. A decade ago I would have kicked myself for being so photography focused, as I believed strongly in the importance of living in the moment. But these days I get a kick out of the artistic component– noticing natural beauty and trying to capture it in a single frame. We also got some neat shots of the Raffles City building, lit up in a slowly changing gradient of oranges, reds, purples, and blues.

    Eventually we went back. As we crossed the bridge, I saw a couple, probably a bit younger than me, also taking pictures of the skyline. The boy was posed against the bridge railing. His face was stone, arm on the rail, facing some arbitrary point on the Yangtze. The girl stood holding him in her phone’s crosshairs for a moment, then lowered her arms, approached him, and placed her hand on his jaw. Gently and without a word, she shifted his head slightly, perhaps to capture more of his profile or balance the lighting on the dim bridge. As she did this, I smiled involuntarily. The gesture was the most pure expression of love I’d seen. Not just the physical intimacy of touch without warning, and the trust manifesting in the lack of resistance to her manipulation, although that certainly played a part. But there is something to be said about trying to capture the beauty of a loved one, and shaping space by hand to showcase the beauty that the beholder already sees every day.

Sunday, December 28th

     Travel day. I woke up to a message from Andrew.
    ‘Lobby 9:30. We are not the marines. Men will get left behind.’
    I got ready. Then I watched Jerry get ready. I started getting nervous watching him eat a protein bar at 9:20 in his underwear with clothes everywhere, but somehow he was ready by 9:28 and we headed down.
    We took a Didi to the Chongqing East Train Station. It was an absolutely massive structure with nobody in it. Just dozens of workers wandering around. About thirty platforms flanked the main lobby, but only two or three were in use. We went through security and chose 7/11 for breakfast– it was the only store in the station.

    The 7/11 had a few customers browsing onigiri and pastries, and about a dozen employees trying to stay out of their way.
    “You’ll never see this in a capitalist country,” Jerry astutely pointed out.

    The train ride was not particularly notable. I’ve ridden bullet trains before in Japan, but this time they gave me a snack box. I enjoy a good snack box. Snack boxes are, quite frankly, the innovation Japan needs more than anything else.
    We arrived in Chengdu. Unlike Chongqing, Chengdu feels more relaxed and is much less vertical. It feels far closer to a European city in terms of layout and public spaces. The weather felt largely the same as Chongqing, but the air was a lot more hazy. I had initially assumed it fog, but the AQI on the weather app begged to differ. I masked up.

    We checked into the hotel, which was more like an apartment with two stories, then went around looking for food. We found a Thai place. I was bitterly disappointed at the lack of pad kee mao, and felt deeply hurt and offended on behalf of the Thai people. I ordered a fantastically disappointing veggie fried rice, while the rest ordered a smorgasbord of strange seafood dishes I had never seen before.
    After lunch we did some shopping– namely, visiting several Adidas stores to find Jerry his jacket. In the second store, he settled on a tan version.
    “I still want to find the dark blue one,” he said, in case anyone thought we were done with Adidas stores.
    We wandered over to the Anshun bridge, a Chengdu landmark that had received high praise from Marco Polo. On the far shore, we lined up against the river railing and took some photos.

    “Do you know what this is called?” Mister Winkles pointed to the life ring tied to the rail, flexing his ocean engineering knowledge.
    “...A life ring?” I asked hesitantly.
    He seemed disappointed that I got it right.
    A bird flew by.
    “Do you know what that is called?” I asked, pointing to the bird.
    “A heron?” he replied.
    “No, that’s a bird.”
    Mister Winkles cocked his head. “How about we test out that life ring?”
    We left the bridge.
    “Hey Jerry, do you want to try redeeming yourself for Chongqing? We need to get Chengdu metro cards since WeChat doesn’t work here with the transit system.”
    Another win for Alipay.
    This time, Jerry was able to successfully procure us four metro cards. He distributed them proudly. They had a cute panda on them.

Monday, December 29th

     Andrew and I rose quietly, as to not disturb Jerry and Mister Winkles, and we set out for coffee. I wanted Luckin, a famous Chinese brand. It was pretty bad. At the same time, it was the best coffee I’d had to that point in China. Andrew supplemented his drink with some Lawson meat buns, which he slid into his inner jacket pockets to keep himself warm.
    The air was thick with smog. We descended to the subway to go up a stop and see a different part of the city. Armed with the metro cards Jerry had secured for us last night, we flashed them against the scanner. ‘Zero balance,’ it read.
    “God fucking dammit Jerry,” Andrew moaned.
    We bought one way tickets at a kiosk.
    Above ground again, we came across a massive statue of Mao. Like most public places in China, there were police officers standing around it on both sides of the street– perhaps one police officer for every civilian. I wanted to take a picture of the statue, but nobody else was, so I tried asking an officer. We played a language game, exacerbated by the fact that I didn’t know what the word for ‘statue’ was. It went something along the lines of:
    “Excuse me, may I take a picture?”
    “Of the statue?”
    “No, a picture.”
    “You want a picture of the statue?”
    “No, we haven’t taken any pictures yet.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
    “Can I?”
    “Can you take a picture of the statue?”
    Once I heard the magic word, ‘can’, I snapped a few shots. They came out pretty poorly, making the entire interaction feel even more silly.

    There’s a half famous park nearby that Andrew and I visited next, which is in most regards entirely normal. Trees, walking paths, old people doing morning exercises, everything you see in every Asian park. But what has given it acclaim is the presence of what I can only describe as IRL Tinder. Huge bulletin boards on one side of the park display pink and blue laminated sheets of paper, each one detailing a standardized dating profile. Women were generally in their 20s and 30s, men in their 30s and 40s, each one essentially requesting the same type of relationship– a man at least ten years older, with a car, a house, a well paying job. Women no older than a certain year, decent at housemaking, never before married. It felt like a deeply antiquated system, having these classified ads hanging in a public space, and I wondered how many of those browsing were tourists or locals looking for a spouse.
    The only other component of the park notable enough to mention was the tea area– adjacent to a small lake, about a hundred covered picnic tables were placed, flanked along by a row of shops vending various snacks and of course, tea. It was the most bustling section of the park, and I reckon maybe a fifth of the tables were filled.

    “I kinda want to get some tea, since we’re in a park in Chengdu,” Andrew mused.
    “Sure,” I said, and we walked over.
    It was confusing and overwhelming.
    “This is confusing and overwhelming,” I said.
    “I don’t really want tea anyway,” Andrew agreed.
    Instead of tea we chose Kuanzhai Alley, a tourist street lined with shops built recently to resemble a Ming dynasty neighborhood. The concept itself made me laugh, especially given our morning encounter with old Mao. The Cultural Revolution was a violent attempt at modernizing China, dumping as much of its history as possible. And now here we have a recently constructed street intentionally built in the old style, intentionally unmodern, and not a ten minute walk from a massive statue of Mao. I wondered if anyone in Chengdu saw the irony. Andrew bought some tea cigarettes.

