Big Trouble in Little China

When I was 9 years old, Rai, a movie was released that changed my life. Set in San Francisco's Chinatown, the movie showed me that even within a modern, North American city, there is the possibility of finding a world completely different from the one I knew. The prospect of finding exotic adventure within the confines of my own city, without having to even leave this continent, excited me greatly.
The movie: John Carpenter's "Big Trouble in Little China" starred Kurt Russell, playing a truck driver who inadvertently gets himself involved in a super-naturally infused adventure in San Francisco's Chinatown. Stepping into Chinatown, Kurt Russell steps into another world. True, the movie exaggerated many aspects of Chinatown, but still, when watching it, I was enthralled by the idea that there are neighborhoods like this one where one can get transported to another time, and another place. For the few months following that first viewing, this movie was the only one that my friends and I rented when we went to the video store.
For the years that followed, I had a summertime obsession of riding my bike around Winnipeg, searching for unique, ethnic neighborhoods. My dream was to find a back alley or street somewhere that would transport me halfway around the globe. I didn't make the connection then, but I see now that these bike adventures were tied to the dreams that had been aroused when I watched Big Trouble in Little China.
I never quite found the same adventure that Kurt Russell had battled his way through in the film, but I did discover a lot about my hometown. Years later, while living in Japan and Korea, and while traveling around the world, that same passion burned within me. I loved the idea of wandering down strange, unknown lanes, peeking into open doorways, climbing creaky stairs to tiny 3rd floor temples, and looking in through windows into restaurant kitchens as chefs tossed food into woks and played mahjong or cards when there was a break in orders.
All this was forgotten until yesterday when, while playing with your toys, you grabbed a small wicker basket and put it on your head. At that moment, as just your eyes peered from under the basket rim, I had a flashback. You looked strangely familiar. You looked just like those guys in Big Trouble in Little China; those martial artists with those giant straw hats on their heads.
A flood of memories came back and the ideas I've laid down in this story came together. I can't say that that movie was the reason I moved to and traveled throughout Asia, but I can say that it fed a desire that I already had within me, and influenced years of adventuring that I did in Winnipeg before trying out the world at large. It's incredible how something so seemingly small can have such a rippling effect. And, let's not even get into the coincidence that I later met your Mom in Korea and moved back to her hometown, San Francisco, where I could wander the lanes of Chinatown anytime I wanted...