Walking through the remote Tibetan village that housed the Shangrila Cheese Factory, we were met by a number of curious villagers, who came out to see who we were. The father and son in this photo came walking by and we asked if we could take a photo—the father is leaning a bit funny because I think he wanted us to see his basket and he was also reminding his son to stand up straight.

Imagine what you’d do if someone, speaking a language you didn’t understand, came walking through your neighborhood and asked to take a picture of you?

• Leave a comment on this post below.
• See another installment of “In This Picture” of another father and son in Vietnam.
• Read more about Langdu Village and their Cheese Factory in There’s No Sesame Chicken In China.
• See more photos from the factory and village in my Langdu Village Flickr Gallery.

The black hole void of sesame chicken in a country I was once fairly certain invented the dish, is a topic for another time, as I’d like to take a closer look at another seemingly paradoxical culinary contradiction in the above mix: Chinese don’t eat cheese, yet there I was in a Land Cruiser on a bumpy ride through the mountains in search of the country’s first gourmet cheese factory, deep in a poor, remote Tibetan village high in the mountains of Yunan Province, China.

How a cheese factory came to be deep in the heart of China, complete with cheese advisors flown in from Wisconsin (America’s undisputed cheese capital), is a story of how two passionate young Chinese women came to the realization that sometimes it is such paradoxical thinking that can make all the difference.

Born from a winning business plan submitted to a social entrepreneurial competition thousands of miles and world’s away from Yunan, in the halls of Harvard University, Mei Xiang Cheese is the first business venture of Boston, Hong Kong and Shanghai based Ventures in Development. Harvard classmates, Marie So from Hong Kong and Carol Chyau from Taiwan, along with a few friends, disappointed in the lack of focus on development work in China, decided they wanted to do something for the millions in their home country that were being left behind, despite the headline-grabbing economic growth.

Starting with less than $50,000 USD, mostly raised from winning the business plan competition, they set up their non-profit/for-profit, a non-profit social entrepreneurial incubator that would work to set up sustainable, for-profit businesses in Mainland China that would direct their growth and profits into improving the quality of life in the villages that built the businesses. The profits and benefits of a successful business, it is hoped, will trickle down to create jobs and spread wealth within the village, plugging the villagers in a small way into the global economy that was, at one time, leaving them behind.

Ventures in Development’s most successful project to date: Mei Xiang Cheese, follows the women’s strategy to leverage readily available local resources, in the case of the cheese factory: Yaks. Yaks, sort of a cross between a buffalo and a sheep, live well in the high altitudes and harsh conditions of the mountains in China’s interior and have been a staple animal for the Tibetans for centuries. The women partnered with local organizations to scout out and select a village in Yunan to pilot their cheese making process. Then turning the more traditional model of aid a bit on its head, the organization sought paid volunteers from the village to undertake the leadership and management of the to-be-built factory. The found, after an exhaustive search, just one volunteer: Zhuo Ma and her family, who were willing to take the risk and learn about the foreign concept of gourmet cheese making.

With the startup money in hand and a local family to lead the project, they began construction on a cheese processing facility that would turn the Yak’s milk into China’s first gourmet yak cheese.  After flying in a professor and cheese expert from Wisconsin (USA), the factory developed a product line and worked to perfect its processing and aging techniques.

Nearly two years after the first brick was laid, on a beautiful piece of land nestled in a valley of pine trees on the banks of a crystal clear cold mountain stream, and four hours on treacherous roads over towering mountain passes to the nearest city (Zhongdian/Shangrila), our Land Crusier came to rest in the misty afternoon weather, were we were hustled into the factory’s restaurant for a cup of tea and—what else—deep fried cheese.

The journey from startup to their now weekly cheese output was not as simple as it sounds, as the challenges were numerous and roadblocks relentless, yet despite a lack of MBAs and large bank accounts, the villagers seem uniquely qualified to persevere.

While we sat comfy in our flashy winter jackets drinking our green tea, having just completed our 4-hour Land Cruiser ride, in the door came a woman with her young daughter who couldn’t have been more than 14-years old. The two, soaking wet and wrapped in thin blankets, had just walked for nearly a day and a half in the sleet and freezing rain over the same mountain pass our Land Cruiser had just bounced and tumbled. The young girl stiff and shivering was clearly in the early stages of hypothermia and was wrapped in a sleeping bag and laid next to the wood-burning stove. “They were walking from town,” we were told, “the only way for them to get from there to here.” None of the locals seemed to blink at the emergency because, as I later learned, adversity was so common here it seemed not at all out of the ordinary. A few days before we arrived, three villagers had been electrocuted and killed at the power station just across the road from the cheese factory. “Most people here live with the goal to simply get to tomorrow,” it was later remarked.

