The Three Most Ridiculous Hours of My Entire Life.

In the name of spontaneous adventure, I decided to break up the train ride from Huangshan to Shanghai by stopping in the small, obscure city of Xuancheng, in Anhui province. I stepped off the train at 6pm, with a ticket in hand to continue my journey to Shanghai later on in the night. The city must have almost never see foreigners, because I immediatlely became a spectacle. No one spoke any English either. But adventure is what I had sought, and adventure I received. I don't have time to write the full story, so consider this a teaser. Briefly, my three hours in Xuancheng involved: Being surrounded multiple times by 20 locals at once and peppered with questions; sitting outside in the town square and enjoying pitchers of beer with passerbys; giving my digits to a group of 9 year old school girls; me belting out a solo rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" to a bar full of locals; awkward ballroom dancing; a terryifying dark alley; and complete nudity. In the end I was dropped off back at the train station, my body and possessions in tact. The only changes to me were that I was cleaner, had my teeth brushed, was still shaking a bit from the dark alley, and had several new friends.