March 26, 2008
Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Yesterday morning, Fiona Zhu and I ate breakfast at a noodle shop. I ordered rice noodles with pork in soup. I expected little bits of pork, and was disconcerted to see an entire chop in my bowl. It was tasty, although I could see why some people think Cantonese food bland compared to Szechuan, or other spicier regional cuisine. Our waitress also brought us a pile of steamed Chinese greens. The bitterness was a sweet reminder of childhood, when Chinese food with Gramma and Grampa at a small Cantonese restaurant in East LA was an almost weekly part of our lives.

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March 25, 2008
Anne Black Guest House/YWCA
Kowloon, Hong Kong

I have no idea what time it is, only that it’s still a dark time of morning, and few cars are passing on the usually busy streets of Kowloon, eleven stories below. I feel a fragile safety in my tiny cocoon of a room, about 10-by-8 feet, with a shared bathroom across the hall. It’s much like a college dorm room: clean, tiny, sterile, with two small twin beds and a sink, behind an anonymous door at the beginning of a brief row of anonymous doors.

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I know many of you are waiting to read about my trip to China last week. However, that story will make better sense if I first tell you about my earlier trip, two years ago. China is the most surreal junction of cultures I’ve encountered. So, please allow me a rare indulgence, in hopes you’ll find it a treat: I’m going to retype my journals here with minimal editing, in a series called  Tracing China’s Past. In each of these posts, I’ll share with you one of my days in China. Each of those days was an adventure unto itself. So, check in as often as you’d like and dip into a refreshing splash of culture shock. My first trip lasted three weeks. It started, as most overseas journeys do: on a plane….

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