    We also came across a perfume shop, To Summer. Andrew explained the significance– the perfume market (and consequently, the market for cologne as well) is largely western-dominated, with scents made specifically for westerners based on western sentiments and flavors. China is largely not a fragrance-wearing nation, and To Summer was founded to rectify that. We huffed the various offerings of the shop, and I found most of them pleasant and natural smelling, unlike the overwhelming chemical taste I get from the perfume stores back home in Austin. Andrew bought an osmanthus scent and one called Triple Tea, while I picked up one that smelled very classy to me called Jazz Bar.
    At this point, phones buzzed to the tune of a very passive aggressive message from Mister Winkles, upset that we had left the hotel without rousing him and Jerry. Apparently, Jerry had insisted several times that we were still upstairs sleeping, and neither had noticed that Andrew had turned on location sharing and sent our location periodically. They took a Didi to Kuanzhai Alley, and we began triangulating lunch.
    I found a place on Happy Cow that was renowned for its vegetarian mala noodles, but the hygiene seemed questionable, so we sprung for some buns instead. Mine had cheese and corn in it, and was as cold as the Chengdu air– that is to say, not fresh. But in the immortal words of Millard Filmore, the nourishment was palatable.
    For others, however, a bun was not enough, and so we found a shop selling dan dan noodles. Andrew wasn’t feeling great so he stuck to his meat buns, but I enjoyed my noods. Vegetarian dan dan noodles are extremely tough to find in the US, so I’m pretty sure the last time I’d had them was before my vegetarian arc began in college. And also like in college, we got milk tea afterward from Molly Tea, whose apple milk tea launched the chain up to my favorite of the trip thus far.
    With Andrew’s energy waning and that of Jerry and Mister Winkles waxing, we lost our Vietnamese comrade to the prospect of resting up while the remaining quarters of our battalion went to the card shop next to Molly Tea.
    I’ve been to card shops in the United States, of course, and they always have a ton of bulk, but it’s always uninteresting mainstream stuff. I’ve also been to card shops in Japan, but they tend to me packed with singles that cost a month of rent in West Campus. The card shop in Chengdu was on a different level. For a card shop, it was massive, about the size of a Walgreens. A quarter of the shop was dedicated to tables, and a few people were quietly playing some card game on one. Singles in cases from every TCG imaginable decorated the walls, and browsing them I was surprised to learn just how many of my favorite anime had TCG adaptions. Shelves were covered in booster packs and starter kits of all kinds. We browsed aggressively, and left with several Uma Musume boosters. I took a picture of the booster packs and sent them in Tarun’s Uma Musume discord channel. Within thirty seconds, I had a DM from Andrew on WeChat: ‘Buy me one too.’
    Our route back was designed by Jerry, and it included a stop at literally every Adidas store in Chengdu. Surely one of them would have the blue jacket in XL size. After the ninth store, Mister Winkles grew annoyed, and asked the attendant at hand (there was always an attendant at hand) to check the stock across Chengdu. The attendant confirmed what we had essentially verified– there was not a blue XL sized Adidas jacket in the city. Jerry looked disappointed.
    Upon returning to the apartment we opened the packs and resolved to return later, but this time to buy boxes instead of just packs. That would have to wait, however, as we had one final stop on the docket for the day– New Century Global Center, a giant building in which one can find, you guessed it, a mall. For dinner, we had dim sum (the irony did not go unnoticed) and visited a famous indoor beach waterpark, which had been converted into a massive ballpit.
    “So… we came here to see a ballpit?” I asked.
    “This is Jerry’s Make A Wish,” Andrew explained.
    “I thought he already had a Make A Wish.”
    Andrew thought about this. “Jerry has a lot of cancer.”
    Jerry nodded. “Yert.”
    Just outside of the Center, some sort of art installation was drawing attention, and we joined the flow of people weaving through a garden to these massive bamboo-like poles spraying water below. LED lights shimmered, causing them to change colors. Between the mist of the water and the thick Chengdu pollution, it was quite a sight to behold.

Tuesday, December 30th

     Today we planned to visit the legendary Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base, and since pandas were most active in the morning, we needed to leave no later than 7:30am. At 6:45am, alarms were going off all over the apartment. At 7:30am sharp, Jerry was just finishing his shower.
    Despite the switch to the JST timezone (Jerry Standard Time), we arrived at the base before it was too touristy. Old men were posted along the sidewalk hawking their panda themed wares. I found it thoughtful that the Chinese government was able to simulate the misty conditions of the pandas homeland by pumping thousands of tons of industrial waste into the sky, resulting in that classic opaqueness you’d expect from Sichuan air. Somehow, the AQI was worse than Hanoi, a city that had Jungwoo coughing up black phlegm by the end of the second day.
    Inside the park, we were able to find the first panda exhibit by the massive throng of cameraholders against a fence. Standing a-tiptoe to see over them, I was able to make out the pseudo-bear sitting among the leaves, chewing on some bamboo. It ate greedily, and nonstop, sitting upright with its legs splayed out. I was surprised at how small it was– I suppose I had expected a certain size after many watches of Kung Fu Panda, but it was no larger than my sister’s dog. It was also less white than I expected– the creature was lightly browned by the damp morning mud.

