I had a China-tastic weekend. We all piled into my host grandfather’s Mitsubishi to take Sophie to the suburbs where she played "constructively," in English of course, with the six little girls of an American missionary family.

Me: Are you going to celebrate Halloween now that you live in China?
Girl: My mommy says Halloween is Satan’s birthday.

We took two of the girls to go bowling, because that’s apparently what you do in China at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. On the way, there was some sort of detour, for a reason that escapes me, to what can only be described as a talent show for the elderly. I shrank back along the sidelines until I was seized by a 65-year-old man with a crumpled sheet of paper bearing what I later determined to be a shoddy English translation of some weird Christian hymn.

Man: I am overseas Chinese. I live Burma. I am doctor. You know? You know?
Me: Yes. I know.
Man: Do you know the river of no return?
Me: Um. No.
Man: OK. You sing with me onstage.

My host grandmother finally, after a million years, noticed that an old man was trying to drag me onstage and came to my rescue. Then we went bowling.

No matter what I do, I can’t eat my food at anything but lightning speed. It’s an American thing. My grandmother is always telling me, “man man chi,” eat slowly, but in a matter of minutes my meal is gone, while the others haven’t even served themselves rice. When they try to spoon more greens into my bowl, I protest, “wo zhende chi bao le.” They all put their chopsticks down, pause a minute, and direct me to the fruit bowl, where I am supposed to eat one tangerine after another until the rest of the family has finished.

My grandmother likes to feed me fruit. I don’t mind, because I happen to be a big believer in fruit, but it’s kind of funny how she sits there, watches me eat a banana, then tries to give me another one. I have gotten used to evening conversation over a pomegranate. Every morning, my grandmother tries to stuff my schoolbag with apples, until I explain to her that the added mass actually makes riding my bicycle even more miserable.

I am really at wit’s end with this whole bike-riding thing. I have to keep looking for new bicycle-repair stands so the shopkeepers don’t think I’m a complete asshole who keeps breaking her bike. Instead of marching into confrontation with the school rental place, Xiao Zhou and I decided it would be better if I just rode her bike, which she never uses. Which was great, until halfway home when the chain fell off. Then a policeman yelled at me for riding in the crosswalk while I was in the middle of a busy intersection. Honestly, aren't there bigger fish to fry in the realm of Chinese traffic law than a hapless foreign exchange student on a bicycle?

China is one big puppy parade. Puppies scamper down the mossy steps of old temples and chase each other between the legs of octopus-tentacle vendors. I don’t know why they never seem to grow old, but they must send the elderly dogs into a doggie nursing home (my vegetarian euphemism for hot pot...). Puppies in China look like they had sprung alive from the pages of a Chinese comic book: small, fat, ridiculously furry, and with a certain googly-eyed stupor. I love to watch the old ladies who walk in the park in the morning, practicing taiji exercises as they stroll surrounded by puppies.

There is an old German Shepard named Xiao Hu, or Little Tiger, who belongs to the guard of our apartment building. She likes to eat sweets. My grandmother gave me a handful of coconut candies to feed her.

One thing that kind of bugs me about China is how everything is staged. Everything is one big spectacle. Come see our Elephant Reserve and roam with wild pachyderms! Come see our Minority People! Chinese culture show! Taijiquan! Natural Wonder! Village that can only be reached by cave but has an enormous lot in which to park your SUV! I say this with all due respect, but Chinese people are a little obsessed with their own culture. These shows aren’t even for Western tourists, as I had originally presumed. No, it’s simply what Chinese people like to do in their free time. They like to file into a room with stadium seating, be served tea by people dressed in cheap, brightly-colored costumes, and be entertained by a hyper emcee who practically yells into the microphone. Even the decorations for Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year have cute little cartoon characters—it’s hard to take them seriously. The building across from our apartment is a wedding complex. You can look into the window and see Chinese families eating food while a stupid-looking performer swathed in tacky red cloth and sequins reenacts some long-lost tale of heroism.

I love China, but sometimes I think it wants me to appreciate its culture so much that it drives me away.

And then there are times like yesterday, when we drove for hours to reach a forgotten temple in the woods, surrounded by Hui villages and fishing ponds, and even though it was sunny in Kunming, a misty rain started to fall as we entered.