After lunch, we ventured up the mountain for a short tour and to meet Yak herders who were coming over the mountain to deliver the latest milk supply. The rain from the previous week had washed a tree across the only dirt road over the mountain, so the herders were leading their Yaks to meet us halfway.

After leading the yaks up slippery logging roads and trudging through knee high mud, their milk barrels were loaded on the back of our truck bound for the wood roofed cheese factory in the fertile green valley below.

Despite the adversity, these villagers, it seems, always find a way through.

* * *

Ventures in Development is still working to get approval from the USFDA and EU to export to the US and Europe, but their gourmet Yak cheese is now available from the company’s first shop in Zhongdian, Yunan (aka Shangrila) and a few other places in China, including Hong Kong. You can read more about Mei Xiang Cheese at www.shangralacheese.org or by visiting Ventures in Develop at www.venturesindev.org.

I’d like to pass on a special thanks to Ventures in Development co-founder Marie So, her sister Annette and Zhuo Ma and the crew in Langdu Village for allowing me a glimpse into their wonderful little cheese business in the heart of a country that I once thought didn’t know much about cheese.

The interior of the cheese factory has very strict sanitary rules and one of the challenges of building the business has been educating the villagers about the strict government sanitation requirements for food export.

The factory complex is built in one of the most beautiful, pristine and remote wilderness areas I’ve seen on my trip.

L to R: Marie, Ventures in Development co-founder; Annette, Marie’s sister from Hong Kong/London; Mei Ziang Cheese Factory Renaissance man responsible for cheese making/repairs/transportation/taking tourists on tours; Sheena, fellow traveler from Hong Kong and my resident translator (Thanks Sheena!).    

On the drive to fetch the milk canisters, we were taken on a short tour of the village and given a peek into a village home.  Hanging dried meat in the home’s living room (2nd picture above). The lack of electricity and the gray rainy day made it quite difficult to see when walking through the massive three story house.

The herders led their Yak’s through the mud and cleared the upturned tree to deliver the milk canisters that were necessary to avoid a halt in the cheese production for the week.

• Leave a comment on the post below.
• View more photos in my Langdu Village Flickr Gallery.
• Visit the website of Mei Xiang Cheese.
• Learn more about Ventures In Development and their other cool startups.
• Read a bit about my thoughts on why this is a great example of social entrepreneurship in A Hand Up, Not Out.

Months later, as I crested an ocean front sand dune in Mozambique, the salty sweet smell of the ocean smacking me in the nose as I came face to face with a postcard perfect panorama of a few lone beach-front palm trees leaning in as if to take a drink of the turquoise waves of the ocean, the first thought that came to my mind, “I’m in a Microsoft screen saver.”

The thing that’s funny about modern life is that what is unreal has become more real than the real. What we think is real, comes from what we’ve seen in the unreal world: movies, television, media, zoos and amusement parks. That unreal is our reference point to what we think is real.

For the average person from the developed world, our understanding of lion behavior come from Simba (which means “lion” in Swahihi) and Scar, our benchmark for beautiful oceans come from airbrushed glossy magazine spreads in National Geographic and our closest brush with pirates came when we were face-to-TV with Johnny Depp.

This phenomenon leads us to two problems:

1) The Real Turns Out Not To Be As Exciting As What We Think Is Real: Because the real thing isn’t edited, scripted, “Photoshoped” and backed by a John Williams orchestrated score, when we see things that are real and they don’t measure up to our expectation, we instead desire for the unreal “real” version instead.

“The sharks were pretty sleepy. I thought they’d be more aggressive, I didn’t get any good photo,” remarked one disappointed woman on a Great White shark cruise in South Africa. Too bad her traveling husband with the camera wasn’t Steven Spielberg.

2) Our desire for this idealized version of the real (the unreal), causes many places to give us what we think we want. Since tourists have certain expectations of the places we go, it is no surprise that these places are going to give us what we think we want.

During my travels in China, I visited Lijang a popular tourist destination in Yunan. The area known as the “old city” appears to have been lifted directly out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with the crafty addition of neon lit pubs overflowing with Tsing Tao beer and Chinese women in short shorts, karaoke bars and kitschy souvenir shops.

Night on the streets in Old Town Lijang, Yunan Province, China.

The reality of China is that people don’t live in movies like Crouching Tiger and darkened cobble stone streets with glowing red lanterns are not where most Chinese exist in the modern era, but the image that tourists have of China is exactly that, so in the end the demand causes the unreal to become real.

A picture in front of my guesthouse in ‘Old Town’ Zhongdian, China.
A city that recently changed its name to “Shangri-la” for obvious tourist purposes.

So if on your next trip you find yourself watching Kenyans dancing and whooping around a camp fire to the beat of leather drums or Geishas bowing to you at the gates of Kyoto-esque temples or even cowboys and indians chasing each other around a dusty stage in South Dakota, enjoy it for what it is, but please my friend take a taste of the real, at least for a bit, and get out of the theme park.

• Leave a comment in the box below.
• Read more of Andy’s ego-talk, this one on American-Chinese relations, in his post Marching for Democracy In China
• See some “Photoshoped, glossy photos” from such reality in the Noboundaries.org photo galleries

(Xun Zhou, China) Everyone likes to save money, right? Of course, that’s why Americans invented Walmart and people worldwide flock to Ikea. During my visit to Xun Zhou, I got a pretty good lesson in why those stores are so cheap.

As I walked under the beating sun, as temperatures rose near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 C), between the tightly packed passageways that separated the homes of this rural village, I noticed a number of large wooden squares maybe 6 feet (about 2m) by 3 ft (1m) and strung with ropes and fabric.

Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I asked innocently what they were. It was explained to me that many women in the village were being paid to hand-stitch sequins onto the fabric that would later be used to make blouses, dresses, and clothes that would, if you followed down the consumer food chain, be sold at a clothing stores near you. A shirtless, middle-aged man explained that this was an easy way for women to make a bit more money for their families, and that they were contracted (and give the supplies) by men from the nearby bigger cities. The men would come around a few time a month to collect the finished fabrics and pay the women per piece they had completed.

Though there was no way for me to determined where these particular blouses where headed once done, a quick Google search for “sequined ladies tops” turns up hundreds of similar blouses (see pictures below). Amazon.com sells one for $25 USD, spiegel for $75 USD, and some of the top designer from Louis Vuitton to Armani sell sequined tops for hundreds of dollar, if not more. (Disclaimer: I am NOT trying to imply that the shirts I saw in Xun Zhou were necessarily headed for any one of these shops in particular or that any of these shops practice such production processes–because frankly I have no way of finding out.)

Above: Some random Google grabs for ’sequined blouse.”List price (Left to right): $49 USD, $89 USD, $69 USD

I asked the village women how long it takes them to hand stitch the sequins onto a single shirt, and was told “about 3-4 days, depending on how much time we spend on it.”

I asked the women if they enjoyed their work. “It’s good to have work,” they said.

I asked the women how much they got paid per shirt, by the man from the big city.

“The equivalent of about 3/4 of 1 US dollar,” they said.

It’s often said, “it pays to shop around,” but after meeting these ladies, I wonder who really pays?

• Leave a comment in the box below.
• See some other photos from Xun Zhou Village, China
• Are you a Bush or are you a Clinton? Read more about my arrival on the island.

• Please leave comments about the video below
• See some photo from my visit to the island.
• See a short video about What It’s Like: To Buy A Duck in Xun Zhou
• “Are you a Bush or a Clinton?” Read more about my arrival on the island.
• Read Andy’s previously posted story “The Tower of Babel: An Instructive Guide”
• See past videos on ‘What It’s Like’:
  • In A Karaoke Bar in Hong Kong
  • To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
  • To Climb Down The Temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia
  • To Buy A Duck In China
  • In a Tibetan Dance Club

Located on the southeast coast of China, Xun Zhou is a rural fishing village whose inhabitants make their living farming fish, clams, vegetables and rice. I spent five days there as a guest of the Zheng family, who graciously invited me to experience life in rural China (and being reported the first American to ever visit the island). The village had a population of about 1,000 people, no running water and, as far as I could tell, no English speaking inhabitants. My sincerest gratitude goes to my friend Sheena for guiding and translating for me and sharing her lovely family and village with me. Click here to see my gallery of photos from my time there, or click the collage above or here to see a Flickr Slideshow of the same photos.

• Please leave comments about the photos either below or on the Flickr site, as you view them.
• “Are you a Bush or a Clinton?” Read more about my arrival on the island.
• See a short video about “What It’s Like” To Buy A Duck in Xun Zhou
• See more photo galleries from my around-the-world trip on my Flickr page from the far reaches of the US, China and Japan.

Click here to see the video or click the video player below.

• Leave a comment about this video in the comment box below.
• Read more about the fishing village in my story, “The First American In China“
• Suggest a topic for a future “What It’s Like” video by contacting noboundaries.org.
• See past entries ‘What It’s Like’:
  • In A Karaoke Bar in Hong Kong
  • To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
  • To Climb Down The Temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia
  • To Walk Through a House in China
  • In a Tibetan Dance Club

Name: 陈峦 Helen Chen Luan

Hometown: Luoyang, China (洛阳). She currently lives in Shanghai

Where she traveled: Yunnan Province of China

Where our paths last crossed: Hong Kong

Helen is a friend of mine from graduate school and she now lives in Shanghai. In a noboundaries.org exclusive, she shares a story from her visit to Lugu Lake in central China. I like this story a lot because it shows the universality of travel and the arbitrary distinction we often make between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

The Happiness of Fish

by 陈峦

This photo was taken by my friend Yijun.

It might not be the best picture taken during our ten day trip to Yunan, but it is my favorite because it contains both the reasons why I like the place and why I miss it.

This place is Lugu Lake on the border of the Szechuan and Yunnan Provinces in China, 184 kilometers northeast of the city of Lijiang, The people that live there are called the Mosuo People.

I like the lake and its blue skies, white clouds, fresh air, quiet mountains and peaceful water. The only word you hear by the lake is “beautiful,” and often in many different languages.

The above photo is a full shot of the lake, or the fullest my camera could take from this mountaintop. The water in the lake looks like paint.

After a thirty-minute car ride we got to the side of the lake, as seen in my photo below.

Thirteen of us took two canoes and headed for the island in the center of the photo.

As soon as we left the shore I mentioned I instead wanted to swim to the island. (Actually, I did not mean it, but the lake was so attractive that I just could not suppress the idea of jumping into it.)

Immediately I was told by our boat boy “You cannot swim in it.”

“Why not?” I questioned, “I saw people swimming in it just now.”

“They are our people, not you tourists,” he said, making a clear line between them and us.

“What’s the difference?” I questioned. “Is it because the lake is yours?”

“It might be dangerous. You are on my boat, I should be responsible for your safety,” he said.

“But, what if I am a good swimmer and I have life insurance?” I began to talk about things in theory.

“No,” he said.

I knew that would be his answer.

“Would you like to sing us a song please?” someone suggested.

“I don’t know how to sing,” the boat boy replied unenthusiastically.

“That’s impossible,” I said, “Mosuo people are known as born singers,” repeating what I had read in a guidebook.

“I am an exception,” he said shyly.

After a bit of paddling our group settled down—no more requests to jump into the lake, no more conversations about singing and by then, all our cameras were tucked back into their cases.

“Where are you from?” the boat boy opened the conversation with me, I guess because I was the loudest of the group.

“Where do you think I come from?” I asked sitting in the very front of the canoe behind the boy.

“I don’t know. But you are not from Shanghai.”

Because I am from Shanghai, his response surprised me a bit (Just a few days earlier, a group of Tibetan monks told me they knew I was from Shanghai because I had an accent…which can not possibly be true, because no one speaks more standard Mandarin than I do =).

“Why do you think I am not from Shanghai?” I asked.

“Because I have met people from there,” he explained.

“But you’ve met people from other place too,” I retorted. “Why am I not Shanghainese?”

“Because you are different. I have been rowing here for three years. I know people, ” he said with unwavering certainty.

“So you are saying I am different from Shanghai people in a bad way or a good way?” I asked sensing he’d say the latter. (I worked in customer service at the Shanghai airport for four years. I know people too.)

“People from big cities are not so good,” he answered.

“You mean I am a good person,” I smiled, “Thank you.”

“What about foreigners,” I asked, “Are you able to make fast judgments about them too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t talk to foreigners. I don’t speak their language,” he said quite honestly.

