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am I a real Chinese person? - by Ava - bookbear express

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The most obvious sign that I’m not a real Chinese person is that I promptly got food poisoning on my second day in Chongqing. As soon as we sat down at the hot pot place, heaping bowls of raw meat surrounding us, I was suffused by a sense of unease. Told myself, as I usually do, “It’ll be okay.” Now I’m on a flight to Shenzhen, using the power of positive thinking to keep the contents of my stomach firmly in place. It’s raining outside. As a child, I would visit Shenzhen in the summer and it would be 38 degrees Celsius, hot and humid enough to make you feel like you were suffocating. Walking into an air-conditioned store felt like passing through a block of ice. Miracle of physics, pure bliss. It’s been over 10 years since I last visited the country where I was born. I hadn’t even realized, I thought I went in 2017. Nope. So much travel during those lost years, Seoul and Hong Kong and who knows where else, when I had no visa, no real job, no one to be in love with, and not enough menta

am I a real Chinese person? bookbear express: travelogue edition Ava Oct 20, 2024 ∙ Paid 113 4 12 Share The author in 1997 The most obvious sign that I’m not a real Chinese person is that I promptly got food poisoning on my second day in Chongqing. As soon as we sat down at the hot pot place, heaping bowls of raw meat surrounding us, I was suffused by a sense of unease. Told myself, as I usually do, “It’ll be okay.” Now I’m on a flight to Shenzhen, using the power of positive thinking to keep the contents of my stomach firmly in place. It’s raining outside. As a child, I would visit Shenzhen i

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