Lingering memories

My profile tagline, or status, on instant-messaging apps is, "Single, and, yay, happy!" My first-ever experience of the onset of a Lunar New Year in China is tempting me to modify that to "Single, and, yay, happier!"

Not because I found thousands of presumably single and visibly happy Chinese during my travels but because I simply loved that the whole Chinese nation, which is larger than my home country, seems to have celebrated the holiday with gusto and energy. In India, each province has its own lunar new year, and not all start on the same day.

My lingering memories of my Shanghai-Suzhou tour would be the warmth and kindness of total strangers, but for whom I'd have found it difficult to find my way from subway stations to various tourist sites. Poor signage and confusing maps at stations need an overhaul.