I don’t remember ever planning on just being, much less being in Chengdu or even being a writer.  Yet here I am.  As an American in China I have hard time reconciling the fact that I had to come all the way to China in order to find freedom and success in the way H.D. Thoreau wrote about in Walden: I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined [emphasis mine], he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an…