A Slow Boat to China

In 2005, during a year-long backpacking trip around China, I spent a couple of nights in Golmud, Qinghai–a dusty little railroad town in the middle of the Gobi desert, where the now infamous Qinghai-Tibet railroad begins. Migrant workers and prostitutes probably make up half of the population, although I only became intimitely familiar with the former group when about 50 of them piled into a public bus the size of a volkswagen that I happened to have been riding in. I can confidently say the smell during that trip was unlike any other.

Anyway, when I stopped by an internet cafe in Golmud to write some e-mails, I saw about a hundred Chinese playing games, blogging, and QQ’ing. Most of these Chinese had probably never left mainland China and likely hadn’t earned in their lifetime as much as most Americans make in a month. Many spent a large majority of their time in rural China. However, they have the means to post their ideas on the internet, and often these ideas take a completely different viewpoint than those held by Americans. I believe this content is worth sharing, and hopefully I will accomplish some of that here.

All translations on this site are my own work. Please feel welcome to make a comment or critique–I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting!

LKS