I think this might finally become the blog I actually stick with!  Exciting words, eh?  When we booked our tickets for this summer's short trip to China, I wasn't planning to blog, but after hearing that my family actually read (and enjoyed!) reading about our adventures (and sometimes misadventures) the last time around, I decided a new blog was in order, as it appears Yahoo has deleted my previous blog (poor little guy!).

We've been back in Beijing for 3 days, kicking off a short 6 week research trip for my husband (the title's inspiration).  Although I last left Beijing in December 2010, it seems as if not much as changed - the noodles are still tasty, the subway is still crowded, and despite my best efforts, I still manage to butcher the Chinese language like the antagonist of a B-grade horror movie.  Meh.  I try.

Although I once famously told my husband in the early days of our courtship that I "really had no desire to go to China", I've since changed my ways, and today, I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to spend so much time getting to know what I believe to be, at present, one of the most interesting countries in the world.  Love it or hate it, China has a tendency to lead one to a sort of life-long obsession that comes from a deeper place than just exoticizing the other.  In the past century, the rapid pace of change (despite what I just wrote above - more on that later) has developed China into a place that is truly unlike anywhere I've ever been.  For instance, the other night, as we rode from the airport to our friends' apartment on the new airport shuttle bus (a bargain at 16 RMB per person!), the contrast between the scenery on the two opposite sides of the bus windows was a dissertation waiting to happen.  To our right, we passed a line of rather shabby, hastily constructed low buildings, illuminated by the glow of neon lights, housing cheap barbecue restaurants, where patrons sat outside drinking beer and tossing their wooden skewers into the road.  To our left stood a rather gaudy, but state of the art shopping complex that wouldn't have been out of place in any suburban community in the US.

What to make of it all?  Well, that's for us to find out together...and what happens when you marry a sinologist.