So this week at my house I had guests from China, and instead of not socializing with my guests like usual because of shyness/anxiety, I talked with them and made a new friend! Making a new friend from China also naturally of course kicked into overdrive my never ending daydreaming of traveling, and this time the daydreams were of traveling to China.
I’ve always wanted to travel the world, China included, but it’s always been just like, I want to visit every country in the world so I can say I’ve been to every country. Making a new friend from China though makes me want to travel all through China the same way I’ve been all over the U.S. I want to visit all the different parts of China, explore the whole country, basically I want to get lost in China and fall in love with it just like I fall in love with the earth when I’ve driven along the shore of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and watched sunsets from the mountains above Phoenix.
I want to visit Hong Kong and watch a sunrise/sunset from the mountains that surround it. Take a high speed train to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Take a train up to Shanghai, and a sleeper train to Beijing. Visit Tianjin. If and when I visit China, I want to go up into the north east part of the country to the border of Korea and climb Mount Paektu. I’d want to visit ZhangJiaJie National Forest and take the cable car to the top of Tianmen Mountain and climb up to Tianmen Cave also known as the Gateway to Heaven and walk on the Coiling Dragon Cliff Skywalk. I want to go to Guilin National Park. I want to go see the Rainbow Mountains Danxia Landform Geological Park. Walk along the Great Wall of China of course. Visit Xi’an, the beginning/end point of the famous Silk Road, and then travel west along the Silk Road just like I’ve traveled on the famous U.S Route 66. I have to take a boat trip across one of China’s famous rivers, just like I’ve taken boat trips across the famous Great Lakes in the U.S/Canada. I want to wander as close as I can to the Gobi Desert, if not wander into it where there is access, since I’ve been through the middle of the Arizona Desert during the middle of summer. I want to visit all the mountain ranges of China. Visit their most famous waterfalls. Drive across their best and longest bridges. Go to the northern most point, the western most point, the southern most point and the eastern most point, experience all the different landscapes and climates of China. Visit all the different provinces and their cities. Spend a full day just riding the public transit in one of the cities like I have on Portland’s light rail and New York City’s subway. I want to have days where I’m by myself and without any understanding of their language or where anything is, I go off exploring and get lost and have to improvise and figure out my way back to wherever I’m staying, just like what happened when I was in Phoenix by myself and got completely lost at night and had no idea where anything was and just had to figure it out and eventually I found my way back to my hotel.
Long story short, not that I haven’t before, but having made a friend from there, I truly want to visit China now. I don’t want to just cross China off my long list of countries to visit, I want to spend months there exploring all of it. I want to see China the way I’ve seen the U.S and parts of Canada.
adamkendall2 