    The view of the panda was not great, and I waited my turn for a spot to open up against the railing, and I slipped in closer to see. I held the spot for all of thirty seconds, before a woman crammed herself in next to me, elbowing me out of the way. Waiting your turn is important in Japan– seizing your turn is the play when in China. I was annoyed by her actions, not necessarily by the loss of the view of the panda. When you watch a panda eat for a few minutes, you get a feel for what they do. You don’t need to watch too much longer.
    We found a few other pandas throughout the park, and the situation was largely the same– massive crowds surrounding the only good vantage, and the fellow would peacefully sit munching on bamboo leaves. No action beyond this. There was a line for Hua Hua, supposedly China’s most famous panda. Hua Hua, per my understanding, is the Lebron James of pandas, sporting sad, tear-like black marks on her eyes, an impressive tummy (she enjoys eating bamboo, truly a shocker) and thus has become a Chinese cultural icon. The line to see her was approximately 2 hours, according to the sign. A woman walked past, muttering in Chinese.
    “She’s complaining that she waited two hours for Hua Hua and only got to see her for a minute,” Mister Winkles translated.
    “What if we… went somewhere else?” I said, gesturing away from the line.
    “You don’t want to see Hua Hua?” Mister Winkles asked in fake shock.
    We left. As was the case with everywhere in China, the park was mostly filled with young couples, many of which were wearing little panda ears.
    “We should get some panda ears,” Andrew said.
    “Oh, to match with your girlfriend?” Mister Winkles muttered dryly.
    “If I buy panda ears for all of you guys, will you wear them?”
    I thought about it. “I mean, sure, but what the heck do we do with them after we leave the park?”
    “It doesn’t matter, cause I’ll be paying for them.”
    Suddenly we were at the nearest gift shop (of which there were many), trying on panda ears. Andrew concluded they did not fit. We marched onto the next panda. And then the next. And then the next.
    At the Nth panda, Andrew stood misty eyed, jaw slightly open, white knuckling his camera.
    “Huh? Did the panda finally do something interesting?” I asked.
    “That… might have been the most beautiful girl in Sichuan province,” Andrew responded.
    Mister Winkles and Jerry looked at each other.
    “So, I guess we’re done looking at pandas. Which way did she go?”
    We found the love of Andrew’s life, and Mister Winkles concluded she was, much like the pandas, a bit of a letdown, and so we knocked out the panda museum and exited the park. Andrew, having skipped breakfast, was a bit grumpy, and began hinting at a prelunch snack. The solution was in the parking lot– Dico’s, a chicken restaurant that sported a logo that looked suspiciously like Oyasumi Punpun.
    “Fuck yeah, we’re finally eating Dico’s,” Jerry and Andrew giggled to each other.
    “We come all the way to China and you just want to eat fast food chicken?” Mister Winkles asked to deaf ears.
    Dico’s was alright– vegetarian options were obviously scarce, but I made do with curry and fries. The others ordered a feast rivaled only by that which is consumed at the end of a One Piece arc. Drumsticks, breasts, bone-in, boneless, several chicken sandwiches, something called ‘Texas Pistol Nuggets’ of which nearly one hundred were ordered– any chicken or chicken-adjacent product you could imagine graced our tiny fast food table. I have rarely seen Andrew happier. So much for a ‘pre-lunch snack.’
    “They call me Chicken Andrew,” Andrew announced.
    We went back to Chengdu, ordered some mediocre boba from Chagee on Jingli street, and then debated the merits of completing our other scheduled task for the day– visiting the Qin Dynasty irrigation canals an hour outside the city. It seemed far from the solution to our fatigue, so we petitioned the crowd.
    Mister Winkles’ mother wrote back first. ‘You should definitely do it, it’s very beautiful out there and the view is nice.’
    Not liking her response, we decided to pretend we didn’t ask her, and instead query Mister Winkles’ cousin Maggie. Her response was slightly slower.
    “I will not be there,” she said.
    “Maggie, my goat!” I exclaimed.
    “If Maggie won’t be there, I guess there’s no point.” Andrew agreed.
    “But isn’t Maggie in Japan right now?” Jerry asked deaf ears.
    When four degenerates cancel plans to do touristy stuff, naturally the next best thing is to Didi to the Mao statue, find yesterday’s card shop, and buy all of the Uma Musume cards remaining in Sichuan prefecture. The attendant was confused by our ask, but after spending some time looking around in the back, finally emerged with three booster boxes, translating to probably around 80 or 90 booster packs. We bought them all and returned to the hotel at once, where we had a delightful pull session. Jerry was even able to pull his Mambo.
    To stay on brand, we concluded our day with a visit to the Adidas store. Just in case they’d restocked. They had not.

Wednesday, December 31st

     Our Sichuan arc was over, and it found its conclusion at the Chengdu Rail Station, comparatively packed versus Chongqing. The prior night, Andrew had warned us of this, and taken us to the nearby grocery store to buy breakfast to avoid having to battle lines and crowds at the station. Andrew finished his in minutes, and disappeared again to procure more food. He came back with second breakfast, as well as lunch for the train.
    The train ride was about four hours, and provided me with a very lovely snack box. China does well with its snack boxes. I enjoyed each component of mine, delighted that this time around was fully vegetarian, and felt immensely satisfied upon finishing it. At 11am, Andrew texted our group: ‘Out of food. Hungry.’
    We arrived in Xi’an, disembarked, and found that suddenly it was incredibly cold– about ten below freezing, snowing gently. At the hotel, we did what we do best– order Meituan, the Chinese Doordash equivalent. Everyone had biang biang noodles, a Shannxi province staple, except me. I had some random vegetarian dishes that Maggie was able to order for me remotely from Japan. Maggie is a large component of why I did not starve to death on this trip.

    Xi’an was projected to be our most busy city, and so after eating we geared up and set out into the frost, intending for the 700 year old city wall.
    The station was packed. I could only compare the trains to the situation in Mumbai– people throwing themselves against the mass of bodies to force themselves in before the doors closed. I am not an assertive person, but Mister Winkles behind me, both hands on my back shoving as hard as he could (‘Now is not the time to be nice!’) was the only reason we were able to get on the train. I felt more like a sardine than I ever have before.
    At our terminal station that led to the wall, we found that half the stations exits were already closed. As we continued to look for a way to get up to the city wall, we found that indeed, the station itself was closing early for New Year’s, and the city walls had also been closed. With about a thousand other people, we shuffled out the one egress available.
    Progress on a sidewalk with a thousand other confused people is understandably slow, as we were pinned between the street and a low wall. A woman with her daughter tugged on Mister Winkles’ sleeve.
    “Excuse me, do you know how to get to Whatever Station?”
    “Uhm… follow the people, probably,” Mister Winkles replied tentatively.
    “No, not the next station, but Whatever Station.”
    Mister Winkles pondered this for a minute.
    “Goodbye,” he said, literally climbing over the wall to escape the social situation.
    I shrugged and followed.
    With the soft snow coming down, and the night lights of the city on, it felt like a good evening to walk home, despite the subzero temperatures. Surprisingly, it was Jerry who had suggested this. Andrew agreed, but seemed like he’d have much preferred finding an open subway station and taking that home. Mister Winkles seemed royally pissed off. The physical exertion throughout the trip was getting to him, and he could not walk much more quickly than the throng of people that we had just escaped.

    But walk we did, and it was a lovely walk, albeit around three miles. Andrew was rather despondent, and walked quickly and far ahead– Mister Winkles, equally despondent, walked slowly and far behind. Jerry and I walked together, unsure of whether to walk alongside either party at risk of abandoning the other, and stayed perfectly in the middle. Our squadron of four was interspersed by about the length of a city block.

    Fortunately our hotel had provided us with free drink vouchers, and I was looking forward to having a cocktail at the hotel bar upon returning. There were two problems with this idea– first, there was no hotel bar. It was instead a woman in the lobby with a drink cooler, which seemed redundant as the lobby was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks to the historical replica Chinese architecture. Secondly, the cooler did not contain cocktail ingredients, but your choice of water, soda, or a beer. I chose the beer. I drank it quickly underneath my winter gear, hoping to go back to the room where it was warm.
    “We should order dinner,” Andrew suggested.
    Mister Winkles looked up with bleary eyes. “What do you want?”
    Jerry leaned back. “I’m thinking some Dico’s would be perfect for New Year’s Eve.”
    Mister Winkles looked annoyed. “Okay Jerry. Seriously though, what do you guys want?”
    Andrew leaned forward now. “Actually, Dico’s sounds great. Let me pull up their menu, there’s still some stuff I want to try.”
    We ordered Dico’s again, and slept at 10pm. Happy New Year.

