At the end of February I went on a six day vacation alone to Xiamen, China. I went to get away. Away from work. Away from Hefei. Away from anyone and everyone I knew. I needed to breathe. I needed to recharge and regain a sense of perspective. I had been working as an English teacher in the busy and gritty city of Hefei for the last five months and nearly everything about the job was stressful and oppressive. I had suffered a major roundhouse punch to my mental stability and I needed to walk it off.
Xiamen is a large city on the South-East corner of China. It’s a popular tourist destination for the Chinese because of its beauty and unique history as a port city with Western influences. It is also home to arguably the most beautiful University in all of China. It was in a little coffee shop near this university that I had my first experience with Time Travel in China.
The coffee shop was a little brick house nestled into the side of a hill at the top of three flights of uneven steps. It was somewhere between colonial and Victorian in style, and it was delicately adorned with white Christmas lights. Upon entering I was met with the sound of a soothing Chinese rendition of the song “You belong to me” and the aroma of sweet jasmine incense mixed with the subtle stench of the cigarette that a man was smoking a few tables away. I sat down in a comfortable padded wicker chair in a nice secluded alcove. The only other person there was Cigarette man, but I wanted to feel cozy and tucked away. The waitress was awoken from her nap upon hearing me enter the front door, and she yawned and stretched and shuffled over to my table once I had sat down. She handed me a menu that that was handwritten on recycled brown paper and looked uncannily like an artist’s sketchbook. I ordered an almond milk tea. She slowly strolled back over to where the coffee maker was, grabbed a mug and started making my drink. I noticed that none of the mugs they had matched, and there was no underlying theme to their randomness. It was as though someone had gone to some garage sale or flea market and took the first mugs they could find and called it a day. It was refreshing. The entire place had the same sort of haphazard décor, but somehow also managed to make all the elements come together and offer a true escape from the outside world.
All of the chairs were wicker, and the tables were all old and used and didn’t match. There were colorful plush pillows and cushions everywhere that could have come from India, Tibet, Thailand, or anywhere exotic. All of the lights and lamps were covered with colorful fabrics or various bejeweled adornments, and there were beads and strings hanging from doorways. Nothing was overly nice or expensive but rather felt second hand, as though it had all been purchased on a whim and thrown together. The walls were covered with posters of famous people, particularly blues musicians and Bob Marley. Interspersed between these posters ancient Chinese garments were pinned up on the walls as well as occasional chalk drawings that a five year old likely could have done. It was the most bizarrely eclectic place I’d been to in a long time or perhaps ever. As a native of Seattle where coffee shops compete to see which can offer the most unique and sometimes worldly feel, it amused me that the real winner was to be found on the other side of the Pacific.
I was so preoccupied and entertained by simply taking in my surroundings that I was caught off guard when the waitress appeared with my drink. I took one sip and was gone. It was so perfectly warm and sweet and delicious, and everything about that place and that moment was so overwhelmingly good, it had to be magic. The surroundings were the setup, and in that cup of milk tea were the ingredients that took me far away. There was the thick base of comfort, a heavy dose of heat and warmth, a distinct flavor of home, a hint of excitement and a dash of adventure.
Perhaps I had traveled like this before, but I was acutely more aware of it now, and this was the first time I was really able to fully appreciate the moment for what it was. The laws of physics may claim that I was still in China and that in fact I hadn’t actually traveled anywhere at all; but I’m not trying to argue with physics. My body was where it was, but the rest of me was lingering in harmony somewhere far away. I wasn’t home, and I wasn’t in China; I was floating somewhere happily in between. It’s not a place on a map, and it’s not a place I’m sure I’ll ever get to visit again, but it’s somewhere many others have traveled to before and a place where many more will find themselves when they least expect it. Maybe it’s the wayfarer’s Never Land, or maybe just an accidental intrusion into Nirvana. Whatever or wherever it was, it’s those moments and those glimpses of heaven in random places on earth that will always keep me traveling and trying new things.
Summary: Sometimes the most fun part about traveling is going to a place you weren’t looking for, didn’t know existed and somewhere you can’t get to on a plane, train, bike or in a car or boat. Xiamen is a place of beauty. I’ll always think back fondly of the white sand beaches, of the stunning Gulang Yu island with its winding alleyways and romantic Western architecture; of the busy and bustling Walking Street flooded with excited pedestrians, and of the twisted tropical trees with roots that spilled down cliff sides like frozen waterfalls. But the fact that they will forever in my mind be eclipsed and outshined by a little mug of milk tea; that is magic.
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