Back in Guangzhou, things did not seem too bad. My companion woke me again because she wanted to brush her teeth. She kindly let me sleep after that, although I could not. At some point, I stopped pretending to sleep and played some rummy. While in Guangzhou, I had two options: buy a fast-train ticket for 70 kuai and leave in under an hour, or buy a slow-train ticket for 45 kuai and leave in five hours. Changing my airline ticket would cost US$175, actually more than I had paid for the round trip, so I was in turbo-cheap mode. Normally I am just plain old cheap, but now I was really cheap. I took the later train.

As a reward, I decided to visit the little rice-ball shop that I liked so much.

The shop played some version of the Oompa Loompa song in Chinese on an endless loop. You know, “Oompa Loompa, doompety-do,” or whatever the words actually are.

I explained that the song was actually the “rice-ball song” and that they were repeating, “Rice balls, rice balls, I had rice balls. Come here for rice balls. I had rice balls. Rice balls.” Indeed, they had some really good rice balls. Sorry if the song is now stuck in your head.

The internet almost worked. More precisely, it worked very poorly. But for the first time since the earthquake, I was able to check my email. I had given my mom access to my email so she could check things, and I could see what she had read. Everything seemed to be in order, so it was back to the train station.

I arrived in Shenzhen quite late, but having already spent plenty of time there, I knew how to get around. Thirty minutes later, I reached the hostel to calls of “Kelvin’s back! Kelvin’s back!” After checking into my Japanese-style room, I quickly fell asleep.