Information overload, sans any real information...

And just like that, I knew it. It's time. Sitting in a hostel in Chengdu I believe I've realized that China is no longer the place for me. It may be that I've talked myself into this in the face of my imminent departure, but there I was and suddenly it seemed that China, a place of increasing interest to so many millions around the world, is, in some ways, becoming less interesting to this one. Newspaper articles pour forth in alternating glowing and critical tones (depending on whether you're in the travel or the business section), books are being written as fast, or perhaps even faster than new perspectives are conceived. In short, I'm a bit tired of hearing about it, of being inundated with snippets describing flashes of a nation which steep themselves in important language but tend to capture absolutely nothing about what it's like to live here. It could be that a short time away from here and I'll be itching to return (there's so much that I legitimately love about life here), but at the moment there's just something overwhelming about the media and marketing machine that is constantly reminding us that the 21st century will belong to China. I long to live in a place nobody cares to write about, someplace where life is about improving what you have, day by day, and not about purported international consequences and geopolitical considerations. Send me to the end of the earth, and don't send me with a newspaper subscription.