tbt: getting lost in zhuhai, china

For one year after college, I taught English at Sun Yat-Sen University in the small city of Zhuhai, China. It was so different from any other place I had lived in or traveled to before. Life was simple and slow. The other teachers and I biked or walked everywhere, spent around CNY ¥5-7 (USD $0.75-1) on average per meal, and always had a lot of free time on our hands.

There wasn't a lot around the university other than the small village of Tangjia that had a wet market with caged chickens, pig carcasses hanging from string, and exotic fruit stands. There were also a few supermarkets and many hole-in-the-wall noodle and steamed bun shops. In between classes, we’d explore.

One day, we biked out to this empty highway. A single car or a bus would pass by every few minutes or so, but other than that it was quiet. We went a little further and found a small village on the other side of the bridge. From the half-finished look of the buildings, people could've been moving in just as easily as they could've been moving out. And yet, no one was there...