So Why China?

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I'd felt driven to China when I arrived in Qingdao last October 17th, but I didn't know why I'd had to come. Now, nine months later, as I head home for good tomorrow morning, I know why, and I'd like to try to explain it to you.

As I was walking home from work last Friday, a young boy--maybe five or six years old--asked me, "Are you a foreigner?"  "Yes," I'd replied.  All in Chinese, of course, but learning a little Chinese wasn't why I'd had to come here. Yet there's another side to that boy's question.  Did I have to come here in order to experience being different and alone--being foreign?  Not really.  I've felt like a Stranger in a Strange Land for my entire adult life, so that wasn't why I'd had to come here either. And, if you're open to the possibility of reincarnation, you might find it curious that I think I was hacked to pieces on a Chinese battlefield in a former life.  But that's neither here nor there. Writing this website has reminded me of how much I enjoy writing, and that renewed awareness might be a side benefit, but that's still not why I had to come to China.

I had to come to China to experience what is known in Christian mysticism as the "Dark Night of the Soul."

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