Where meals pull families back together each evening and there's always extra just in case someone else happens by. Where your back is always sore from sitting on hard little chairs while cracking open handfuls of sunflower seeds and sipping on endless cups of strong tea. Where a pig somehow feeds an entire family for a year with sausage and salted pork and where even yak butter tea can be refreshing. Where every cigarette you refuse plants a seed of distrust and where they won't let you leave until you eat just one more meal.
Where they cook for the pigs before cooking for the family. Where somehow cats befriend dogs, dogs befriend ducks and ducks befriend chickens, while cows and buffalo stand around seemingly stupefied by it all. Where the idea that dogs can't eat chicken bones is laughable. Where the proud clucks of a hen that just laid an egg don't go unnoticed by the owner.
Where wearing high heels or a business suit is no reason to stay out of the rice paddies. Where children don't practice the violin for five hours a day and the term 'tiger mom' means nothing more than the mother of a tiger. Where the only traffic is a herd of goats and the only honks are from geese.
Where the ability to chat is an art form and "privacy" is a foreign concept. Where you can't help but feel like a wimp when you notice how worn everyone else's hands are and how manicured yours look. Where everything you eat was raised or grown just a short walk away and even the corn cobs don't go to waste. Where a walk to the neighbors' house might take a couple hours.
Where fire still stokes the embers of life for cooking, heating, disposing, fertilizing and as the vehicle to fill the wallets of passed relatives. Where even with barking dogs, clanging cow bells, early rooster calls and roaring tractor motors you somehow sleep sounder than you have in a long time. Where you can still find your way by the light of the moon and the Milky Way spans the entire sky.