“Ok,” I said, “but you are only half right about me. I have lived in Shanghai for four years.”

“…and I think there are good people from every place,” I added.

“Whatever,” he said back.

(In this photo, Michelle from South Africa. Does the water look like silk?)

“You do not like outsiders very much, do you?” I said, sensing this from the way he spoke to us.

“You outsiders do not know what life is,” he said, shocking me a bit with his directness and insight.

“Everything you care about is money. You just come here to see what you don’t have in your place,” he paused a second.

“And we want to go outside to see high buildings and modern cities which we don’t have,” he added, I believe, only to soften the bluntness of his earlier comment by assuring me we had things that they did not.

The difference I realize, is that they could have high buildings and live “modern” lives, if not right now, at least some day in the future; although we could never have their beautiful lake and natural scenery. Everyone seems to be so excited about growth and modernization in China, but I wonder if the “modern” China we are building will still have room for these emerald green mountains, clear blue lakes and warm open hearts?

“Have you been to the cities?” one girl from our group asked.

“No, never,” the boat boy said.

“Do you want to go out there to have a look?” the girl followed up.

The boat boy paused a moment, “Umm, not sure, maybe, maybe not,” he said.

“Some friends of mine went out there and changed a lot,” he paused to think again.

“I liked them much more the way they used to be,” he concluded.

“If there were no restrictions, what are three places you’d most like to go?” the six girls in our boat asked the boat boy.

“I think I do not want to go outside,” he replied.

“Why, you just have said people like to see fresh things?” one of us replied.

“Maybe to see fresh things…but if I wanted to see high buildings, we have TV,” he retorted, “besides, we often get sick when we leave our place.”

He continued, “Some of you outsiders are arrogant and ask if we have electricity, running water and things like that. And outsiders are surprised that we have TV sets.”

I realized that these questions, asked in the wrong tone, could seem quite rude, but most people from China’s big cities have the impression that people in China’s interior live a hard life. (Though my Dad once told me when I was a little girl that people who live near the water would always live a good life since there are fishes in lakes and rivers that connect to the outside.)

“How old are you?” a girl asked the boat boy.

“Age is a secret for Muosou guys,” he said.

“Oh, have you done a walking marriage?” I suddenly remembered, referring to a common, yet often misunderstood Muosou tradition, where by a man will sneak to see a woman at her home at night and return to his own family’s home in the morning. Maybe, I thought, we could deduce his age from that?

“You don’t have any chance anyway,” he turned around and said to me. (I had the sudden urge to again jump into the lake—but this time it was out of sheer embarrassment.)

I told him my age and for that I learned his 20th birthday was next month.

“Do you think we are talkative?” I asked, afraid of saying too much that would make his already scarred image of outsiders even worse.

“Feel free to talk. You people are not those I hate. I have my little tricks to deal with those people,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I tell them I do not speak Mandarin and pretend I have no idea what they’re talking about. That shuts then up,” he said dryly.

“That’s smart.” I thought.

“Do you mind that more and more outsiders are coming to your lake and are changing your previously quiet life?” I asked.

“We could not prevent you coming,” he responded. “People like to see beautiful scenes. And the lake is not ours. It belongs to nature. We just happened to live beside it.”

“He is a philosopher!” I thought smiling.

“Are you enjoying your life now?” I asked.

“Yes, very much,” he answered quickly.

“What’s the most enjoyable thing,” I questioned.

“Drinking, rowing boats, chatting with friends and swimming in the lake where I feel I am like a fish, happy and free,” he replied.

I smiled, I think we all agreed with him.

People are so alike sometimes.

On the way back from the island, he actually sang a song for us–it was good. He told us more about his people and culture: an optimistic people, open hearted and longing for freedom. I like them.

When it was time to say goodbye, the boat boy let me take a picture of him and smiled.

He joked, “You, hurry up! Don’t get in the way of me making money. ”

And it was then that he told me his name: Tsili.

I am happy, happy like a fish too.

If any of you go to Lugu Lake and happen to see Tsili, please tell him I said hello.

This photo was taken by my friend Yijun. It might not be the best picture taken during our ten day trip to Yunnan, but it is my favorite because it contains both the reasons why I like the place and why I miss it.

