I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Long since past its heyday, a time when German butchers christened it “Porkopolis,” the town stands today as a pillar of conservativism holding up a mighty, corn-covered Midwestern temple. I wouldn’t particularly recommend it, unless you are over 60 years old and/or have a gun rack on your Hummer.

Yet, as much as I might want to shake the moniker, I am a Midwesterner. Driving far enough northward, you notice my hometown begin to merge with cornfield. I speak slowly sometimes, and some part of me wants in all situations to uphold the status quo. The rampant gossip inherent in the hen-like Midwestern social circles finds echo in my Instant Messenger conversations. Not to mention, I own a pair of overalls or two.

It is from this perspective that I approach the Republic of China. I arrived several nights ago, scarred mentally and physically by 19 straight hours of travel.

How did I end up here? In the end, I don’t really know. I have learned Chinese since I was in kindergarten — a bright-eyed little white boy with an inability to tie my shoes and only a tiny inkling of where China was on a map. My parents had enrolled my brother and me into a foreign language elementary school, a result of my father’s sinophilia. And given the fact that the population of Ohio is 0.4 percent Chinese, I was learning a language that seemed kind of useless at the time. While the other kids went to summer camps with fake Native-American inspired names, I spent my summers learning Chinese in a Minnesota Mandarin immersion camp.

Now, here I am, in a Shanghai hotel, breathing air of sub-optimal quality and reading Wikipedia articles about how to use Eastern-style toilets. I’m in China for the next eight weeks, teaching children, whose parents have loads of disposable income, how to take the American SAT.

My first stop: Shanghai. Though I have been here for only two days, I think I’ve got the place figured out: Shanghai is an odd combination of Las Vegas and the Amazon rainforest. Neon lights assault the viewer from every conceivable angle, seemingly serving no other purpose than to color the walls of my hotel room 24 hours a day. At times, Shanghai may even outdo the “City of Lights” in terms of flamboyance, despite the fact that gambling is illegal here and these signs are mostly illuminating not-so-exceptional stores. Every shop with a staff larger than two people has deemed it necessary to adorn its storefront with overly illuminated Chinese characters.

The rainforest portion of the Shanghai identity is painfully apparent the second you step off of the plane. The city feels as if there is a large, sweaty man breathing on you at all times. The average humidity level hovers around 90 percent and the temperature is usually in the high 80s (Fahrenheit). Fairly frequently, the man spits: It rains daily, and even when it doesn’t, it mists. One tourism website I visited notes playfully, “you might want to bring along a personal fan!” Yet this fails to acknowledge that personal fans are powerless in the face of oppressive humidity.

While Shanghai may not be host to such exotic beings as the spider monkey and the macaw, it does indeed have the exotic closet-sized used sock store (50 cents for six socks!...not like I would know or anything) and the black market bootleg shops with the overly grabby attendants. As a sidenote: When I entered one of these shops yesterday, one of the shop attendants screamed, “White man! White man! Buy polos to make nice look for sexy girl”.

Shanghai certainly does have a local flavor to it. The locals take pride in their eating establishments, numerous and delicious. My second day here, I purchased a duck head and, I think, a large, red, duck sausage. Ordering the head was actually an accident — I was speaking through a small hole roughly five inches in diameter and the woman mistook my wish for “duck leg” (a drumstick, I had hoped) with “duck head” — but the resulting cranium was actually not so bad. Yesterday afternoon, I ate the Chinese equivalent of popcorn chicken — a dish than can only be described as popcorn claws, chewy little morsels laced with the bones from chicken feet.

Bootleg stores abound, selling pre-theater releases, American box office films and, oddly, a large number of nature documentaries. Perhaps the best part of these stores is the Chinese slapstick comedy movies, whose covers feature makeup laden cross-dressing old men surrounded by a large number of confused-looking women suitors.

And this is China. From the Midwest to the Far East, I have made the journey of a lifetime. I expect in the weeks to come to see new sights, hear new sounds and taste new flavors. This is truly only the beginning. To quote the great Natasha Bedingfield, whose CD I saw at the store down the street, “The rest is still unwritten!”