The People’s Republic of China is a nation of 1.6 billion people. Let’s honor the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who hang their laundry where they damn please. The People’s Person.

Kids do the darndest things when class is out. Especially when their faces aren’t buried in homework at an afterschool program or when there aren’t any local gangs to join. Such is the case with Bored Afterschool Kid. Let’s call him Zhou (Joe). His parents own the restaurant down the block from my flat and they make “jook” or rice porridge. The restaurant gets tons of customers throughout the day, so the parents are often too busy to look after their son. For Zhou, this means absolute freedom.

For me, a paying customer hungry for a steaming bowl of jook, this means crayons in the hot chili oil. And for your information, the crayons are not made by Crayola. I’m guessing they are probably made in a factory in Shenzhen, where impoverished workers – most likely the same age as Zhou – stir large vats filled with boiling ammonia, rat carcasses, and soy to create all the colors of the rainbow. As I slurp up my jook, I pretend that “Yin Black” is made by Crayola. Unless Crayola is made in China, which means I’m fucked.

On another occasion, I walk by the restaurant and see Zhou playing outside. No, not with toys. But with a wooden plank and a stack of concrete blocks. Here’s his game: Zhou positions the middle of the plank on the sidewalk edge. Then, he places a concrete block on one end of the plank, and jumps on the other end, sending the heavy block flying into the streets. Meanwhile, cyclists zoom by, completely oblivious to their impending face-to-pavement future. And after Zhou has exhausted his supply, the little boy runs out into the street and lugs each concrete block back onto his plank for round two.

All the while, Zhou’s parents are stirring their umpteenth pot of jook. The matron might scold him every now and then to do his homework, but she’s usually far too busy dealing with customers. They aren’t to be blamed for Zhou’s self-directed afterschool curriculum. They have to make money to support a family, that is the reality of it.

But I see it this way. For working class families in the China of today, Zhou’s upbringing is no different than that of middle American families in the 1950s. When the bell rings, children would run home to play stickball. They would explore by the creek, or experiment with wood and fire. Do unspeakable things to a snail.

The world is their playground.

There’s a beautiful ring to it. One that’s missing from the touchscreen-obsessed youth of the United States of Facebook. Film director Terence Malick expressed this sentiment wonderfully in the Tree of Life. Sure, the environments are different: Shanghai in 2011, with its constant inflow of construction and commerce versus the quiet life of 1950’s Waco, Texas. But the dreams are the same. Work hard to support your family. Do whatever it takes to better your child’s future. In the meantime, hand them a concrete block and let them run free.

These are bamboo shoots. At least that’s what the lady at the supermarket told me. So I bought two, along with many other ingredients, for the dumplings my roommates and I were planning to make. It’s Chinese New Years after all. We had no problem preparing the other ingredients; mincing cabbage, garlic, ginger, green onions, and cucumbers were a cinch. But THIS, these bamboo shoots, were blowing my mind. I began peeling off each layer, one by one, until I reached the core. There was a huge pile in the trash but nothing in my hands. Where the hell was the meat?

And then I realized something. This was my first time holding a bamboo shoot in its original dirty rooty glory, let alone peel one. The first time I’m hand-making dumplings from scratch. The first time I’m celebrating Chinese New Years wholeheartedly and not just half. I realized the America in me has overshadowed my ancestral heritage.

After all, I had already celebrated, you know, the regular New Years on December 31st. I had already stumbled from bar to club to bar in the company of my equally hammered friends. We drank to the dawning of a new three sixty five. And before that – for that warm, fuzzy feeling – there was Christmas. So like any American, I already had my fill of holiday.

But this time around, I saw CNY as a minor annoyance. I liked many parts of it: relatives gave me red envelopes stuffed with money, the delicious home-cooked meals, and the general liveliness. But this was my first time celebrating it in China, and Shanghai has been a ghost town. All the restaurants and stores are closed and no one is on the streets. The supermarket chains are open, but they are filled with a province’s worth of Chinese people. And they are damn aggressive with the shopping carts. Fireworks – while exciting at the first burst – explode incessantly at all hours of the day every day. Travel is difficult because ticket prices are expensive and scarce, tourist attractions become crowded, and I’d rather not occupy a train seat that a migrant worker might need. To be honest, it’s kind of a boring week.

A few days before the official holiday, at 11pm, I was hungry but too lazy to make or pick up any food. So I called McDonald’s delivery (which has been an absolute godsend even though it contradicts the term “fast food” because delivery can take up to 90 fucking minutes and your fries get all soggy). I waited impatiently and finally, the delivery guy rang my doorbell. He took off his motorcycle helmet and as I handed him my money, I saw his face. The man was tired. Really tired. He had little fight in his eyes and he was drenched in ice-cold rain from delivering fast food to spoiled brats like me. I felt terrible. I was being a little shit, the People’s Republic’s Scrooge. The Chinese are hardworking people and all they ask is one week a year where they can spend time with family. And here I was grumbling.

At that moment, I conceded my grumpiness and dove headfirst into celebrating Chinese New Years. On the day of, I wore my brand new red pants (please, no judgements). My roommates, my sister, and I made dumplings from scratch. We prepared the pork and shrimp filling, kneaded the dough, and fried the suckers. And the best part of all – thanks to my industrious problem-solving German friends – there was a hint of bamboo shoot in every bite.

But let me explain how I got here. I flew from San Francisco to Seoul to Shanghai to Chongqing, where my sister Maggie and I got swindled by a cabbie. We then took a full day’s worth of cramped bus rides from Chongqing to Chengdu and finally into the valley. After traveling two hemispheres, that first whiff of mountain air was the smelling salt to my exhaustion. Ahh.

Jiuzhaigou is a protected nature reserve known for its snow-capped peaks, waterfalls and lakes. We could’ve experienced it the easy way – in a heated bus full of fanny-packed Chinese tourists – but no, our crew found ourselves shuttled to the top of the mountain. A sign, blanketed in snow, told us we were in the Primeval Forest. Did I take a wrong turn in the Legend of Zelda?

We hiked down, all 14 kilometers of it. Along the way, the landscape changed with each passing turn. The lakes were amazing! There were ones that reflected the thousand-foot rock faces above it, and ones that were so intensely blue, you could see the bottom of the lake.

During the trip, Maggie and I met a mother and her two sons, Kenneth and Nick, from Hong Kong. They took us in as their own, and that night, after a trek of a lifetime, we stayed in a Tibetan home stay.

The matron of the house – a tall Tibetan woman in her 60s with a booming voice and a sweet, genuine smile – welcomed us. She had prepared a meal cooked over a wood-burning stove: stir fried beef with veggies, ice cold tomato slices with sugar, and a bowl of cabbage soup. And for dessert, yak butter tea.

The sun had set, and the street dogs outside were scampering home. I returned to my room and slipped under the covers, very far away from home.