Call me Ishmael

Readers can now rest assured that the longest hiatus in the history of Changsha et al. has come to an end. The cause, mind you, was a worthy one: a long-weekend trip to the no-nails Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge and, more impressively, the breathtaking Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces, a sprawling region of tiered rice fields, the beauty of which is surpassed in value only by its serendipitous location in Administrative Region #11, the Guangxi Autonomous Region. Guangxi is populated by members of some of China's most numerous minority groups, most of whom have utterly failed to distinguish themselves from one another in the field in which they all seem to excel: embroidery design. Who would have thought that mere bucolic isolation would have resulted in the complete uniformity of tourist culture that the Yao, Dong, Miao and Zhuang people all display with such panache? This lack of anthropological avoirdupois notwithstanding, the trip was a step in the right direction towards the goal of catching a glimpse of the white whale, the elusive "real China."