If you ever have the opportunity to travel in China, go out of your way to travel like the locals. For one thing, you will save an immense amount of money, but even more importantly, you will certainly have unforgettable experiences - and stories. And travel in China, like much of the world, will take you to unlikely and unpredictable places, but it is the people you run into that emphasize the richness as well as the pure surrealness of humanity.

I lived in China for about a year - long enough to consider it, in many ways, as home. In some aspects I settled there, and would go weeks without seeing another white face, but I was always a foreigner - in a country where just three years before, it was technically against the law for a native Chinese person to even speak to someone like me.

I traveled by bus, taxi, plane and ferry - but most of the time I was on my bicycle.

If you are in China, even for a few weeks, get a bike. You can rent one or buy a used one for a very reasonable price. I bought a great bike for about $14. And I rented another one for about $12 for six months.

With a bike, you can quickly and discretely get away from any scrubbed, modernized and sanitized tourist sites and see the rough richness of the historic culture China holds. Once I had lunch at a tiny cafe literally one block from Tianamen Square - the ultimate Chinese tourist Mecca. I asked how many "foreigners" (like myself) they had had as customers. After the usual hushed Chinese whispers it came out that I was the first one.

Taxis are amazingly cheap, and the drivers are, ahem, very "creative" when it comes to negotiating hordes of bicyclists, stray chickens and thousands of other erratic taxi drivers, - and don't expect them to know more than about ten words in English. But if you want to get a hands-on experience of mass transit in an Asian urban center, take a city bus.

Buses are filled to capacity day and night - and the number of passengers has nothing to do with the number of seats on the bus. Usually the aisle and stairwells will be packed with the occasional option of people and various limbs somehow hanging out of opened windows.

Trains are essentially the same - with no correlation between the number of tickets sold and the number of seats.

I took a train from Beijing to Zibo (pronounced Zib-Wa) in the spring of 1999. This trip took about six hours total.

About an hour out of Beijing we stopped in Tianjin - a major port city. It was a stifling hot day and the train was already packed - standing room only in the aisles and movement out of a seat was literally impossible.

The train had the old style pull down windows - no air conditioning, of course. I pulled down the window just to be able to breathe, and literally within seconds, a hand from outside grabbed the window and a guy in a policeman's uniform climbed in. And another one.

People were yelling at me in Chinese to close the window, as I stood up to close it, a woman standing on the platform outside handed me her little girl. She was about four years old.

I didn't know what to do, so I just took the little girl. I set her down on my seat in the train car - and I was even more baffled. But not for long.

The mother was banging on the outside of the train. She was short and couldn't reach the windowsill, but she signaled for me to grab her arms and pull her in. She was small and light and I easily lifted her in and reunited her with her daughter.

Finally, having no idea what might happen next, I closed the window. Now we were even hotter and more crowded than before.

There was nowhere for the new passengers to go, so we were just jammed together for the rest of the trip.

The woman was a teacher and knew shreds of English. She was on her way to visit her husband in Zibo. She told me that she didn't want her daughter to be afraid to get on the train through the window.

There were eight or nine of us crammed in a standard three-person bench seat. We took turns sitting and standing, constantly shifting and never getting comfortable. At that time, virtually everyone in China wanted to learn English, so they crowded around me to hear everything I said.

I was the only white face in the train car - and probably the entire train. There must have been a bathroom on that train, but there was no way to get to it. Just standing straight or sitting without someone leaning on me was comfort enough.

After another three or four hours, we got off the train - and, barely hobbling on our cramped and unused limbs, our first stop was, as you would imagine, the bathroom.

The woman and daughter got off with us and I, exhausted went to a super low budget motel room where, again, I was the only white face. In most motels in China, you will find a "monitor" (almost always an older woman) at each end of the hall, keeping an eye on everything, and yes, I was probably the only white face to ever have a room in that place.

I was completed depleted and wanted to take a hot shower and go to bed. Ah, silly me. In this city (population about 700,000) hot water was only available two hours a day. And I missed it this particular evening.

