One time, I woke up from an afternoon nap, and I went downstairs and found the den full of ladies in red dresses with plates and drinks in their hands. I took it they were from the school next door.

The airport seemed like a megalithic bathroom, with its janitorial-fresh aroma, pale yellow tiled walls, and green steeped corridors. We headed into the front lobbies near the baggage checkpoints and ticket counters where my mom scoured the proximity for her brother, Uncle Bhoy.

“I’m a taxi driver in Calcutta…I’m a taxi driver in Calcutta…” my drivers’ tape deck sang out in a creepily chirpy voice, as my cab sped solo on an empty expressway to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

“Once you’ve seen one pagoda, you’ve seen them all,” said one Polish backpacker I met outside the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing.