In Which I Put on My Big Girl Panties. Or My Buddha Panties, As It Were.

In northwest China, there are dozens of desert hillsides and cliff faces honeycombed with Buddha caves. In these caves, the devout painted elaborate, vivid murals on the walls and ceilings and enshrined statues of the Buddha. His holiness is as much a part of this area's history as are Silk Road traders and exiled government officials (really: this is where they sent people to punish them).

So there was no escaping him as I wandered through the Xinjiang Provincial Museum in Urumqi. I'd turn a corner and there he was, smiling at me serenely. Venturing into another room, he was there, all benevolence and peace. It was infuriating.

LOOK, BUDDHA, I JUST WANT TO ADMIRE UYGHUR CARPETS, OK!?!

But no, he was having none of it. He just kept smiling smiling smiling and sending me this one clear message: Calm the hell down, lotus blossom.

I'll admit to being a little... tense. And not just because my luggage still was lost. It was everything -- the unfamiliarty of my new home, my inability to speak the language, the mutton kebab that had taken up permanent residence in my stomach.

Take, for example, the simple act of riding in a cab. In China, the lines on the road are something of a hilarious joke, a delightful whimsy to give drivers a laugh as they cut off buses, careen a hair's breadth past other cars and straddle lanes at breakneck speed. And cab drivers. *sigh* Cab drivers seem to be under the impression that the engine is aflame and they must get to the fire station immediately.

So, I discovered during my first cab ride that it is, in fact, possible to clench every muscle in my body simultaneously, including those tiny ones in my ears. It seemed rude to shriek, "There's a bus! There's a bus right there!!!" -- not that the driver would have understood me, anyway -- so I full-body cringed and prayed: Please, Lord, do not let me die in a Volkswagen on Beijing Road.

This ride was followed by the discovery that China is a nation of line cutters. I'd had a hint of this at the airport, but really got a taste at the health center where I went to get my work visa. What seemed like 9,000 people were crammed into a tiled, fluorescent-lit office the size of my parents' living room, and the effect was of 9,000 salmon swimming up a single fish ladder. There was no line; there was a scrum. I was jostled and then shoved, and an insidious shoulder kept trying to worm its way past my arm.

"Dude!" I finally said. "Do you mind?"

I got a blank look and a shoulder to the kidney. I guess in a nation with a population of 1.3 billion, you have to shove if you're ever going to get what you need. But what I wanted to stand on the desk and shout is, "Look, Xinjiang Province has a sixth of China's land mass and only 20 million people. It's not that crowded. WHAT'S WITH THE SHOVING?"

But I didn't. I just tensed up a little more. I guess that's why the Buddha wouldn't leave me alone.

Staring into his serene face, I resigned myself to giving in. OK, Buddha, I will not struggle. I will drift. There is nothing I can do about my luggage. My beloved sister is on the case, and if she can't track it down, nobody can. Otherwise, I will buy clothes here, because they obviously carry so many clothes for women who are 6'1" in northwest China...

But no, that doesn't matter. I will breathe deeply. I will take things as they come. I will simply close my eyes in the cab, in the manner of enjoying a nice little rest. And OK, maybe I'll throw the occasional elbow in a "line," but I won't get bent out of shape about it.

And I'll remember the tender mercies and small graces that have marked my time in China so far -- the woman who waited with me in line at the Beijing airport, just to make sure I got my ticket OK; the cab driver who laughed at himself as he practiced his English on me; the man in the Chengdu airport who pretended he kind of understood my Chinese; the people I passed on the sidewalk who smiled and nodded as they walked by.

As overwhelming as it's been, it's been beautiful, too -- as thrilling as anything I've ever experienced. I'd wanted something different, some grand adventure, and I definitely was getting it. So, standing in the Xinjiang museum, communing with the Buddha, I pulled on my metaphorical big girl panties.

Just then, a lady from the Urumqi airport called. My luggage was on the 5 p.m. flight from Beijing.