A friend, who writes for "That’s Shanghai" magazine, has a new article posted online, titled One Step Beyond:
There was an old joke I heard as a kid: a city slicker is lost in the countryside; eventually, he happens upon a local walking along the dirt road. The guy asks for directions back to the city and the local makes several unsuccessful attempts to explain the route. Finally, the local gives up and says to the city slicker: “Well, I guess you can’t get there from here.” Needless to add, the point of this little jest is that there is always a way to get from point A to point B. But not necessarily so in China. We may be all-too-familiar with the Lao Tse saying: “A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.” Which is good advice (provided you know what the heck a li is), but it omits a crucial precondition. There first must be a road to walk on. Put another way, you may know your destination, but finding the path to get there is a whole ‘nuther matter.
Go here to read the whole thing. You won’t regret it.
