Guilin, China, December 27th, 2015. What you see in this photo is a bamboo raft on a lake in the South of China, surrounded by low, jagged mountains. In the distance, locals propel similar boats forward with long wooden paddles and chatter away to each other across the water.

What you don’t see is the local rowing our raft: a man with skin that is browned and wrinkled from a lifetime under the sun and strong, graceful arms that flex to twice their size each time he lifts the paddle from the water. His mates who are off-duty are at the edge of the lake, out of the frame, distributing large bowls of noodles to one another from a steaming communal wok. Some local children who were off playing by the water’s edge are drawn to the spicy aromas and run to join the men at their meal. One of the men shouts something jokingly to our rower, holding up his bowl of noodles tauntingly. Our rower is standing behind me and my little brother, and when we turn around to watch him, he scowls. Perhaps he’s annoyed that he is not partaking in the mid-day meal. Maybe he’s just squinting from the sun.

My brother and I are thrilled to be this close to the water, so close we could  touch it, but we don’t dare. The air is crisp and cool, fresh with the smell of water and mountains, so unlike the polluted smog we have grown accustomed to in Shanghai. Our parents are in the raft behind us and we keep turning around to tease them, boasting that we are winning an imaginary race. They are unfazed by our mockery and hold hands, smiling in utter bliss as their raft falls farther and farther behind ours. The rower grows tired of our shouting and leaning out of the raft and he snaps at us in Chinese. I am startled by his accent. He is distinctly speaking Mandarin, but the vowels sound different from what I am used to hearing in Shanghai: more curved, twangier. My brother and I look at each other, surprised at having been reprimanded, and burst into a fit of giggles.

Ahead we are approaching a sudden drop, a small waterfall, and my little brother and I cling to each other as we plunge downward, cold water splashing all over us, making us shriek with delight. He’s only eleven years old, and the expression on his face reveals the kind of pure elation that you rarely see anywhere but in children. I put my arm around him and lean back, savoring the exquisitely beautiful nature surrounding me and the company of my favorite human on earth.

Isabelle Fitzpatrick is a sophomore currently majoring in Mathematics and Statistics as well as French Studies. A lifelong world traveller and binational of France and the United States, she spends her summers and winter breaks visiting her parents and younger brother in Shanghai, China. She aspires to combine her love of languages and travel with her studies in math to eventually work for an international organization as a statistician.

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