In Which I'm Beguiled by a Vegetable

By the time it looked like my luggage was good and gone, the only thing left to do was buy and eat the sweet potato. I'm sorry, CDC, and I thank you for all your warnings about food from street vendors, but what else was I supposed to do?

So, hello, toothess Hui man standing in an alley and roasting sweet potatoes in a 55-gallon drum! A mere 2.5 yuan, you say? Don't mind if I do! He wrapped the misshapen thing in a plastic baggie and I cuddled it for a bit as I wobbled down the snow-slick sidewalk. It was very, very warm and the afternoon was very, very cold.

And my luggage was missing. In fact, its very existence was met by Air China and U.S. Airways representatives with the sort of skeptcism reserved for mentions of Nessie. I tried to convince them and ended up protesting too much: No, it's true, I swear! I saw it with my own eyes! It was blue, and it rolled.

So I was wearing the same clothes I had been for the previous four days, and I was coming off 52 hours in airplanes and airports, and I'd used a squat toilet for the first time in my life, and I'd bought a bottle of water using what turned out to be 30 percent Mandarin, 70 percent gibberish -- "WAW. MY. SHWAY." -- and I was standing on a sidewalk in Urumqi, China, thinking the Talking Heads were prophets: Well, how did I get here?

I hugged my potato a little tighter, and pondered how so many things in life seem like a good idea at the time.