• Leave a comment about Helen’s story in the comment box below.
• Suggest yourself or someone else for a future “Guest Traveler” post by contacting noboundaries.org.
• Read entries from past “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • Brian Triplett on life in Africa on his 8 months trip around-the-world.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central and South America for a year.
  • David Strackany writing 365 songs in 365 days, while living in his car and touring The United States.

I was to spend the next four days on the island.

In mainstream American newspapers and on television, not a day goes by without a story of the unprecedented growth in China. The shining, postmodern skyscrapers of Shanghai, the frantic and methodical re-birth of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics and the financial markets and shipping epicenter in Hong Kong are often splashed across front pages, web banners, and nightly news lead-ins. And, yes, China is growing (and fast) but what the media often fails to mention is that of the 1.3 billion people in China (Over 1/5 of the world’s population), only 30% live in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and other cities, while 70% of the country lives in rural farming and fishing villages—similar to the one I was now visiting.

I had been invited by my Hong Kong friend Sheena to join her family on a trip to visit her grandma in their homeland. This was an exciting chance, I figured, to get off the beaten tourist/backpacker tracks to see the “other side” of China that is rarely spoken of in the media outside of Asia. What I found, I think you’ll find very interesting, and I will try to share it with you in writing, photos and videos in this and my next few posts.

The best way to sum up the village in a few short sentences is to say that it is a place that is about 75 years behind where I come from in the US (or probably any other developed country). There is no running water, some motorized vehicles but not modern cars, and limited electricity—which they’ve only been hooked up to for less than a decade. The island appeared to subsist on fishing and basic, small-scale agriculture (rice, vegetables, grains), and there was a very obvious lack of mechanized equipment to do most things—outside of a few small trucks and scooters running with small, two-stroke engines.

But while the amenities were not as “developed” as where I come from, in no way do I mean that the people were not. The house I stayed in was a rather nice three story home, and it may not be the best representations of where most of rural Chinese people live—the family obviously had done well for themselves and were able to provide a relatively comfortable and well provided life. (Watch for a future post with a video tour of the house). And despite a lack of air conditioning (it was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside), having to take a shower out of a bucket (no running water), and having a limited variety of food (vegetables and lots of seafood…it was a fishing village), I think life in this particular home would be comfortable, in a relative sense.

What struck me most about the experience was that despite the lack of “modern” amenities, the lack of any English and being surrounded by foreign people in a foreign land over 10,000 miles from my home, most everything was eerily familiar. My mother’s parents were wheat farmers in rural western Nebraska (USA), and each summer we’d make an annual trip to visit them amongst the dusty bluffs overlooking the Oregon Trail and amongst cows, sheep, corn and wheat. This visit to Sheena’s grandma’s home in China, despite the obvious differences in context, had all the same ingredients. There was the long drive with eager anticipation to get their; the rowdy laughter, smiles and gift exchanges upon arrival; the crazy aunt who was always over eager to, metaphorically, “squeeze your cheeks;” the doting grandmother, the little kids running underneath the dinner table, and the eager questions from relatives about the goings on in your life. And, despite the fact I was a foreigner from a place they knew little about and I spoke a language they could not understand, they took me in like family, and they asked me lots of questions, laughed at my jokes (well, kind of), were generous with their time, and overstuffed me with food—-exactly as my grandparents had once done to me in Nebraska.

Chinese culture puts a high value on family and oftentimes it goes above all else (it even comes first when they write their names): Children live with their parents typically until they are married, grown children who work often give their parents part of their monthly paycheck, and which family you come from often can tell a lot about who you are. As we walked around the island through rice fields, fishing net shops, oyster harvesting, and village streets, I often got dubious looks as an obvious “foreigner”, and at times they would ask, “Who are you?” When I told them I were staying with the Zheng family, I was greeted with wide smiles and warm invitations. Despite my differences, I felt, in a way, part of the family, and in a home so very similar to my own grandparents on the other side of the world.

“Are you a Bush or are you a Clinton?” I later figured out was not a question with political motivations, but in fact an honest question of who I was. In China, your family often tells a lot about you, and my host, knowing only two American “families,” was asking me an honest question of where I come from. “I come from Iowa…in the United States….I said,” which may have caused The Handsome Uncle to wonder for a moment how different a place it was. I assured him and I assure you that, cultural differences aside, it’s a lot more similar than you might at first imagine.

The rooftops of Jinxua, China at sunrise.