Sketches 2020

scattered across the forest. I found
myself in the company of great people,
great music, and festival food purchased
on a drunken whim. On the second
evening, our group was enjoying our
drinks when two South Africans
approached us, since we looked like a
cool bunch but of course. We extended
an invitation, not only to them, but
also to a group of French party-goers
who wanted to join along, and soon
enough we were all dancing in the
moonlight to the thumps of loud bass
and screaming turntables. For once in
my life, I found myself surrounded by
strangers but so comfortable that we
shared drinks and grooved the night
away. Even as we shared moments
about the lives we led in our home
countries, we still found common
ground as foreigners in China. We all
sought a good life while we tipped back
our cups. We all sought a good life
where our differences did not matter.
Soon, the months dwindled for my
time in China because of rising
political unrest that spilled into 2019.
Since potentially being imprisoned in
a Chinese facility did not sound so
fantastic, I made a choice harder than
the one I made to go to China: I chose
to leave China. I spent those final nights
at Fabio’s, bringing a full-circle conclusion
to my very own misadventure. My new
life began in that foreigner bar, from
whence I took my first hesitant sips,
and that was where my fading hours
were spent, where I could not seem
to drink enough to numb the sorrows.
I took one final picture with the last
few of my teary-eyed friends, all of us
standing in front of that fabled wall.
“Come as a tourist, leave as a friend,”
those words still put a smile on my
face and tear in my eyes.
With armfuls of cheap souvenirs, I
left a land where personal freedoms
were celebrated, a place where being
different was idolized, and those very
differences are what drew us together.
If the younger me could see what I
accomplished–what mesmerizing
journey i undertook–I probably would
have stared like a Chinese child
seeing a foreigner for the first time
because I would have seemed just as
outlandish and striking.
I was the odd one out, the one who
dared, the foreigner, 老 外 (lao-why).
Ryan Ritchie
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