Thursday, January 1st

     It was morning, and I was wide awake, and I was listening to the same song I listen to to start every year, or at least the same song I’ve started every year with since 8th grade– This Year by the Mountain Goats. It was easy to do so, since I was already wearing my airpods. Mister Winkles is a noisy bathroom user, and to be polite last night I had put my airpods in and turned on noise cancelling as to afford him a bit of privacy while he managed last night’s dinner. When I finished my anthem, I took out my airpods and noticed that he was also awake.
    “You ruined my fucking night with your stupid fucking snoring. You fell asleep with your fucking airpods in so I couldn’t wake you up to make you stop. Why the fuck would you even do that?”
    There was something about getting berated 4 minutes into the New Year, before I had my coffee, before I had adjusted to anything– it took the strength of Hercules to keep from responding.
    “Oh. I see,” I said evenly, taking the tone I use to respond to the barking of my dog back home.
    Mister Winkles did not appreciate this tone, and exhaled air hard. I think he expected me to beg for his forgiveness. Instead I got dressed, met Jerry and Andrew in the lobby, and hopped into a Didi bound for the Terracotta Army on the outskirts of Xi’an.
    The entrance to the facility was incredibly crowded, starting at the street and exponentially increasing in density as we approached the gates.
    “Hello,” an old woman smiled at me on the side of the street as I exited the car.
    “Hey, good morning,” I said, zipping up my jacket.
    “Would you like a guided tour of the facilities?” she asked, her accent quite good for this area of China.
    “Uhm… No thanks,” I said, stepping away. Winkles scowled at me.
    “Don’t fucking talk to them,” he said.
    A similar interaction occurred with Andrew, but this time someone approaching him in Japanese. Proudly, he explained to us that it must be because of his Montbell gear, a Japanese outdoorswear brand in which he was dressed from head to toe.
    Once inside, we followed the flow of people through a lovely garden area filled with snow. As is Chinese tradition, many people stepped off the path to take pictures with frozen trees or near the powdered bushes and icy ponds, some of them standing right next to bilingual signs reading ‘Do Not Leave Path’ and such variations.
    “Qin Shi Huang thought mercury would let him live forever, so there are literal rivers of mercury around the Terracotta Army. They probably don’t let you get too close cause that amount of mercury will kill you,” Winkles claimed as we approached the door to the first pit.
    The first pit is the largest of the three, and what you see in textbooks when you read about the Terracotta Army in your sixth grade world cultures class. It’s about the size of a football field, covered with a frosted glass ceiling high above, and a railing separates the perimeter path from the rows and columns of soldier statues ten or fifteen feet below. The railing was practically invisible, however, with the absolute density of people all fighting for a glimpse of the soldiers, cameras held high above their heads, elbowing and jostling and shouting. There were no rivers of mercury.

    “I wonder where the mercury is,” Mister Winkles pondered.
    I walked counterclockwise, looking for a density that was somewhat manageable, perhaps a place I could sneak in and see the army that I had read so much about. Finally, in an area where the people were only one or two heads deep, I slipped into a position against the railing right as my predecessor was leaving. It immediately became apparent why the crowd was so thin here– the soldiers immediately below were broken, and beyond that others were obscured by one of the excavation walls.
    I felt a chin against my shoulder, and was surprised to see it was not Jerry, but a random middle aged Chinese man. Since I was flat against the rail, I turned sideways, as to let him slip in as well. The moment I shifted to give him ingress, he shoved himself hard into the railing, filling the space I had afforded him and then more. He put an elbow into my stomach and a hand against the rail, pushing me backward. He shouted something in Mandarin, and a woman, probably a wife, shouted back, and suddenly there she was, forcing herself into the spot where I was just moments before. The backwards momentum was perpetuated by several other people sliding in front of me, and suddenly I was at the back of the pack, standing next to Mister Winkles and Andrew.
    Andrew grinned. “It’s nothing personal!”
    Winkles smirked. “Yeah, it’s nothing personal!”
    I knew it wasn’t personal, but for some reason their comments made me more upset than the original action. I’d learned in my two weeks thus far that China is a deeply individualist society, where everyone prioritizes themselves and expects others to prioritize themselves as well. Nobody takes offense to it, as that’s just the way things are done. I hate that way of thinking. I’m rather collectivist, and always look to prioritize others before myself. Manners to me are hugely important– the decorum of respect, the small rituals to let others know that you are keeping them in mind at all times, are things I hold in the highest of regards. I can turn the other cheek when some local shoves me around. But it’s a lot harder to do that when it feels like my friends are trying to justify that behavior. Perhaps I was making mountains out of molehills, but two weeks into an exhausting trip, my defenses were breaking down, and I was starting to take things personally. Especially when people tell me not to.
    I stuck with Jerry for the remainder of the facility. The other two pits were much less busy, fortunately, but still had some notable features, including a chariot in the third pit. Chariots, as far as I’m aware, were not part of the military of the early Qin state, but were much more used in Wei, so including one in his tomb was probably a clever way of Qin Shi Huang cementing himself not as a Qin king, but a Chinese emperor. Neat.

    Everyone was reasonably hungry after wrestling the crowds and the cold, and we visited some of the restaurants nearby. Most of them had people outside screaming at passerbys in the local dialect in a bid to get them to come into their restaurant. We intentionally found an establishment without such a staff member.
    I was deeply excited because this place had vegetarian biangbiang noodles, a local Shaanxi food I wanted to try. The noodles came, and were warm, and were about as thick as a belt. I mixed the bowl gently and ate. It was tough to eat the gigantic noodles, but I gradually felt my strength returning.
    “I wish it were a bit more spicy, but it’s alright.” I answered, when Andrew asked how the vegetarian version was.
    “Chinese food isn’t spicy. I don’t get why you guys think it’s spicy,” Winkles cut in, seeing an opportunity to assert dominance over the stupid white guy.
    Jerry interrupted with a slurp.
    “Sichuan food is spicy.”
    Mister Winkles squinted. “Well… no it’s not, it’s mala, not spicy. That’s like… numbing.”
    We finished eating. I wasn’t able to empty my gigantic bowl, and neither was Jerry. I looked in his, and noticed he had also left the ones that were coated in tomato paste.
    “Yeah, I also don’t think the tomato paste was a super great addition.”
    Jerry nodded.
    “That’s why I didn’t mix in the tomato paste. See? I didn’t mix it. That’s why you don’t blindly mix everything together like you were doing,” Mister Winkles very helpfully added.
    God, I needed coffee.
    The Terracotta Army is about a kilometer away from the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, which is famously unearthed. We touched on this in my archaeology degree in undergrad as an example of responsible excavation– the Chinese government was unsure about being unable to excavate without significantly damaging the tomb, so had elected to wait until the technology had caught up to unearth it responsibly. So the mausoleum is functionally just a park right now. I delivered this anecdote to the team when Jerry asked if we would be able to see anything.
    “Actually it’s because of all the mercury. I’m pretty sure if they opened up the tomb, the mercury would kill everyone,” Winkles corrected me. I wished I had studied ocean engineering instead of archaeology in school– clearly, I would have learned more about archaeology if I had done that.
    Unanimously deciding to return to Xi’an, I crossed my fingers in hope that I could move some bitterness towards my perception of my fellow travelers into a cup of hot, black ichor, and so I refueled my patience reserves at Cotti Coffee, the other major Chinese coffee chain I’d seen everywhere. It was far too sweet to do much for my mood, and to make matters worse, my eSim died, so I was dead in the water when it came to navigating, using the subway, and paying for things.
    Having failed to climb the walls yesterday, we tried again today, with far greater success. The Xi’an city wall is one of the most famous attractions in the city. It dates back to the 14th century, is incredibly well preserved, and is about nine miles in perimeter. We climbed up and were immediately assaulted by a bunch of crap.

