Steve Yang felt he couldn't explore his dreams in Beijing. He hustled his way to America. He uses his Chinese street smarts to navigate the neighborhoods of Oakland, California, and emerges in a rapturous state of self-discovery.

The Flex is one dispatch from Beijing Beat, a series of intimate reports produced in the Bay Area and Beijing by a team of digital journalists from the Center for Digital TV and the World at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. See all the reports at washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/beijingbeat/.