The top of Tianmen mountain, my favorite spot in Zhangjiajie
Mamma mia what a month. This one will be short and sweet because this month drainedddddd meeee.
Highlights, lowlights, and everything in between in chronological order
- My first stop post farm was Zhangjiajie which is currently going viral on TikTok for its mountains! It was indeed unreal. It was indeed not at all hectic like you may have seen on TikTok and I was worried about before going. I did indeed have to self-soothe multiple times because of heights. The monkeys were TERRIFYING because everyone feeds them (SIDE EYE,) so they can get very aggressive (not to their fault.) One tried attacking me, but after a lengthy standoff got distracted by a lady who came by with food. The next day a hostel friend I made told me I was lucky because they bit and scratched someone at my hostel who had to be rushed to the hospital to get the rabies shot. Getting rabies has been one of my biggest fears since reading Zora Neale Huston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. I think it was good for me to see him bite and scratch marks and all and still smiling the next day because in my head, if something like that were to happen to me there is no surviving, I would simply just perish.
-I met this really cool older Chinese-Malaysian couple that are just world travellers. Continuing with my pattern of bonding with older women in China, I had a really good conversation with the woman, who even though our hostel timing only overlapped for a couple days, told me she wished we could've crossed path sooner when she left :'). She, similar to me, was on a journey of reconnecting to her Chinese side which she lost touch with after her family migrated from China to Malaysia and adapted a more western lifestyle. Also, while she wasn't adopted, her family has a very intense history with adoption that she shared with me and we bonded over both appreciating the ways that culture is so well preserved and showcased here, and how it seems like people here have a deep understanding of where they come from and who they are in this sense.
-For some reason this seems to be the part of my trip where I'm becoming a survivor because after I left ZJJ, the universe hit me with the 1-2-3 combo of the worst food poisoning I've ever had, a hotel room with no windows, and receiving the craziest text message ever. The type of sickness that makes you contemplate life for real. The spirits apparently needed me to cleanse and release. Luckily it was just a 48hr bug, but at one point I was like.... should I be worried.
- I finally made it to the town I was adopted from! My orphanage no longer exists, which I knew before going, but it was cool to see what the area was like. Oddly there was a lot of international food, which I'm curious if its because at one point there probably was a lot of adoption related tourism there????? Korean BBQ, French bakeries, burgers. Yueyang is known specifically for its BBQ where I learned the secret is a lifetime's worth of garlic on a single skewer. Perhaps I am my people's people because I am a garlic girl.
-Upon arrival to Yueyang, and to note on basically the 48th hour of my 48 hour stomach bug, I ended up on the wildest journey to find the hotel I had booked. I arrived at the train station, walked what was supposed to be 10 minutes to the hotel, only to end up in a kind of industrial area with 10% battery, a dead backup battery, a glitching e-sim (I will never use airalo again) and a stomach that hadn't eaten in 2 days, lost in 95 degree heat. After asking some people and walking around for an hour, I still could not find the hotel, but saw one with the same name on my Apple map a 10 minute drive away. So I ended up flagging a taxi, where I could also charge my phone to 8% battery, only to still not find the hotel. Aiya, at this point I was panicking because I honestly did not know what I would do if my phone died and it was just one of those moments where I was on the brink of tears from exhaustion, discomfort, stress, and confusion. I was luckily able to cancel and get my money back and book a new hotel I could find but whewwwwwww, it was a lot for my current state of being. The hotel I ended up staying at I also learned later on was a chain that had another location down the street from where my orphanage used to be. Sometimes I think I'm one of those people that looks too much into things and sees signs where they are not, but then things like this happen and I'm like strange.....
- While I was in Yueyang, I thought a lot about odd or unexplainable overlaps between this place that I'm connected to through adoption and where I grew up in Rochester. One of which being, both sit on famous lakes. Yueyang sits on Dongting Lake known for being a popular trade and transportation hub, the town where I grew up in Rochester sits on a "Great Lake," Lake Ontario. Lakes have generally felt thematic to my life in some way.