    “This is a bunch of crap,” Andrew noted.
    “Yes,” I agreed, “all crap. Really ruins the vibe of a medieval city wall.”
    The crap in question was a mile or so of brightly colored plastic statues of various animals, commemorating the upcoming Chinese New Year. They looked incredibly cheap and ugly on the old fortification, and they seemed to go on forever. Winkles announced several times that he wanted to go back to the hotel, as his foot was bothering him, and each time Andrew mentioned that he was free to descend and call a Didi. Fortunately, the endless eyesore ended, and beside the sign announcing that the area we had just passed through was the ‘Chinese Spring Festival Area’ was what we had ascended the walls to find– bikes.
    “Do we want to bike?” Andrew asked.
    “No,” Winkles cut in.
    “If we want to bike, I’m down to bike,” I said.
    “I’m feeling very bikey today,” Jerry mused.
    “Do they call you Bikey Jerry?!” I asked, incredulous.
    “They do. They do call me Bikey Jerry,” he replied.
    “Bikey Jerry!”
    We got on the bikes and set out. In Jerry’s softboy fashion, they had made him attach huge rubber bands to his equally huge jeans, claiming he would otherwise get them trapped in the chain and fall off. I wished they provided us helmets– I had very little confidence on a bike, despite riding the Shiminamikaidou in Japan a few years ago.
    The cobblestone of the walls caused the bikes to rattle violently, and after a few minutes my hands itched something fierce from the vibrations. The bikes were also old and cheap, groaning and creaking suspiciously as we road along, so I let this justify my nervousness and did not mess with the gears or try to go too fast. We stopped periodically to walk the bikes up or down ramps, or to pull over and get a view of the city. Andrew had a small camera, which he held in his mouth while we rode. Some girls giggled at him when they saw this, causing him to ride faster. I stayed in the back with Mister Winkles. Neither of us are very confident on a bike.
    On a particularly unremarkable stretch of wall, with Jerry in the lead, followed by Andrew with his camera, and then me, with Mister Winkles a ways behind us, I was struck by a most incredible image. From over Andrew’s head, I saw Jerry rise up on his bike, as if he were merely straightening his back, but then continue to rise beyond expectation. And just as suddenly, he began to sink again, but now followed by his rising rear tire in some unholy undulation that I perceived in slow motion. A sickening crash was followed by the squeal of Andrew’s ancient brakes, and then mine, as everyone within shouting radius turned to gawk at Jerry, now on the ground, now rolling, now on his feet, now awkwardly picking up his bike.
    “Are you okay?!” Andrew asked urgently.
    Jerry, red with adrenaline or embarrassment, stared vacantly at Andrew.
    “Jerry! Are you alright?” Again, no reply.
    “Jerry!”
    “I’m fine! I’m.. fine.” Jerry said, rubbing his legs, feeling for bruises or scrapes.
    “Are you sure?”
    “I’m fine,” he echoed.
    With that confirmed, Andrew blinked, and then roared with laughter. I joined him.
    “I got it all! I got you in 4k, bud! I can’t wait to review this footage!” Andrew shook the camera in Jerry’s direction.
    “What happened? How did you fall?” Jerry looked around but did not answer. I knew he was checking to see how many people had seen his fall, and more importantly, if any of them were girls.
    “Jerry, did something scare you? Was it just an accident? Why did you squeeze just your front wheel brake?”
    Jerry ignored the question, continuing to glance around, continuing his systems check to see where his bumps and aches were. It was clear we weren’t going to get any answers from him.
    “Can you keep riding?”
    “Yes,” Jerry answered immediately, and we set off again.

    The rest of the ride was quite enjoyable. Despite being below freezing, the physical strenuousness allowed me to open up my jacket and remove my hat, letting the chilly air balance my rising core temperature, and I huffed and puffed that sweet Chinese pollution. Especially once I took off my hat and left my brownish yellow hair to the whims of the breeze did I become a point of attraction with the other wanderers upon the wall. Riding past elicited a word that I was hearing more and more, the one for ‘foreigner,’ and on more than one occasion people would literally run up to me as I rode by, brazenly taking photographs of the white guy riding a bicycle on the walls of Xi’an. Later, after we had returned the bikes, Mister Winkles had told me that when Jerry crashed, two girls were watching, discussing in Chinese, “Should we ask the white foreigner for a photo together? No, he seems busy helping with the crash.”
    Having returned once more to the other end of the stupid Spring Festival decorations, we returned the bikes, found the subway, and returned to the hotel. Mister Winkles turned on a hotspot to help me reset my eSim.
    “They call me Wi-fi Winkles,” he said monotonously. Then, realizing what he just said, “God dammit. This joke is so fucking stupid.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh.
    Mister Winkles was in for the night, but I was in a much better mood after the physical exertion, and asked Andrew what he wanted for dinner.
    “Mai Dang Lao,” he answered immediately.
    “Sure, lead the way,” I replied.
    My knowledge of Chinese food outside of the core Sino-American favorites is hugely limited to vegetarian options, so I had no idea what Andrew was talking about. I was happy to tag along if it was something he and Jerry wanted to try, and I hoped they’d at least have white rice or something so I could eat with them. I brought a protein bar anyway.
    We arrived at Mai Dang Lao.
    “Oh,” I said, recognizing the classic golden arches sign.
    Andrew cackled.

