Intensity of experience

I think that's why my trip to China seemed to go by in a flash. 10 days does not seem like too short a length of time, but the long work hours I had to pull, the late-night social activities with clients and colleagues and the overwhelming explosion of sensory input that I had to take in all make it feel as though I just left.

I can probably claim to be the only person I know to have gone to China and not have visited the Great Wall. I used the short space of personal time I was able to free up over my second weekend to visit Matt, his family, and his new fiance in Xi'an, the old capital during the Tang Dynasty. Well worth it. Aside from finally having an opportunity to meet Linnea, and to personally congratulate her and her husband-to-be soon after the proposal, Xi'an also provided me the opportunity to experience a more rural, less industrialized China than I saw in my visits to Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The terracotta warriors, despite being attacked by an even larger army of tourists, were nonetheless an impressive sight. Xi'an also had a feeling to it that implied it was more the way China used to be.

Friends and tourist attractions aside, Chinese culture was wonderful to take in. One of the most surreal and alien experiences during my trip I enjoyed with Matt, Linnea and Hilary in a bar in Xi'an. After lounging upstairs and absorbing the older dance hits that pulsed from the speakers overhead, we all joined a dancing group fo what could only have been moms, or at least 40+ year-old Chinese women out for a night on the town. Aside from being thrilled, or at least bemused, to have the only foreigners in the bar join in dancing with their circle, they also sang out their own accompaniment to the dance melody in operatic form. Matt danced in their midst wearing his $2 Mao cap purchased from street vendors in Beijing, which only foreigners seem to appreciate. Bizarre, perhaps, but memorable, undoubtedly.