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I’ve been in eight cities in the past 50 hours (DC, Baltimore, NYC, Newark, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kunming, Xishuangbanna), lugging about 90 pounds of stuff. Traveling is always arduous, but excitement about seeing my boyfriend after nearly nine months apart provided the adrenaline needed to withstand the journey. It also helped that I was able to punctuate my trip with two nights of decent rest at friends’ apartments along the way, first in Hong Kong and then in Shenzhen. Given the fact that I’ve lived in China for three years, and the Shenzhen/Hong Kong area for an entire year, I thought coming back after ten months in the States would be no big deal. I thought I was already immunized to the chaos, the noise, the lights, the crowds, the constant non-stop pace of life, the sense that money is the primary thing on people’s minds, whether for the purpose of mere survival, for simple economic betterment, or for the ability to buy Prada bags for your mistress. Turns out I felt very lost and almost depressed in the area I spent a year of my life, and the country in which I spent three years. It wasn’t the culture, it wasn’t the food, it wasn’t the language that felt alien, it was the simple fact that I felt I didn’t belong here anymore. It wasn’t my home, it wasn’t my universe. It used to be, but that has changed. Now, I’m just a visitor.

As I was on the train from Kowloon bound for the Shenzhen border,  I had this overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. The train was nearly empty as it was a 11 am on a Saturday morning, but looking out the window there was just an unending stream of high rise apartment buildings, continuing for miles and miles and miles. 1.3 billion is a large number conceptually, but it really hits you when high rise buildings continue out into the boondocks. There are no people on the streets, but still, the skyscrapers are there. I began thinking that the sheer numbers of people is why “guanxi” is such an important cultural concept in China. Without having your network of friends and family, you would feel lost and isolated in a population of millions. When the universe is so big, you need to create a smaller universe just to stay sane. It reminded me a lot of a chapter in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, when Zaphod Beeblebrox enters the Total Perspective Vortex, a machine designed to show a person their actual place in the universe. As the universe is so big, most people are shown their insignificance in the grand scheme of things, which makes them go mad, and they come out of the TPV as a babbling vegetable. Not so Beeblebrox, who was so arrogant and self-centered that he came out of the TVP fully convinced of his own important place at the center of the universe. I think that is what guanxi networks are for, they create a universe around you in which you are the center. If placed in a Total Perspective Vortex, you would be shown how important you are to your friends, family, and business contacts, and thereby stay sane. Although I still have many contacts here in China, I do feel that I stepped out of my universe, left the relationship web that holds me together and of which I am a vital component. This feeling has dissipated a bit now that I’m with Andy, and am once again grounded in a relationship network. But, if put into a TVP here in China I’d probably go insane. My universe, it seems, is now back in the USA.