Meet Lao Ai

For ten years, my job as a sales director took me all over China. My flight app (think Flighty, but Chinese) adds it up: 833 flights, 991,903 kilometers — enough to circle the equator about 25 times — across 73 cities, every province except Tibet.

But the numbers were never the point.

The point was what happened on the ground. Eating feichang fen at 3 a.m. in a Chengdu alley. Getting lost in a Kashgar bazaar and being pulled into a stranger’s home for milk tea. Learning that every Chinese city has its own temper, its own taste, its own reason for surviving a thousand years.

Most of what the world sees of China comes through algorithms — fast, shallow, and gone by tomorrow. I wanted to build something different: a slower, warmer, more focused way to understand this country. Not a list of facts, but one person’s real understanding of its cities, told one story at a time.

If you’ve ever wanted to know China beyond the headlines, you’re in the right place. I’ll take you there — starting with the places I’ve actually stood.

— Lao Ai