The PA crackled to life on China Airlines Flight CA1333, service from Beijing to Wuhan, jarring me out of my half-sleep. The flight attendant cleared her throat softly, then said in her clipped, nasal voice:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been informed that because of some technical difficulties, we’ll be turning around and heading back to Beijing airport.”

Click.

Trying to suppress the anxieties that tend to arise when the words “technical difficulties” are applied to an airplane in which I’m currently airborne, I looked around at my fellow passengers to gauge their reaction.

One woman, staring open-mouthed into the middle distance, almost seemed on the verge of panic; but then, she barked a scornful laugh and settled into her chair for a nap. The elderly man across from me glanced up briefly from his paper when the announcement started, but went back to reading as soon as he realized its import. Everyone else was snoozing.

Either these people had the most monumental self-discipline of any population on Earth, or this was not a wholly uncommon occurrence. In any event, I realized they had it right; whether or not it was serious, I had no control over the outcome anyway. Either I would arrive at Wuhan a few hours later than expected, or I would die in an enormous fireball.

I went back to sleep.

That afternoon, following a great deal of sitting in Beijing airport’s terminal 3, I found myself in another plane, descending toward Wuhan’s Tianhe airport through distressingly yellow cloud cover. Nor was the city an especially welcoming sight once we descended below the clouds. It was gloomily lit in the late afternoon, with a pall of smog and clouds clinging to clusters of gritty-looking buildings, in turn huddled around a dark river that wound its way through the city like an oil slick.

Even so, a sense of celebration filled me as the wheels touched the tarmac, and I stepped off the plane with the strangest feeling of homecoming.

It seemed fitting that the first person I recognized on my return trip to Wuhan was the first friend I made here; Molly, perched on a barstool at the hostel’s front desk, did a double take as I walked up to the front step, and bolted out through the double doors to hug me. XiXi wasn’t far behind, and from there on it was something of a blur of faces, both familiar and unfamiliar.

After a few hours of celebrating, and one or two too many beers, I gave up the fight against jetlag and turned in at around 9pm. The party continued without me; I heard the next day that Jing Jing walked in around midnight, looked around, and just said, “那个人呢？”, or “So? Where is he?”

In a conversation I had with my friend’s husband yesterday, he grilled me about my education growing up. When we got to the part where I chose to attend UC San Diego instead of Berkeley or UCLA, he was intrigued. He wondered whether, at my high school reunions, wouldn’t I feel a sense of inferiority compared to my classmates who went on to places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford? Wouldn’t I be envious of their houses, cars, and so on?

I thought for a moment, and then repeated a sentiment someone related to me a while ago: You have to define your own measures for success. I haven’t much interest in the trappings of luxury, and for now I am far more interested in pursuing other things; friendships, relationships, and — for lack of a better word — adventure.

So now, even though I am by nearly any measure a vagrant, I am happier than I have been in a long time. I feel like I’ve distilled the the things I need down to the bare minimum — indeed, my worldly possessions now fit in one suitcase and one backpack, with room to spare — and this allows me to see the things I want more clearly.

At any event, the last few days have been so full of activity — things I need to arrange, work I need to do, people I need to spend time with — that not only have I not had time to write, what I do write is scattered, sloppy, and essentially just me drooling words onto a screen.

So. Enjoy that mental image. Better posts will be coming once I get over my jetlag and the “welcome back” fervor starts dying down.