Finding the Path Adventure, Food, Art, Drinks, Love, and Laughs on the Road

The motorbike speeds across the southern Chinese countryside, passing factories and temples alike, flaming piles of garbage and manicured Asian-style estates. The highway leading out from downtown Shantou mixes the smell of sea-side air with the noxious fumes of gasoline. From the back of a truck, the puzzled faces of several migrant workers gawk at me, the pale, blonde-haired foreigner. I smile and ease my grip to wave, and they return the gesture with big grins until we pass on. This is the moment it all solidifies and becomes real: a strange fusion of adventure, exploration, and pushing my boundaries as I pass through one the most unfamiliar but entrancing lands in the world.

As a mode of transportation, nothing beats a motorcycle taxi in China - at least in the cities that allow them. Faster than the ever-present rickshaws, electric or man-powered, they haphazardly zip through traffic. Flying through intersections, the bikes take me through strange sections of city: past giant tea-cups and reservoirs in the park, from walking-style shopping streets to rows of restaurants opening onto the avenue, wafting inviting smells of kai-lan and pork. The outdoor night markets emerge later in the evening - rowdy and fun, full of smoking and dice drinking games and tiny cups of Tsingtao set up on card tables with plastic chairs. Pushing tables together, we gather round to cheers our new acquaintances: "Gambai!" means you drink it all.

The only thing I knew at the beginning of my journey was that I had no idea what I was getting into, not the language or the customs. It is in the markets near Old Shantou, amidst the classic European architecture mixed with Asian flare, that I see an old woman pull a squawking chicken from its cage to butcher and skin it with her bare hands. My friend laughs at me as I pull a face, my western sensibilities more than a little offended. He doesn't always get my disdain for squat toilets, just like I don't understand his love of fish eyes, which is why we remain friends to this day.

China is a mix of the foreign and the familiar, full of never ending discoveries that feel like little gifts like this: Standing at the harbour in Shantou in the early morning I see numerous ships and swimming men. Clad in black trunks, the swimmers' grinning friends play heated games of mah-jongg on the wharf. They smile and offer us corn as we pass, and then begin to prepare Gong Fu tea in a teochew traditional ritual from the region. Staring into the old man's smiling face, I accept my cup of the highly flavoured tea: though we are separated by language and culture, for a moment we come together in quiet celebration of new friends.