Even California wasn't far enough for Williams, 34, a Loyola Sacred Heart graduate from Missoula.
He spent seven unfulfilling years in Los Angeles at a civil engineering job and casting about for acting and modeling jobs.
China, where civilization began more than 4,000 years ago, is a whole new world - a bustling, building, safe and exciting place of 1.3 billion people that Williams can't get enough of.
“There's a little bit of a Wild West feeling to it, which is good for adventurers and young people,” he said on a Christmastime visit home.
“My basic message is: If you're feeling a little bit bored, or thinking maybe there's more out there for you, you can take a chance like I did. It might be a good decision,” Williams added. “I can give you pointers on how to make the transition quick and successful if you read the book.”
Williams lives in the capital city of Beijing, home of the 2008 Summer Olympics that start in August. It's also home to 13 million people, and is friendlier and less prone to violence than we've been led to believe, he said.
And it's a veritable treasure trove of opportunity. Since he's been in Beijing, Williams has modeled as a London policeman for a 2012 Olympics exhibition and acted on “learning English” DVDs.
He played lead bodyguard for Dolph Lundgren of “Rocky IV” fame in the B film “Diamond Dogs,” in which he died.
“I went over a cliff in a jeep,” Williams said, but admits: “They put a doll in the jeep. I wasn't even there that day.”
He recovered in time to appear in five Chinese-speaking fitness commercials, to translate a cultural exchange Web site called Bocoo.com, and for the last three months to serve as project director for a company that aids foreign companies moving to Beijing.
Williams said he's the only foreigner in a TV show that comes out in March, all in Chinese, that's set in a factory in the 1970s. When he gets back to China, he'll start a new job as director of an American-owned modeling company.
His goal, he said, is to start his own production agency, “so I can get my own TV shows and films going.”
Williams, who graduated in civil engineering from the University of Washington, had a few contacts - but little money - when he landed in China in March 2006.
It wasn't his first visit - he'd spent a week in Shanghai with a girlfriend a couple of years before and was bowled over.
“I was just like, ‘Wow, this place is going crazy,' ” he said. “There are more tall buildings here than Manhattan, it looks like. And they're all under construction.”
He was struck by “the very friendly people and a very positive mode of living.”
“They're not negative, they're all pushing forward, the government's pushing development,” Williams said. “Then I read and learned more about this place, that it's growing 10 times faster than America, the people are nice, there's no violence. I'm thinking maybe I should consider living over here, man.”
He's since found “that the place is wide open, much different than if you're an actor in Los Angeles,” he said. “And even if you're not into acting ... I've heard of people who have awesome jobs, where they're making big money just going to meetings, acting as foreign representatives for a company because they're a foreigner. There's really not too much responsibility.”
The safety net, he said, is teaching English.
“I don't like it, but if I don't have anything else, it pays good money,” said Williams. “Anybody from America or Canada can choose from dozens of jobs right now, if they want to do that.”
Learning the Chinese language is a key. Williams taught himself, day by day, by immersing himself in it.
He carries a notebook everywhere, he said, opening one to display pages of his own sketches and phrases written in Chinese.
“I'm very visual. If I draw a picture of it, I can remember it,” he said. “It's nothing special. It's just my way because I didn't have the time or the money to go back to school.”
The notebook led to the book, on sale for $19.95 in Missoula at Shakespeare and Co., Fact & Fiction, the Bookstore at the University of Montana and Hastings, as well as on Amazon.com.
It was published by Foreign Languages Press, a venerable publishing company in Beijing that's closely associated with the Chinese government.
After a meeting concerning an English-instruction DVD, Williams pulled aside the publisher and showed him his “Learning Chinese Notebook.”
“I said, ‘I've only been here less than a year, and what do you think? Pretty cool, huh? Maybe we can do a book about this,' ” he said. “He said they'd think about it. It went from there to like, ‘Yeah, we not only want you to talk about this, but all of your experiences over here and the differences between the U.S. and China, and let's put that all into a book.' ”
It took nearly six months, Williams said, from last February to late July. Most of the time was spent cutting in half what he had to say. His editors sent it back for revision at least 10 times.
Five thousand books were printed, and the feedback he's gotten so far has been positive.
“Move To China!” doesn't get into the politics of the Communist government or human rights issues that already cast a pall over the Olympic Games. People read and hear “certain bad things about China” and have little inkling about what it's really like, Williams maintained.
“I have never been more fulfilled and happier than living there, and the other foreigners who've been there eight, nine, 10 years have no plans to go back (to their native countries),” he said.
Williams is concerned that some may read it as a denouncement of the United States, a country he still loves, and Montana, where he grew up. In hindsight, he wishes he'd made more of a distinction between his life in Montana and life in Los Angeles.
“I don't know how to say it without putting America down a little bit, but my experience in L.A. was of course different from Missoula,” Williams said. “There are 20 pages that are a little borderline, but my whole point is that for me, a place without violence, personally, I'd prefer.
“It takes the sacrifice of living in a faraway country, but that's worth it to me.”
Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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