Friday, January 2nd

     One of the things I was most looking forward to in Xi’an was staying at a hotel built on the site of the Qin Dynasty’s royal hot spring. The cost per night was somewhat absurd, even for China, and so we had resolved to spend the first two nights in one hotel, check out, and that evening, check in for our final night in Xi’an at the hot spring hotel. In the meantime, we’d go climb a mountain. Mister Winkles and I packed, then went down the hall to Andrew and Jerry’s room, where as usual, Jerry was running late. I picked up a USB-C chord.
    “You can throw that away,” Andrew said. “It’s the one that came with the external batteries we ordered.”
    “Oh shoot, do you mind if I have this then? I didn’t notice it in the box, so I guess I threw it away,” I said, somewhat embarrassed.
    “Idiot,” Winkles muttered, shockingly venomously for this early in the day.
    I looked at him. He glanced away, but added his signature, airy exhale-laugh as if to say ‘See? By snickering at the end, I made it a joke, so now you can’t get mad.’
    We went to the train station, but couldn’t find any luggage lockers. Andrew and I were not too stressed over this, having just our backpacks, but Winkles and Jerry seemed more high strung. Mister Winkles especially seemed stressed, snapping at Andrew when told he would ‘just have to roll it behind him up the mountain.’ At this point, everyone seemed like they’d prefer to be anywhere else right now.
    We waited for the train in the business class lounge, the highest class on Chinese bullet trains. Because we were only going one city over, a quick, thirty minute ride, we’d sprung for the most expensive tickets to experience the experience. When it came time to board, we went to the special line for westerners who need to have their passports manually checked by an attendant. Right as we were about to scan in, Jerry glanced around shiftily.
    “I think I forgot my backpack in the lounge,” he muttered.
    “How do you forget your backpack? You have two R’s in your name because you’re twice the retard,” Mister Winkles said.
    Jerry turned around and walked away.
    “Are you coming in?” The attendant asked. “I need to go help at another platform, so show me your passport now if you want to get on the train.”
    We glanced at each other. Jerry was not back yet. The attendant left. A pair of foreigners came, looking awkwardly at the gate, trying to figure out how to scan their passports. The clock ticked. The foreigners gave up and left. Eventually Jerry appeared again, strolling leisurely.
    “You made us miss our fucking train,” Mister Winkles sneered.
    Jerry stared blankly at the empty booth.
    “But I thought it hasn’t left for another three minutes?”
    “Yes, but foreigners need to board fifteen minutes prior because of the manual check. And the gate lady already left. What are we gonna do with our day now that we’ve missed our train, Jerry?”
    Jerry had no reply. We all just stood uncomfortably at the platform gate, watching the clock run out. Even Andrew seemed quite frustrated.
    Eventually, someone arrived.
    “Do you need help? Passports please.”
    We raced onto the platform, catching the train in the knickerbockers of time.
    Business class on a Chinese train is a rather luxurious experience. A business class car has only five seats, instead of the twenty or thirty in the lower classes, and they are spaced out such that they can recline fully. I had a potted plant on the sill next to me. A cute attendant brought me a bottle of water and a snack box, this time a fancy white one with extra treats. It was a comfortable ride, and I spent it feasting and taking funny pictures of Jerry, who also seemed to be enjoying himself despite the morning scare. The brevity was the only part disappointing.
    The stations thus far have been elaborate structures, either crowded by architecture or people. The station in Huayin was neither of these things– a single platform that becomes a hallway, and a hallway that emerges into a square surrounded by shops. The center of the square had maybe two dozen cab drivers standing approximately in a line, or at least a cluster of points with a confident R-squared value. Every cab driver was shouting. Some shouted to each other, most of them shouted at us. A few approached and asked where we were going. Mister Winkles looked badly shaken.
    “We should not be here. This is some tier five, maybe tier six city. Why the fuck are we here. This is so bad. We should not be here,” he muttered, his eyes wide with panic.
    Andrew shrugged. Jerry shrugged. I shrugged. It didn’t seem so bad to me. We called a taxi using the Didi app, which seemed like a better idea that letting the drivers already present fight for our business.
    The cab that picked us up was an old fellow who loved to use his horn. He honked to let people know he was accelerating, and he honked to let people know he was braking. He honked when he saw another car, he honked when he didn’t, presumably in case of invisible automobiles. The honking was incessant, but never aggressive– the driver kept an even face, perhaps even a slight smile, and looked completely relaxed.
    “You know we’re in the middle of nowhere when the driver honks more than he doesn’t,” Jerry analyzed.
    Mister Winkles continued to sweat. “This is the kind of city that makes Chinese people go to America and never come back. Look how awful it is. We really shouldn’t be here.”
    I looked out the window. It seemed more or less exactly like North Austin. Maybe with fewer cars. I’d feel less comfortable in downtown Round Rock than here.
    The cab dropped us off in the center of town, near a sign for the Huashan Mountain 5A Tourist Attraction, indicating it was one of the highest rated tourist attractions in China. Some lady at the entrance offered to sell me a walking stick.
    “No thanks,” I waved her off.
    Winkles turned to me and spoke quietly. “If you talk to any of these people, I swear to god, I will kill you. You think I’m fucking joking? Don’t say a word to them. In fact, you don’t even speak English. You don’t look at them, you don’t speak to them. Don’t raise attention to yourself.”
    Inside the gates, we found a lady at an information booth. She agreed to hold onto our bags.
    “20 RMB per bag. Six bags? Okay, I’ll do it for 100.”
    “But… that would be 120 RMB.” Mister Winkles protested.
    “It’s fine, I’ll do it for 100.” She offered her personal WeChat to receive the payment.
    We gave her our bags. She grimaced under the weight, and slid them behind the counter, then waved goodbye.
    “Did you see that? She can’t even do math. She thought 20 times 6 is 100. And she used her personal WeChat to take the payment. We really shouldn’t be here,” panted Mister Winkles.
    “Yeah, it’s really scary. We’re probably gonna die,” I agreed.
    We boarded the bus we were supposed to board, and it took us up the mountains. The snow in the mountains was beautiful, and Mister Winkles calmed down as he looked out the window, occasionally tapping me excitedly to point out the view as we climbed higher and higher. The bus was warm with the heater on blast. The ride was just under an hour.
    Our next stop was a cable car, because you can never ride in too many of those. We were with another Chinese family, and the two kids excitedly ran back and forth, climbing over each other to see the insane views of the mountains, practically spilling over onto Andrew and me, who sat next to their parents. Every few minutes, Andrew would point at a view and yell “Oh my god!” or “Ehhhhhhhhhhhh?!”, and find it hilarious when our gondola-mates would turn to look. But the ride, up over several peaks and down through several valleys, was very pretty.
    At the top of Huashan, we exited the station.
    “You have got to be kidding me,” Mister Winkles said.
    “Am I– am I hallucinating?” Jerry asked.
    “I know what we’re doing for lunch,” Andrew cackled.
    Of course there was a Dico’s at the top of China’s most sacred mountain. I had two large fries.
    Huashan has several peaks, each one of them independently Tiktok famous, and at least one of them famous enough that I recognized it from Chinese tourism forums in years past. You’d think a snowy, icy day like this would deter visitors from climbing up the steep stairs to each peak, but in a land with as many people as China, naturally a larger number would be willing to spend their day hiking up frozen steps. And so we joined the slow procession up to the eastern peak and then the southern peak. The views were quite incredible, but more interesting to me was how just many people could fit on these narrow mountain ridges.

    Descent proved more of a challenge for our team. Jerry and Andrew rushed on ahead. Winkles was physically unable to rush. With two trembling hands gripping the chain railing, he took one step at a time, going slowly, causing dozens of mountain visitors to grow tired of waiting and pass on the left. I followed him down.
    “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m going slow, I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice dripping with fear.
    “It’s okay man, we’re in no rush, take your time. You don’t have to apologize.”
    “I’m not scared,” his voice trembled and cracked. “It’s just dangerous. These steps could be icy and we could fall and die. So we have to go slow. I’m not scared. All these idiot kids running by might knock me over and make me fall.”
    “It’s okay. Just go slow.”
    “I’m not scared.” He sounded like he was about to burst into tears.

