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         Once in Haikou my first telephone call (on a borrowed cellphone) wasn't to my landlord to ask if he could perhaps pick me up at the airport, it wasn't to my close friend Robert, and it wasn't to any of the other people I've known almost since the beginning of my time on this island. It was to the bike shop manager.

"喂,李有志吗?是玫瑰.我回来了中国.现在坐在飞机场巴士.您们关门了没有?"

"Ah Zhi? This is Marian. I'm back in China. Sitting on the airport bus right now. Are you guys still open?"

         It being nearly 9 o'clock at night and certain to be nearly 10 by the time I got downtown this was a very valid question to be asking. Just because I'm enough of a regular that I can carry a tab, invite the mechanics out to dinner, eat dinner at the bike shop or end up at a seven hour mahjongg session on the second floor of the shop doesn't mean I want to show up after hours without at least giving a heads up. Not that I'm entirely sure what the business hours are.

         Spring Festival is a big holiday and much of the economy for the island (whether we like it or not) is still centered around tourism. Mostly we like it, except when we have to deal with the yobbos in their loud Hawaiian prints running up prices, taking all the seats in the best resteraunts, making traffic jams, and so on. I'm a foreigner and I was gawping at things (the city changed in the three weeks I was away). Although it helped that I was asking to go someplace really weird (why would anyone newly arrived from the airport go to old town at night?) I don't think the taxi driver really believed me when I said I lived here until I stuck my head out the window and yelled "我回来了我回来了" (I'm back, I'm back) And was met with people taking my gear out of the open (unbungeed) trunk before the car had even finished parking.

         It was good to be back in a familiar place on the stair where I sit (there isn't any other quite like it) watching the mechanics do their business (which included reassembling my bike) while periodically bouncing and flitting from one place to another, handing out chocolates from America ('tis a great shame none of the handsome young men knew I was kissing them with Hershey's kisses), showing off the embroidered silk jacket I got in Vietnam, the backpack I bought, the pedals Mike brought me, my new camera, my new ipod, unpacking my bags across the floor of the shop trying to dig out the things that were going with me in the morning (so I wouldn't have to carry them home and back) ... because the very best thing about going away is coming back again.