Friends in China and everywhere else
You may have seen this photo posted before and thought that I was just sneaking a shot of some stranger on the train in China. Nope! Well, I was sneaking a shot but she’s no stranger! Her name is Xie Ying (American name Helen) and we couldn’t have asked for a better person to meet up with when we got onto the 24 hour train ride from Beijing to Guilin.
She’s actually a college professor in Kunming (in the south) and she was in Beijing with 3 of her students for an enviromental conference. Yes. We were just as surprised to run into not only one chinese environmentalist, but four of them on the same train.
We honestly could not have asked for better cabin-mates (of course it wasn’t a real cabin since we bought hard-sleeper tickets.) If you ever have the choice and you’re traveling in China by train - get a hard sleeper and start talking to some people with their broken english and your almost non-existent mandarin.
Xie Ying had a text translator/thesaurus on her cellphone which really came in handy during our trip.
Why are we talking about her? Because the other day I finally wrote her an email and today we received her reply:
Hello! LeahAndMark!
I’m ( xie ying ), your friend whom you met on the train last April going from Beijing to Guilin. I feel so glad when I received your E-mail! I’m very happy because you remember me! Thank you!
Actually, I want to write to you on several occasions. But, my English is not well, I’m afraid to write. Now, I gather up my courage to write to you with the help of translation online sometimes. If you find my mistake, please tell me. Thank you!
(By the way Xie Ying - your written english is WAY better than my written chinese - TRUST ME.)
It was just an extremely awesome surprise that dropped into my inbox while I sat at my desk in the office today. In fact, today has been a pretty awesome day in general and the rest of the week? - it’s looking even better - thanks to my friend Rick, some other occurrences, the Twelpers, and of course the general awesomeness that is LeahAnd (ha! see what I did there? I’m Mark… that makes her LeahAnd… um, nevermind. - okay that would technically make me Mark.com which I’m alright with… because she’s LeahAnd!)
(This was taken while we sat waiting in the Beijing train station - absolutely massive and people everywhere - so we sat on the floor of course.)
About a month earlier, our friend Jeff Shia emailed us from Guangzhou (I think). And then Wang, an engineer we briefly met while in Shangri-La also wrote us a while back. It’s all just… see I know how common and easy it is to connect with people who live on the other side of the planet, but it’s just a whole different thing when it’s people you actually met in person. What am I getting at? I don’t know, but I’m just so very happy that we created our friend cards and even to this day still hand them out to people we meet that we may want to say hello to in the future for whatever reason.
For us - they’re brilliant because we can hand them out without giving up too much contact information (phone/address) and then we also get new people to check out our blog here - and even though most don’t ever comment or probably even keep up with the reading - they email us and say hi - so less and less we’re not having to lose those happenstance connections with people that occur while we’re standing in line someplace and a conversation strikes, or we’re at a party, or any other stranger to stranger situation where maybe, just maybe we’re interesting in finding out if you’re cool or not. 
(That’s Jeff on the left there.)
Because obviously, for us our blog isn’t just about ’speaking to an audience’ but also to our friends - and anyone who’s found themselves increasingly busy with less time to simply hangout - will understand the importance and convenience that a blog provides to friends and family who otherwise would only ever get the once a month ‘update phone call’ if even that (of course that could just be me.)
(This is Xie Ying and ‘Lucas’ - he didn’t have an American name so we named him um, Lucas!)
So yeah. While attempts have been made to get our blog our there - it’s really just a medium to grow our friend-base! And we’re always happy when we see new people signing up for our rss feed. Which oh, look at that, is right here - or if you noticed, at the top right of our blog in the sidebar, is a easy email feed signup box.
So while I may have wondered whether or not this week was going to be good - I now have no doubt. There are too many things in the works and we have good friends all around - new, old, and even undiscovered. Oh, and if this is you don’t live here in Atlanta, and one day you find yourself stranded for a few hours at the airport and you’re up for it… let us know. We just might be able to kick with you - old skool style.
In the meantime, some strung-together clips of the train and Leah interacting the way she does - oh, and our loooooooooooong walk from one end of the train back to the other after our fruitful search for some bottled water.
LeahAndMark.com - Train Ride: Beijing to Guilin from LeahAndMark.com on Vimeo.pg=embed&sec=1562952″>Vimeo.<–>
