There once was a me who had no desire to visit a country that wasn’t, in my eyes, free. After all, we wear poppies for freedom. People die for freedom. We sing the national anthem glorious and free. What did I know about freedom? It’s hard to say if you haven’t been imprisoned. But freedom, it’s like milk and cookies. Of course you want it. Never mind you’re lactose intolerant and now, thanks to age, somehow sugar intolerant. But there I was, up in the mountains like some sort of Wuxia drama. A drama with McDonald’s and Luckin. Time is whatever here, as long as you remember when to leave. And there, a butterfly slow enough for me to film it when just weeks earlier, I thought, out of the many things I won't get to do this lifetime: there’s no way I’ll ever capture a butterfly on camera. Every time I've tried, they've flown away before I can even get my phone out. They’re just that fleeting. A few minutes before, my legs were telling me they can’t do this. I should just go back. I don't know how much further. I'm glad I didn't. This is glorious. I've never felt more free, shin splints and weak-kneed. The abstract good and bad someone invented and passed into my veins like it’s my DNA and not just a really good story. You’re good if you’re quiet. Be so grateful for your freedom. Wow, you’re like really really productive. I wore it like a badge of honour, like I’m fighting some sort of war and it’s all on me. It never was. The clock strikes 4pm, it’s time to go. I was a machine, now I am alive. Call it irony, or awakening.