1: Why I Like China

When people ask me why I'm so fascinated by China, I give them my usual stock answer: I grew up in San Diego, which is only 50 years old. We speak English here. All the houses are the same, and developments are still popping up. Everyone is white here. What's the exact opposite of that? China.

I only give people that explanation because it's easier than the true reason. The true reason is that ever since I was young, I've had such a need to explore my surroundings, and taste the culture that pervades every detail of our lives. My parents took my sister and me on road trips around the US, and once I had my fill of observing the differences between people in the Rockies, New Mexico, and upstate New York, my obsession turned to countries. I was so intrigued that people in Europe could be so much different from their neighbors, much less people from the US. One of the places that fascinated me the most was Asia. People were just so different and I craved to explore how they lived.

I remember the first country I was obsessed with was Japan. The most exotic language they offered at my high school was Japanese, and from that point on, I was memorizing details of the country, from its population of 127 million, to how the Diet was organized much like England's Parliament. I got the opportunity to visit it spring of sophomore year. I'll spare everyone the details, but when I got home, I instantly knew that travel was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I later found the perfect word for it: wanderlust. I had come back home with an enormous burning desire to go back to Japan, or even explore some new country. Still to this day, I beg my dad to take me back to Tijuana, even if it's just for a day, to get my fix of a foreign country.

My wanderlust for China began in the summer of 2008. The Summer Olympics were to be held in Beijing, and there was a small controversy over the Chinese government wanting to move the Opening Ceremony from its original date to the more culturally auspicious date of August 8th (8 is considered a lucky number, and that date was triple 8s). This caught my eye, and as I studied more about Chinese culture and history, I found myself wanting to study Chinese in my first year at George Washington University. My obsession was instantly locked in once I saw how pervasive the Chinese were in American culture. They make everything that America buys, from toys to t-shirts, and own 23% of 4310 billion dollar debt. I knew I just had to visit China at least once, and ended up applying for study abroad there. I got in, and now I'm going to be studying in Beijing, and of course, blogging about this experience there.