"Humans Of New York." Most of us have heard of this page, and some of us, including me, even follow it. The idea is that every person has a story to be heard.

When I walk around in Beijing, I get the sense that we, as humans, are all an incredibly tiny part of this huge spectrum of other humans--and other stories. It occurred to me one day that I'd want to hear these stories, to seek out random strangers on the streets and listen to what they have to say. I got these "interviews" over the course of several days; each day, I took a walk after lunch and stopped to ask strangers on the street (I also started going to a park and finding people who were sitting in a little patio-type thing) if they would like to help me. I translated their stories, told in Chinese, into English so I could finish this article project. I told them that I was doing a project that required me to talk to unfamiliar faces and ask for their stories. Many people did not want to do it; the first four people I tried gave me weird looks and came up with any excuse to walk away, and I got no answers on the first day. I didn't stop though--and the second day came with better luck. Here's what I found:

"I work this breakfast stand; I make the meat patty sandwiches. My aunt makes the egg pancakes, and my dad makes the soybean milk and deals with the money. He likes to listen to the radio in the morning; it's usually this talk show, and it's always pretty funny. I've worked here for over four years now. We used to be just a little cart on the side of the road, but now we have our own little wood hut and tent. We get a lot of regular customers and they have their own special 'regular' orders."

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"We're picking peaches. They're good and ripe right about now. My friend sometimes comes down here and picks mint leaves, and then we eat it in our dinner. You see this peach tree? It grew on itself. This used to be two branches. But it grew too close to itself and molded together. Nature does crazy things."

(Here's the peach tree she was talking about; it actually looks pretty cool.)

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"I'm part of the little squadron that patrols this neighborhood every day. That's our job: we ride around on our little bikes and patrol. Right now, we're on our lunch break. I sit with my unit here and we usually just buy some stuff from the food carts on the street; I got corn on the cob and a scallion pancake today. Right before this break, we were patrolling for suspicious activity. We didn't find anything interesting today. Nothing big usually happens in this neighborhood... it's pretty safe. The other week, a different neighborhood's patrol unit found a case of robbery though."

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"My family didn't grow up very rich. Most of my siblings saved every cent we earned. My sister loved photographs too much though. She would spend all her money at the picture printing store. They would take a picture of her, thinking it was for a passport or something, and then she would buy a ton of printed copies. I guess it was worth it in the end, though, because she's the only one of us that has pictures of herself from her teenage years."

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"I drive a taxi, but I let myself take a break today to walk through this park and relax. The most I've ever made on a taxi ride was 130 some yuan. I have a 'mentor,' though, and he's a genius. He knows how to talk to the people who ride in his taxi; he knows how to make conversation. One time, he drove a couple of tourists to the Great Wall at Badaling, and it would have only cost them 200 yuan or so. But he acted as a tour guide the entire way there, pointing out landmarks they passed. He basically makes friends with his customers. Anyway, that group of tourists ended up tipping him so he earned 600 yuan."

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"One time my daughter almost got kidnapped. She was just starting to learn to run, and I was holding her hand at the mall. Suddenly, she wasn't there. I looked around and thankfully I found her before she was taken away. But there was this grown man with her in the corner, trying to change her clothes so she'd be unrecognizable. When I saw that, my knees felt so weak, like water. But I got to her in time and pinned the man on the ground, and the police took him away. Parenting really takes a lot of courage. One time I was at the hospital and a man was taking his 8-year-old son into the operating room. He told me his son had a brain tumor. This was his third surgery. He said that each time his son went in, his heart would pound and pound and pound and pound until he came out safely."

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There was also one time where I was taking a taxi somewhere, and the driver told us stories about himself. It's a bit extensive, and I don't have a picture of him because we were running to the hospital for my brother, but I kept note:

"I'm originally from Shanxi actually. We have this big piece of land there. You can grow corn as far as the eye can see. You can grow anything actually: strawberries, pears, apples, apricots, walnuts, tomatoes. There's more food there than you can even eat. The air there is so much better than here in Beijing. You can't find that free feeling here in the city; waking up every morning in Shanxi to nature is so refreshing. None of my siblings live there anymore; it's just my parents because they're getting old. Our land is starting to gain value too... All land is starting to be worth more. We live next to some historical sites too, the memorial of an ancient tribal warrior, a few temples; it's starting to grow into a tourist site. Life back home is really nice, but there's still more of a flow into the city than into the country. You have to make a living somehow, right? I drive this big van because I actually have a rice business here and I use it to haul my rice places. When I'm not busy with the store, I do taxi services like this. Rice is a staple food that we all need, but the online market is starting to steal my customers. They can order rice online and have it delivered the same day. Heck, you could order peaches and the farmers out in the country would literally pick a few and ship it out to you the same day. My family doesn't actually eat a lot of rice though; people in Shanxi tend to eat more wheat-based breads and such. My wife can make her own dough from flour and such, and I get to eat fresh delicious breads every day. It's so good with a few pieces of meat and vegetables stuck in there, and if you really want more flavor, you add some sauce."

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I like to reflect on things, so I'm going to do that with this mini project of mine. First off, there are a tonof taxi drivers. Each day, I collected more stories and each day, I built more friendships with people in my neighborhood that I wouldn't have spoken to otherwise. I think that this project, though it put me in uncomfortable and awkward positions talking to strangers, also helped open up little-known parts of the world to me--and that's truly valuable.