Visiting the Xīnjiāng Autonomous Region last week, I was taken by how extremely different it is from eastern China. Whether it be the Central Asian look and sounds of the people there, the signs written in Arabic as well as Chinese (with English a distant, faltering third), or the expanse of desert ringed by unreal looking mountains of sand, rock, and then snow-capped peaks, this is not the China that most foreigners imagine. Yet despite this and the differences in language, religion, and opinions, and despite also my impression that the hodgepodge of ethnicities native to this region, particularly the Uighurs, are looked down upon by the Han majority, this is part of it. China is the far side of the world; Xīnjiāng is the far side of China. Accordingly, it represents to many Chinese what China represents to many Westerners-a distant, mysterious, exotic place. Traveling out to Ürümqi, Tiān Chí, and Turpan (Tŭlŭfān), I felt a jolt similar to, although less powerful than, the one I experienced when I first came to China in 2003. But even while still out there, I had another feeling, not a jolt so much as a steadily growing idea that I began to have a few months after my return here in 2005: China’s not as different from the United States as I once thought it was. I kept thinking of how this part of the country, in its peculiar desert beauty, looked like Arizona. And how the Tiān Shān range looked very much like pictures that I’d seen of the Rockies. Of course, China’s about as foreign as it gets, in all of the obvious ways and others that are not so visible. But the two countries are similar. If you’re willing to take the time to compare US and Chinese cities, rivers, mountains, deserts, airline and railway hubs, and any number of other things, you will find that they match up quite nicely. But this is not the only way that they are alike. I’ve also found in my time here that daily life, although different in its details, often follows a pattern close to that of the United States. This, for me, was a personal and, to some extent, relieving discovery. Before I came to China, I had planned on going to Vietnam. When I gave my notice at work and told my soon-to-be-former colleagues that I was planning on going there to live, one of them said something like, “So you want to stand in line to pick up your toilet paper, huh?” in reference to the perceived communist way of doing things. He wasn’t entirely joking. Worse, I started thinking, “What if he’s right?” In spite of myself, I visualized standing in a long line of irritated Vietnamese people and then being screamed at by some equally irritated low-level government official waving a roll of toilet paper in my face and then not giving it to me for some reason that I literally didn’t understand. I still haven’t made it to Vietnam. Maybe that’s how it is. In China, however, it isn’t. The toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, Coke, batteries, and just about everything else you can pick up at your local Walgreen’s is available here, too. And the line at the counter’s usually not too bad, either. I’ve found that many daily activities here in Nánjīng are very much like those in Boston: catching the bus, looking busy at work, figuring out what to eat for dinner, watching TV, surfing the net, getting the kids ready for bed, whatever. Sitting in a friend’s living room after dinner one night as we watched a cop show on TV, I told her that this is pretty much what people in the States do after they eat. She seemed surprised to hear it. I went on to say that life in America isn’t like the TV shows popular here on DVD and unlike the characters on Friends, people usually need to hold onto a steady job in order to keep an apartment in Manhattan. She politely listened to what I had to say and then launched into a very precise explanation of how the Umbrella Gang swung the rent. She knew her stuff. I didn’t have a chance. Eventually, I managed to crawl out of the conversation and we went back to watching the show. Nice time. Hey, I’ve got my toilet paper.