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I sat across in a meeting from a hot, young entrepreneuer with gorgeous lips and he told me his philosophy is KISS – keep it simple, stupid. My, my, I thought.

Standing in a press conference in Qingdao, the photographers and camera man keep turning to the back of the room to photograph me – the only foreigner in the crowded room – a head taller than all – red hair – the exotic – I smile for the camera – one waves across the room enthusiastically – another is convinced I am so and so – it’s all bewilderingly refreshing.

In the last four weeks I have accomplished all of what I sought in 2007. I’m out of my slump with men via Turkey, I christened the LaLa via Mesmerizer, and a man made me dinner in China – the dinner was a goal my girlfriends set for me some months back when they said “your mission is to have a man make you dinner by November 1st.” This was to put an end to my chronic taking care of men habit and allow a man to take care of me.

So in Shanghai, a man, out of the kindness of his heart, made me a thoughtful dinner, a picnic packed with care, because he knew I was traveling alone and late and needed food, a cut up ripe peach, a salad of fresh vegetables, two small bottles of wine, sweet star-shaped cookies, stir fried Chinese celery and tofu, a breakfast bar for the next day – and napkins.

I’m a lucky woman.

At an advertising conference in the small, quaint town of 10 million in Qingdao – home to Tsing Tao beer – I learn the difference in spelling is to help foreigners pronounce the beer – but I say, Tao is Dow – Qing is Ching – Tsing is Ching – it’s not helping. As usual, another confusion that has no resolution.

But then there is the pleasure of leisure after work – a boat ride to the Three Old Men rock.

A woman raised in Tibet says the Chinese government has been good to the people there and without the government, the people would surely have had a lower living standard. The ones who left are the ones who complain, she says. The ones who stayed, are happy. She wonders what will become of Tibet when the Dali Lama is dead and his campaign to “save Tibet” is done.

All of these are the universal elements – I speak to people in China of love – one woman tells me she loves too much, she’s too emotional, she cries and gets hurts; another says she believes the adage that good girls love bad boys and vice versa – it’s an old Chinese saying she says – I tell her it exists in every culture and repeat “Good girls get the guy, but bad girls want for nothing at all.”

The universal sentiment that who you like might not be who you love.

A man tells me, “Sometimes I get sick of the game, but then I find myself right back in it again.”

Another says to me, “I am a mess emotionally in relationships” – I tell him smart women are dumb in love.

We all agree the winners are those who compartmentalize – not us – the ones who pull and synthesize all things into one mass – the big heart as a large as a globe.

One woman says we are all alike, we have a habit and we need to break it.

There are the women who love attention, who love money, who love men, who love to love. These are universal.

The Venice of China – my sister at large takes me there and we glide through the narrow canals in a wooden Chinese gandola, under the Love Bridge, by the people in their windows relaxing, eating, conversing, by the women squatting near the banks washing their dishes and/or toilet, all in the same water.

We visit a Chinese garden where the four elements are bamboo, chrysanthenum, plum and orchid – the superior plants.

Outside the tightly squeezed houses are clotheslines with underwear – my friend says, “the national flag of China.”

There is a big pit of earth in Shanghai that is being dug furiously in preparation for the World Expo here in 2010. Some believe there will be a huge ramp up till then and what follows will be the denouement.

East meets west never on the same clock – I think back to E.M. Forster’s Passage to India, where the priest dances wearing socks with clocks near a sign that reads GOD SI LOVE [syc] in an antithesis to Western linear time – I read Jeremy Rifkin’s Time Wars around the same time and understand now, here in China, that there is no synergy between East and West and never will be. When West meets East, confusion follows.

I dumped all the wishes out of my prayer box the other day in a fit of something. And now my Chinese friends have filled the box with wishes for me – all written in Chinese characters.

One of these has now become my sister at large – I text her after she left Shanghai for the states for a man, with only these wishes, “stay single, my friend,” – she wrote back, “I will, I’ll wait to have a joint small ceremony with you.”