Every ordinary encounter in life is a miracle.

With my main business in Weihai finished and my second run through Drive complete, I could not wait to race outside—on a bicycle, naturally.

The downhill journey delivered plenty of scares but no disaster. (How can the road downtown have no bike lane?) Once I reached the familiar place where I watched the sunrise on my first day, I turned and followed the coast. Cycling beside the sea is fundamentally different from walking: for one thing, you must admire the view while avoiding the crowds. None of that is the point of this entry, though.

I should have introduced geocaching before. Oh, I never posted that entry on WeChat? Excellent. Geocaching began in the United States in 2000 and has spread across the world. A hider places a container and logsheet at a location, then publishes its GPS coordinates online. Seekers follow the coordinates and clues, find the container, and sign the log. If it contains trade items, they may exchange one for something of equal value. Then the cache waits for the next person.

Naturally, Weihai has caches too—but all four turned out to be placed by the same person. Beijing’s abundance really is rare. One lay near the shore. I had searched there with classmates before and found nothing. On a whim, I messaged the owner and quickly received a warm reply with an extra hint and an invitation to see his collection of geocoins. I gladly accepted, and we arranged to meet today. (Mainly because I returned for a second search and still could not find the container.) He arrived carrying two thick albums. We took their surprising weight and sat on a roadside bench to examine them carefully. I had been geocaching for at least half a year, yet knew nothing about this collecting culture. He patiently told the stories behind the coins: some proved attendance at overseas events—there are in-person events!—some represented different cache types—the version I described was only the beginning—and others marked milestones in finds and hides. (I have a very long way to go.) The variety amazed me. Someday, I decided, I must earn at least one geocoin of my own.

We exchanged plenty of geocaching stories too. China has similar games, he said, but in simple terms they are closed systems: official containers and QR codes are mandatory, and none has reached much scale. It made this twenty-five-year-old, open game seem even more farsighted.

We talked happily for a long time. Aside from Puzzler’s Day, he was only the second geocacher I had ever met in person. Meeting someone who shares your interest feels wonderful. Perhaps that is what belonging means.

Finally: what is the price of a downhill ride on the way there?