There is no sensation quite like being in a ratty motel room, by yourself, in a city you can't even pronounce, with a phone you don't know how to use, even if you could speak the language, where even peeking out the door generates stares and suspicion, and of course you don't know anybody and you don't know, even within a thousand miles, where you are. Yep, we're not in Kansas anymore. Or anywhere in the known world.

A student I had traveled with finally knocked on my door and I went out with him on a tour of the city. And yes, in a city of this size, tiny by Chinese standards, I was certainly the only "foreigner".

Suddenly those canned buses on the tourist circuit started looking good to me.

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My experience on a Chinese ferry was equally, uh, well...let me say, equally, uh,... well, maybe parallel would be a better word...

I had been on the road for about a week, on all kinds of ratty and fumeous buses, on foot, lost a lot and generally too tired to want anything except home - though my real home was six thousand miles and the Pacific Ocean away.

I had been visiting an island that historically had been home to several Buddhist monasteries. I was glad to get on the ferry and just wanted to sit and rest in any quiet corner I could find. Wrong, again.

The ferry was old and dirty - and way over-packed with passengers. I took the only relative solace I could find. I sat on some crates outside in the rear of the ferry. Yes, right by the blaring and stinking diesel engine. And yes, the whole ferry shook like a crazed beast in the midst of a seizure.

There were several dozen young men who were in the early stages of becoming Buddhist monks. They had shaved heads and saffron robes. Some had tattooed heads with Buddhist symbols in Chinese.

As always, I was essentially the only white face anywhere in sight.

One of the young Buddhist monks in training approached me. He, of course, spoke no English.

And, I, of course, spoke no Chinese.

I had made friends with an ethnic Chinese woman who had grown up in Singapore who spoke both Chinese and English. She was also tired and wanted to be left alone.

But this young monk was persistent. He wanted to know the difference between Buddhism and Christianity. And I, as the only Westerner in sight, was his last (and probably first) source of insight regarding Christianity before he made his Buddhist vows.

This is, to put it mildly, a fairly complex topic requiring some serious thought, clear definitions of spiritual terms and certainly time for reflection and prayerful analysis.

We had none of that. We had a tired and already annoyed interpreter, a blaring diesel engine not twenty feet away spewing noxious fumes our way, the smell of fish and rotting seaweed and, as if that wasn't enough, total language stalemate.

I also had a sense of destiny about this conversation. I knew that he would remember, if not meditate on, this conversation for years. As he made this life long vow to study and live out Buddhism, he would certainly keep in mind, at least as a reference, his brief brush with a Christian.

So, as much as I wanted to be left alone, I also wanted to answer his question. But what, in a few words, was the answer?

My interpreter was a lapsed Catholic, and in no mood for a lengthy philosophical/theological discussion.

But even in the most ideal circumstances, how would I answer that question? What could I say that would cross religious jargon and cultural assumptions?

Compassion? Mindfulness? Forgiveness? Should I talk about principles? The Ten Commandments?

Finally, in my exhausted, dazed state, I just said "It's Jesus. Read the New Testament".

Who knows if he would ever see a New Testament, but if Jesus is the One and all truth is God's truth, no matter what route this young man takes, if he is sincerely seeking God, I am convinced that God will reveal himself to him - and to each of us.

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But for sheer terror in travel, nothing could beat China airlines. I took two short flights within China, one was routine - and one wasn't.

The most memorable trip was on a fairly short flight, about two hours on an ancient Russian Aeroflot jet. This clunker must have been at least thirty years old. There were disconnected wires hanging down from the ceiling and my seat kept sliding off of its rails. I kept wondering what else might come loose as this (as always) way over packed plane shook across the sky.

Before we took off, I had walked around the tiny airport. There was an adjacent military airfield - with about eight World War I era biplanes. I had my camera with me, and just as I pulled it out, several uniformed military security guys came out of the bushes. I had obviously stumbled upon a secret aircraft base. I didn't get to take any pictures, but at least I didn't get arrested. And in China, that is always a good thing....