1. All of China comes to Beijing for the Dragon Boat Festival in late June. At least, that’s what it feels like walking shoulder to shoulder through the crowd spilling into Tian’anmen Square, the largest city square in the world, on a Chinese national holiday.
2. When chatting with another American traveler while waiting in line for the passport check at the Chinese border, take care. You can be as discrete as you’d like, but you can’t always anticipate the questions he might ask about your status as a “missionary” as you try to enter a country that has strict regulations against that very thing.
3. On that note, when you randomly meet another group of American travelers and suspect their visit to China might err more on the side of missions than tourism, it’s hard to resist a little sleuthing.
4. The people who seem to eat the most rice also use the utensil least suited to rice consumption. The beauty of using chopsticks in America is the reasonable degree of certainty that you’re never too fare from a back-up fork. You’ll rarely find a back-up fork in China.
5. As a foreigner, there is someone in China who wants to take a picture with you, a picture of you, or a video of any combination of the two. You won’t have to look too far to find them. Chances are, they’ll find you first.
6. When you look up “smog” in the search engine Bing (all Google affiliated sites are blocked in China), the Wikipedia page for Beijing is one of the top hits. Air pollution in the city is a real problem.
7. Three million people died building the Great Wall of China over a period of 282 years.
8. When trying (and failing) to communicate with the kind elderly Chinese couple on your train into Beijing, don’t make the mistake of assuming the pen she’s just pulled out from her purse will help alleviate any of the confusion. That sweet little lady might just use it to write down a whole host of Chinese characters she’ll assume you’re able to read.
9. You’re the average of the five people you hang out with most. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
10. “Since when,” he asked, “Are the first line and last line of any poem where the poem begins and ends?” – Seamus Heaney
11. I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy. – Philippians 1:3-4