    This went on until we reached Dico’s again. Jerry wanted to hike the remainder of the mountain. I looked at Mister Winkles, still shivering, not from the cold, and the massive crowds passing us in both directions. I made a rare, assertive direction.
    “I don’t think we should today. Probably better to head back to Xi’an.”
    We booked tickets down the mountain. Mister Winkles had regained his cocky demeanor.
    “It’s not my fault, by the way. Like, Zach is the one that wanted to go back down. Not me, right? Like, I’d be fine staying up here. Right? Right?”
    Nobody answered his rights, and we retraced our steps: first the gondola, then the bus, and then the luggage lady, and finally back to the parking lot where we were dropped off. We ordered a cab through the Didi app, and one pulled up. The driver got out and opened the door, and right as I made move to enter, an old lady carrying a few bags of groceries and presumably her grandson got out. The driver pointed to another cab and they shuffled awkwardly over to it, climbing into the back seat.
    “Did this guy just abandon his current passengers to pick us up?” Andrew asked incredulously.
    “I guess the drive back to Xi’an will net him a lot more than a random grandma taking her grandson to the store.”
    It was a long, cramped, cigarette scented ride. By the time we arrived at the new hotel in Xi’an, night had fallen. The driver dropped us off on the street, and we walked the remaining way to the gates of the old palace, the grounds upon which our hotel operated. Mister Winkles trudged a ways behind us.
    At the gate a man in a black uniform stood, a heat lamp and a table with a gun on it behind him. He called out in Mandarin. Jerry, Andrew and I stopped. The man called to us again, approaching.
    Jerry stared blankly at the man, and then turned to Andrew.
    Andrew looked incredulous. “Don’t look at me man, I don’t speak Chinese.”
    Jerry looked back at the man, as he said a third thing. The tension was palpable. Finally, Mister Winkles appeared, and responded to his questioning. The man smiled and gestured for us to wait by the heat lamp.
    “What did he ask?” Andrew inquired.
    “He asked if we were guests at the hotel. Jerry, you speak Chinese. What happened?”
    Jerry looked at the ground. “I, uh, forgot what the hotel’s name was, so I didn’t know if he was going to ask that.”
    Another man appeared next to the guard. “Come with me please,” he said, taking Jerry’s rollerboard. We walked just beyond the gate, about ten steps total.
    “Now please wait a moment.”
    We stood in the freezing night air for another few minutes until a long golf cart came. We loaded all of our luggage onto the cart, hopped aboard, and we were off. The golf cart drove a hundred feet.
    “We’re here,” the driver announced.
    “What was the point of that?” I whispered to Andrew.
    We checked into the hotel. A woman in a period costume handed us the room keys and we got back on the cart, and it drove us through the maze of a facility to our rooms. The driver led us through the new building, down a mess of hallways, and finally to our doors. It was a reasonable room, but nothing to write home about. A lady knocked on the door a bit later to deliver some hot snow fungus soup, which I enjoyed immensely. We ordered room service. The two ladies that delivered it also wore period pieces, and entered our room to place the food in a table in the back corner. It made me feel quite awkward.
    After eating, everyone met in the other room with our towels and we climbed into the private onsen. It was tiny, and we were practically on top of each other, but worse than that, it wasn’t super warm. The struggle with natural hot springs is that you can’t control the temperature, and it happened that this one was probably around 80F, which is not nearly warm enough on a night in the high teens. In hindsight, I should have remembered to relax and enjoy it.

Saturday, January 3rd

     “Where is Mister Winkles?” Andrew asked.
    “He wanted to spend the extra hour reading manga,” I answered. “Shall we walk to breakfast?”
    “No, we should call the cart to pick us up.”
    “Why can’t we walk?” I asked.
    “A lot of reasons. Mostly cause I want to take the cart.”
    We took the cart to breakfast and ate gluttonously.
    By the cold morning light, the grounds of the palace were far more extravagant than I expected. I felt like I was inside Apothecary Diaries. Classical style buildings decorated the campus amongst hunchbacked bridges and crooked trees. The soft dawn made it all seem even more impressive, especially with the gradually appearing mountainous backdrop. And of course, the most obvious attraction, front and center, were the springs themselves, manifesting in pools all around the palace grounds, gently giving off steam.

    We took some highly performative pictures of ourselves, gazing pathetically at imagined horizons from beneath branches or upon bridges, as if contemplating some great truth of the universe that would stir the hearts of various perusers of dating apps and social media profiles. Strolling the gardens lazily instilled a comfort for which I had been in sore need, and served as leather armor against the slings and arrows we endured at the airport before the hour was out.

    We lined up to board the plane.
    “I sure hope they give us a good snack box on this plane,” I said.
    Mister Winkles turned to Andrew. “This guy is so spoiled. He thinks everywhere is going to give him a snack box. Just cause we keep riding in the upper classes on the bullet trains, he thinks snack boxes are a thing. They’re not a thing. He’s gonna be so disappointed, right? Right?”
    We funneled through the ticket checking and down the ramp. A small man was politely thanking everyone for coming aboard and handing each of them a snack box. He excitedly switched to English as he handed me mine.
    “Thank you foh coming!” he said.
    “Thank you, sir,” I said, accepting my snack box graciously with two hands and a gentle bow. I did not turn to look at Winkles’ face, but I knew exactly what it looked like.
    The flight, as all domestic Asian flights are, was cramped and hot. I tried to stay awake, but I caught myself dozing. I was awoken by the rattle of the cart coming up the aisle.
    “Excuse me sir,” the flight attendant asked. “Here is your in-flight snack box.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “I would love another snack box.”
    Mister Winkles looked exasperated. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
    I was not sure if I was nervous or excited when the plane came down. It was only 4pm, but being so far north, the sun had long since set. I mentioned my nerves to Mister Winkles.
    “Really? You’re scared of a little cold? I’m not afraid of anything unless it’s actually dangerous.”
    I held my tongue for a beat. “You seemed a little nervous on the mountain the other day.”
    He shrugged. “Well yeah, cause that was actually dangerous. We could have died.”
    “Ah.”
    Andrew leaned forward. “God, it would suck if they bus us to the airport. I do not want to have to go outside until we have the winter gear we rented.”
    “Nah, we’re in Harbin. They definitely have the infrastructure to provide gates for every plane. It’s gotta be a requirement here.”
    The seatbelt sign went off. Everyone rose, gathered their luggage, exited the plane, and stood on the tarmac to wait for the bus.
    By the time we arrived at our hotel, I was already wondering when I’d get my next snack box. I was getting hungry. The hotel, like all buildings in Harbin, was about 85 degrees inside. The old Russian-style central heating made sure of that. This is partially the reason we chose to rent clothes– obviously because it’s wildly, ridiculously cold outside and we needed something thick– but also because when switching between inside and outside, you need the versatility to quickly undress, or risk overheating, meaning lots of layers would not be effective. Antarctica-rated winter gear killed two penguins with one stone. We sorted the rented clothes, changed into our warmest outfits, and exited the hotel into the Harbin streets.
    Harbin is fairly close to the Russian border, and the influence is still to be felt. Streets are lined with buildings in the old 1880s Russian empire architecture, and thus Harbin feels part of the same world as Helsinki and other such cities of the north. The St. Sophia Cathedral, built after the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, looks like the little sister of St. Basil’s with it’s radish-like dome. But the city also felt very Chinese, with its economical, plain skyscrapers and unremarkable yet ubiquitous roadside shops.

