Wandering Misfit: Part 7 ... enter the other misfits

     I am still, to this day, not really sure what I was expecting when it came time to meet my fellow wanderers and misfits. I think somewhere I had the impression of them as people who just wanted to do something different. That maybe they would be tied together by the bond of choosing uncertainty and adventure over calm certainty.

     In some ways I was disappointed but in others I was pleasantly surprised. Nowhere to be seen, at least in that initial meeting, was the drive to see the world differently I had in some naive way hoped for. Instead what I found was a general joyous abandon. Also at this first dinner I saw some of the gluing together of people who under other circumstances would not have given each other the time of day.

     An odd bunch indeed. It is strange to recount that this was less than 5 years ago, but even so recently China was a different place, especially in a backwater like Dongying. This was before Chairman Xi came and started his war on corruption, before the real drive began to make it more difficult for foreigners to enter the country. I say that it has become more difficult because it has but perhaps suggesting that it has been made that way is wrong. Instead I should say that all of the little loopholes have been closed and all the blind eyes turned now stare unblinking.

     Going back to that I myself had at this time not come into the country on a work visa but instead a tourist one. Admittedly I never worked illegally on that visa but to be honest you aren't supposed to, and can't now, have these visas changed over in country. There was a brief stage where people would duck off to Hong Kong or even Thailand to get it changed but even that now has gone by the wayside as in a later tale I am sure I will complain bitterly about.

     I digress however. This veritable mix of humanity sitting before me were to be my new colleagues, friends and only "real" contact with the world for the foreseeable future.

      Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger.