When I was in China, the only communists I met were wearing uniforms at the airport. Everyone else was a budding capitalist looking to make a connection or make a deal.

On my last day there, I managed to break away from my guides. I had six hours before my flight. I convinced the driver (with the aid of a a fistful of dollars) to take me the long way, on the backroads, to the airport. I had him stop several times on the drive along unpaved backroads through small villages and towns.

What I saw there made me feel as if I had travelled back a century in time. Subsistence farmers tending small, roadside plots. Chickens scurrying about. Dogs wagging their tails while offering low growls of warning. A farmer pushing his hay in what looked like a handmade cart along a dirt road. No one with even a word of English in their vocabulary trying to communicate with me, a man of the mountains of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia without a word of Chinese in my own quiver.

It was a wonderful way to end my journey across China which took me from the teaming metropolis of Hong Kong, to the Blade-Runner cool of Shanghai and then to the industrial city of Lianyungang before a final few days in Beijing.

I enjoyed the rural countryside but I loved Hong Kong. The energy of the place grabs you by the scruff of the neck, shakes you hard and then tosses you down side streets where temples huddle next to skyscrapers. It is a truly international city where you can find anything your heart desires. You can disappear in Hong Kong and only be seen if you decide to reveal yourself. I disappeared for a few days and then gathered myself and prepared for the rest of my travels, refreshed and renewed, with the smell of incense lingering behind my eyes.