By Jarek

This was actually the second time I’ve taken A camping in China. In our few first months here, our church congregation organized a campout, and I got my hopes waaay too high about getting out of the city… until we set up our tent in what was essentially a backyard right next to the high-speed train station. We still had a good time, but it was not exactly what I had in mind.

So you’d think that this time around I’d be more realistically prepared. “Fool me once” and all that. And yet, somehow, in the same moment that I looked at pictures of the campsite online and said, “Stars, haha, yeah right, they totally photo-shopped that in there” I didn’t also think, “Wow, no people and no trash, they must have photo-shopped those out.” Once again, expectations dashed by the realities of China.

The experience is a perfect case study of worldview and culture clash. When I hear the word “camping,” I bring all the background of a childhood in Wyoming: solitude, freedom, stillness, overwhelming nature. Camping with Chinese characteristics, however, is more likely to feature crowds, limits, late-night karaoke, and all the traces of thousands of years of continuous human habitation. I shouldn’t have been surprised—we live in the most populous province of the most populous nation on earth, where camping is only a recently imported pastime. Even armed with logic and prior experience, though, I brought my hardwired expectations of camping and so was in for a shock. But fear not, gentle reader. We still had fun!

Every U.S. consulate or embassy has an office dedicated to building the community. We have been the beneficiaries of many of their events, activities, and support. I was excited when they announced a camping trip through a local tour company, and though it was a little pricey I figured it would be a fun weekend with A. Other consulate families would be going, and A could play with friends at the beach.

The night before, I reviewed the schedule: leave from the consulate on Saturday, take a boat to Da La Jia Island, swim and camp and play, and come home Sunday morning. Somehow I managed to understand each step correctly while imagining every detail wrong.

The departure from the consulate was no hassle, but my imagined two-hour drive shaped up to be over four—I miscalculated the distance, overestimated the speed of the bus, and wishfully imagined no weekend traffic. Hardy-har-har. We stopped for lunch along the way at a restaurant prepared by the tour to receive us. A liked the live fish, shrimp, and crabs in tanks outside. The food was fine, though we definitely got the “Hey, this is bland, I bet foreigners will eat it” menu. At one point the waitress put a nice-looking eggplant dish on the table, then realized her mistake and whisked it away. When I asked after it, she told me it was for the tour guides, not us.

After lunch we were dropped off at a fruit market to wander around while the guides bought food supplies for all the meals. After sticking my head in for about ten seconds to ascertain that the market was, indeed, like many fruit markets I’ve been to before, A and I headed outside and tracked down our own five-liter jug of water, cheap beach toys, and ice cream. At last we boarded the bus to carry on our merry way. My imagined two-hour direct route this voyage was not.

Eventually we disembarked near a dock. Here, I use both the words “near” and “dock” loosely. Due to construction we had to load up our gear and hoof it a decent little ways between the bus and the boat. Arriving at the beach, I could not actually see a dock but I did notice some rocks and a board sticking out a little ways into the water. Once a boat pulled up to the board, I realized my mistake.

Staring at the boat, I realized that in my mind I had pictured our transport from land to the island in a sort of yacht, white, clean, and tall, with ample seating indoor and outdoor for our party of 25. Now imagine a speedboat that is none of those things. Take what you have imagined, multiply its sketchy factor by six, and you may have an approximation of our royal chariot. It did have life jackets, though nothing child-sized, and I was glad I’d brought A’s own one. I buckled it on him as we clambered into the boat and tried to hide our baggage from the threatening drizzle of rain.

In many things, A is fearless. He was delighted with the boat ride, and I felt my spirits lift too as we cut across the bay. It was a good distance, maybe 20 minutes at high speed, but even with the rain the air was hot and so the wind felt great. The water was calm and the ride surprisingly smooth.

As we neared the island, however, I noticed a problem. The beach—what you could see of it—was covered with tents. It was not a large island, and between the rocks was quite a short beach, maybe an eight-minute walk from one extremity to the other. There were hundreds of people on it. Right in the middle was some sort of high school military camp, with 200 teenagers in blue navy camo fatigues standing in rows and playing on their phones. The plastic detritus of this crowd and their predecessors swarming the island each day littered the beach, eddied in the water, and made great mounds against the rocks. At that moment, I at last realized in full the astonishing distance between my expectations and the reality of our experience.

The trick in getting through with a fun time regardless was focusing on A. He still loved setting up the tent. He still loved playing in the waves. He still had fun collecting shells, building sandcastles, and paddle boarding. And therefore, so did I.

There were still occasional bumps along the way—A could not abide the campsite’s “toilet;” absent Kaylee’s help with sunscreen I got a sunburn pattern on my back worthy of the Hirshhorn; and the only living bird on the island screamed like a banshee at five in the morning—but darn it all, we had fun. A loved the other kids and made friends, and he can’t ever get enough of the sea. So though I maintain that Wyoming camping is real camping, I’m not sorry that I took another shot at camping with Chinese characteristics.