Ya Ting had taken me under her wing after hearing me speaking Chinese in a hotel in Lijiang. She had been hitchhiking(搭便车旅行) around China for months. She invited me to travel with her, which was how we ended up on the side of the road looking for a ride to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Within 20 minutes, we had our first ride. The driver couldn't take us all the way and ended up dropping us at a freeway crossroads. As a new hitchhiker, I thought that would be the end of our luck, but almost immediately we got another ride.
Our most forgettable ride was when a twenty-something kid picked us up. He couldn't take us the whole way so his uncle bought us lunch and a bus ticket for the rest of the journey. He felt it was his duty to help us find a way to complete our trip. It brought tears of joy and thankfulness to my eyes. This was the first time I understood how guests are respected in China.
A few weeks later, we said goodbye. I thought we had been so lucky because we had been a local(本地人) and a foreigner travelling together. But now Ya Ting was no longer around to do the talking, nor did I have someone to depend on if something went wrong. When I stood by a highway in Sichuan, I knew all about the difficulties before me. Now I was just a strange foreigner on her own who suddenly had to manage to talk with Chinese.
After about 30 minutes, a couple picked me up and took me the whole eight hours to Chengdu. We ate lunch on the way, and they refused to allow me to pay for any of it, which I had come to learn was typical(特有的) of Chinese culture. This made me believe the hospitality(好客)in Chinese culture that we don't often see in the west.