    And the city also felt festive. The main street of Harbin that we walked cut all the way from one end of the city to the other, and was pedestrian only. It was tree-lined, and fairy lights spanned the eves, giving a wonderful Christmas vibe as people milled about. Despite the absurd cold, it was quite lovely.

    There is one more characteristic of the streets of Harbin that I would not like to mention, but feel obliged to– they are absolutely filthy. Chinese people spit. They spit in urinals, they spit in trash cans, they spit on plants, they spit on sidewalks. And it’s not a saliva heavy spit, either. They reach deep into their throats, producing that characteristic rumble as one compresses the air and evicts the phlegm from deep in their pipes, before launching it up and out into the world. In the southern areas, this isn’t as much a problem, as it evaporates. In Harbin, when it’s minus twenty five, the ejaculate has no where to go but freeze on the ground. One cannot take a step in Harbin without stepping on the frozen phlegm of some Chinese pedestrian that had passed by an hour, a day, a month before. The unfortunate answer to this is simply to keep your eyes forward when walking in Harbin.
    We went to Hai Di Lao for dinner. I’ve never been to Hai Di Lao, and I expected good things, but it was quite frankly a nightmare experience. Disappointed with my water broth at the last hot pot restaurant, I requested a mild mala vegetarian broth this time around, and then proceeded to order far too many vegetables. The waitress ran out of real estate on our table for all the dishes she had to bring, and many had to not only be relegated to a cart which she pushed up to extend our table, but stacked upon other dishes on the cart.
    My broth, despite being purportedly mild, was also one of the spiciest things I’ve ever eaten. Each vegetable I cooked and ate took a week off my life– numbing and burning my tastebuds until I could hardly taste, which gave me the bravery to move on to the next morsel. I was sweating like a pig, and was struggling to even see. Either amused or annoyed, the waitress camped next to me, constantly refilling my drink, as a single bite was enough to cause me to drain my glass. I felt bloated after fifteen minutes of eating.
    Andrew tapped out early, deciding he was done with the spice for the rest of the dinner. I was not far behind. Mister Winkles, noticing my pain, made sure to gloat a bit that mine wasn’t spicy at all, before calling the waitress over and informing her that I was struggling.
    “Forgive me, I’m a bit too American,” I said, though I’m not sure my grammar made any sense. She chuckled kindly, and proceeded to scoop out the peppers and oil from the top of my broth, carrying it away somewhere. Despite the blisters on my tongue, I forced as much of the remaining food down as I could. We finished and paid. My shame was great. I have never been so glad to leave a restaurant.
    Back out in the cold, Mister Winkles eyes lit up in panic. He informed us that he lost his passport. We retraced our steps, which meant going back into the Hai Di Lao. Just like Uncle Iroh, I returned to the scene of my greatest defeat, and Jerry (Winkles was checking the street outside) asked the waitress had seen a passport. She was also brought to panic, and began helping us look around the table for it. After some awkward shuffling and digging through the coat closet, Andrew’s phone rang. The missing passport had been found– in Mister Winkles’ pocket.

Sunday, January 4th

     Being in the cold is draining. I’d liken it to the poison status in Pokemon– every turn, you lose a bit of HP. Harbin level cold is more like the toxic status– every turn, you lose an exponentially increasing fraction of HP. You don’t even realize how much health you need to regen until you’ve hit the snooze a dozen times, ignoring all of Mister Winkles’ pleas for someone to accompany him out of the hotel and around the streets of Harbin. We seemed to be on opposite side of the pendulum– now that he had calmed down and recovered from his burnout, I (and evidently, Jerry, from his continued presence in the bed next to mine) was the one exhausted and sleeping in and resisting the allure of the strange northern city.
    And so I bedrotted, to use a Zoomer term that I am hip and trendy enough to know. All the way up until noon. I felt like I did in those glorious six months between college and employment. Slow. Very. Slow.
    But then it was noon, so there really was no excuse, and it was time to get up, to brush teeth, to put on pants and to put on jackets, to battle messy hair, to surrender to messy hair, to cleverly bury messy hair in a hat and resolve to not take it off, not even inside. It was time to check passport and wallet and phone and battery, to file out of the hot apartment, to descend through the double doors to the frozen streets below, to feel the awful sting of ice blistering on your face, to call him ‘Chilly Jerry,’ to cross several filthy streets under a sun that, by noon, was already looking to set. And it was time to enter another mall, eat a bit of lunch, order more, eat too much lunch, leave again, and finally end up in Stalin Square, where we descended down to the river.

    The Songhai River was obviously frozen over at this time of year, and had about six gazillion people on it. It looked to be about a mile across, all thick ice, with little carpets here and there to grant sanctuary for those who could not walk without slipping. Temporary buildings sprung up all over with signs for hot beverages and frozen snacks, and most had a line. There seemed to be about ten variations of a vehicle towing a sled behind it driving in circles, going fast, spinning out– while its cold passengers spin behind them. The same three C-Pop songs blasted from grainy speakers placed all over the river. Little orange tents crowded one side of the river, where presumably people would go warm up.
    I estimated the number of spoons I had remaining was not enough to join the rest of the group for ice skating, so I left them to their devices and wandered the river. It was essentially the same as I described above, just repeated in subtle variation all the way down. Everyone was having a grand old time, and it reminded me of the old frost fairs that London had on the Thames in the 1600s. Just with more modern attractions.

    This moment is the coldest I’ve ever been. The cold radiating up from the ice was too much, the frigid Manchurian air was too much, the wind, unimpeded by any landscape coming down from Siberia, was sharp and vicious and entirely too much. Walking against the wind made the liquid on my eyeballs themselves start to freeze, and if I held from blinking long enough, made my vision blur. Closing my eyes would melt the little ice crystals, causing water to stream down my cheeks and refreeze. I stayed on the river as long as I could, but every part of my body was feeling heavy, my lungs ached, and my patience was thin. I left the river and warmed up in the comparatively balmy -20 streets.
    The others spent some more time on the river, eventually joining me. Jerry joined me first, as he passed by running on the street yelling “gotta take a shit!” before leaving me again, and then the other two. We ran a few errands, returned to the hotel, and called it a day.

Further Harbin Pictures I liked

Further Shanghai Pictures I liked

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