Let me take just a moment to give you some sense of where I am and where I have been. Let’s draw a mental map juxtaposing the U.S. and China. China and the U.S. are similar in continental land mass size, though certainly not in population, wherein China weighs in at 1.3 billion compared to around 300 million for the U.S., a considerable difference. If we overlay the two maps, we could say I’ve zigged and zagged my way around the eastern coast and the Midwest, from the south to the north. That was the first part of my journey around inner China or Mainland China. The other half of China in the west is comprised largely of several provinces and two sizeable areas: the mountainous south formerly known as Tibet and a mostly desert north called Xinjiang (“x’s” are pronounced like “sh”). So after my exploration of the east, I then headed due west, traversing the east / west span of China to land in this northern quadrant of China officially called Xinjiang Autonomous Region (AR), one of several Autonomous Regions in China. AR’s are names given to those areas wrapped into China that are comprised of mostly culturally different, non-Han Chinese people. Tibet is another autonomous region, called Xizang Tibetan Autonomous Region to acknowledge the Tibetan people and culture, as is Inner Mongolia, but both regions are considered an official part of China and are not independent entities. The same is true for Xinjiang, which is far more like Central Asia than mainland China.