Ya Ting had taken me under her wing after hearing me speaking Chinese in a hotel in Lijiang.  She had been hitchhiking① around China for months.She invited me to travel with her,which was how we ended up on the side of the road looking for a ride to the Tiger Leaping Gorge.Within 20 minutes,we had our first ride.The driver couldn’t take us all the way and ended up dropping us at a freeway crossroads.As a new hitchhiker,I thought that would be the end of our luck,but almost immediately we got another ride.