If it ain’t broke, you probably didn’t buy it in China.

Never before has a smallish white girl looked at a large brown man and thought, How nice! One of my own kind! But in this case I was truly pleased to meet a fellow English-speaking foreigner—an Indian dude, who spotted me within my first few struggling steps into the mad circus that is Chungking Mansions. He talked a blue streak, as you come to expect merchants in China to, bargained, cajoled and flattered me, but even the salesmanship didn’t make me like him less.

Anyway, thanks to his entrepreneurial spirit, here I am on a flower-sheeted single bed, in a room hardly bigger than it, in front of a small window in “Yan Han House”, the top floor of Chungking Mansions (vastly less opulent than it sounds, I assure you), Kowloon, Hong Kong.

In the events leading up to this moment, I have discarded two thirds of my worldly belongings, left chunks of suitcase in four different cities, stayed in two hotels I couldn’t afford, frolicked in the Pacific Ocean, cried thrice, been caught in the rain multiple times, eaten the most delicious egg tart of my life, and been helped by at least four angels disguised as regular people: two Chinese, one Dutch and one Australian.

Bottom line, I am okay. I am here, I am alive, and I am definitely paring down my belongings—again.