-Semi-related, I heard two songs (Warm by Dre'es ft. Mia and Love Songs remix by Kaash Paige and 6lack), one at a cafe and one at a restaurant which felt so odd because I rarely hear American music playing in places here, let alone these 2 songs I really like, but felt random because I rarely/never hear them in public in the U.S. IDK man.
-Although after 48 hrs of that stomach bug I could move, sleep and eat again, spicy food was still too much for my stomach. Not being able to eat spicy food my last week in Hunan felt illegal, and made me so sad. As it goes.
- Stopped in Wuhan very briefly to save money on trains, and I actually really loved it. I had my first proper soup dumplings, since I've only ever had vegan ones, and wow. It's funny to be eating things for the first time that are classically Chinese and I've known about, but have never had simply because I was vegan or only had a vegan version, so I wasn't sure how different it was in taste or texture.
-Since leaving Hunan I realized the serotonin drop in my brain when there is no chili or spice in my food. I fear my taste buds have peaked.
- Alas on the 85th day of my 90 day Visa, I finally arrived to Shanghai, my last city in China. Shanghai is such a funky place, mostly because the aesthetics and culture are very heavily shaped by being colonized by several different countries kind of all at the same time, but it also feels so distinctly Chinese in a way that I feel like people weren't making it seem like when I would tell them I was ending my trip there. Although, seeing Tim Hortons and Five guys after seeing virtually no foreign food chains in China for nearly 3 months was an out of body experience. Once, I am replatformed with a paycheck, I would like to return with nothing but my wallet and an empty suitcase, because the shopping was insane. I felt like I was god's strongest soldier restraining myself from buying clothes I don't have space for AND actually being successful at it.
-Towards the end of my trip I was craving any sort of food that wasn't Chinese food, but oddly once I got to Shanghai and had plentiful options outside of Chinese food, all I wanted was Chinese food LOL. The fusion food in Shanghai is nothing short of genius. I did not expect to be eating so much fusion, but while restaurants labeled Asian fusion are usually a major red flag to me in the U.S., in Shanghai they were some of the best meals I ate. My 2 favorites were Thai soup dumplings, where the meat was shrimp instead of pork, and the soup was tom kha, and this sichuan chorizo pasta from an Italian restaurant that I think is on this Terrigino's top 10 best pastas eaten.
-A funny encounter-- while at my hostel in Shanghai, one of the people in my dorm started talking to me but only kept repeatedly asking me questions about what I do for work, what I want to do for work, etc. which I never know what to say these days, like ma'am I am just existing please stop asking me where I work. I always realize after I should probably just tell people I'm a traveller, but in the moment I always panic. Eventually the person asked me what I studied in college and asked where I went to school, which I replied The New School. She had never heard of it before which I kind of expected since at most people only know about Parsons, if anything, and she responded "The only American universities I know are Harvard, Stanford, Princeton....." To which I responded "Oh, it's definitely not like any of those" and we both laughed.
sichuan chorizo pasta, feel like its important to note there is a pool of spicy Sichuan oil at the bottom, will be thinking about this meal for a while.
Thai soup dumplings, will also be thinking about this for a while.
Oddly spiritual, inevitably cyclical, frustrating and confusing, amazing and magical
Leaving China really hit on my flight to my current destination when I received my in-flight meal and it was a Japanese style meal, not Chinese food. Luckily, I think still being in Asia has softened the blow of not being in China anymore, but I'm still majorly readjusting. I was messaging with the friend the other day who shared feelings of chaos fomo in her blog, which I resonated with in regards to my own travels, but I also shared that I think my travel chaos is taking time and slowness to unpack childhood traumas that have rudely chosen to follow me on this journey LOL. What a time. Anyways, currently missing chili pepper based meals, meituan coupons, and fruit tea for less than $1.
I think I will be taking a hiatus from blogging until I get to New Zealand in late October because I fear I am slightly overstimulated at present. Not super decisive on this but, seems right. In the meantime I will probably be experiencing tropical beaches, continuing to gallivant around East Asia but this time (hopefully) in love (but at minimum in good company), circling islands, hoping to not encounter typhoons, making my way down south(east), and continuing to eat real good.
