Mystified by a bizarre excitement I could barely control, I made my descent into Beijing for the second time this month.
Although almost any American will surelyhave a great feeling of excitement and anticipation when landing in Beijing, China, my butterflies were peculiar and somewhat disconcerting as my excitement was due foremost to a feeling that I was returning home. I was returning after a 17 day trip across China to a place where I had lived for only four days, yet I was calling it home.
On Friday afternoon, my flight brought me from Urumqi back to Beijing after 17 days of indescribable beauty, hardship and priceless experiences.
Traveling along the Silk Road for a little less than three weeks, my classmates and I journeyed across Northern China from Beijing to Urumqi, a city just 200 miles from Afghanistan, and back.
A total of 51 students traveled across China by late-night trains, a plane, countless buses, a speedboat or two, 51 repugnant camels, bike and foot.
During the 17 days I saw a number of awe-inspiring Buddhist cave sites, innumerable open-air bazaars, visited some of the oldest mosques in China, ate freshly cooked lamb on a mountain, slept in the Taklamakan desert and visited the Labrang Tibetan Buddhist monastery on Heavenly Lake in Urumqi.
I discussed politics and philosophy with a couple of backpackers from Beijing under one of the most beautiful night skies that I have ever seen. I rode bikes on Xi’an’s city wall with local college students, traveled to a rural sector outside of Turpan so I could eat dinner and sleep in the home of a Chinese Muslim family and saw the Terracotta warriors.
On a very late night in Turpan, I drank Chinese white liquor and endeavored upon a truly strange odyssey led by several middle-aged Uiger Muslim men. I saw ancient cities in Xia’he and woke up at 5 a.m. as my roommate retuned to our hotel room after an all-night game of Counter-Strike with a number of the local Tibetan Buddhist monks.
I explored the millennia-old waterways of a Chinese town, practiced my Chinese every chance I got and ate some of the most amazing food that I have ever tasted in my life.
I try to describe the trip to friends and family and I can find only a few adjectives that can possibly describe the experience completely. I usually just say, “Well, it was amazing.” In the end, I guess that I can also say that the trip was often uncomfortable,
I was sick for several days, but it was incredible in every sense of the word.
Returning to that odd excitement which overtook me on that plane from Urumqi to Beijing, I think that I now know why I was so anxious to get back to Beijing. Chiefly, I knew that I was returning to some form of regularity.
Sitting on the plane, I knew that I was returning to one bed, my own shower and a closet full of clothes. I was no longer going to live out of a hiker’s backpack and I was going to stay in one city for more than two nights.
I believe that I felt those butterflies not necessarily because I was returning home, but because I was returning to a place that I will soon be able to call home.
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