Okay, I am quite cooled down after last time’s rant. There can be found some catharsis in ventilating one’s feelings on a subject. However, it is not my intention to do this every time. I was wondering how I could steer away from something negative today and focus on something very positive. One of the most positive periods in my life, incidentally, was my year-long exchange period in China. I would describe China as a land of contrast; China has several aspects to it that are easy to criticize, and for a good cause. However, China also has a lot of aspects that, in my opinion, are vastly superior to those in Western cultures that I am used to. There is very little middle ground, things are either on the Yin side of awful or on the Yang side of wonderful. Today I would like to share you some of my experiences in China. I can’t promise I get through all of them in one go, but I will write them out in whatever sequence they come into my mind.

My first ever contact with a local on the communist soil was a rather promising encounter. It was the morning I landed on the airport and took a taxi to the campus grounds. Now, I had been given a map of the campus area prior to my departure. However, a Chinese university campus is roughly the size of a moderate North European city. The taxi dropped me off in front of the main gate; I had no clue which of the several gates on the map I was currently in front of or how I could find my way to the exchange studies office. I walked down the campus street and stopped to assess my location in front of a street sign in the hopes that I could determine where the street was on the map. As I was gazing back and forth between the sign and the map, this young local approached me. He greeted me in English and asked me if I was lost. I told him that I very much was and that I needed to find my way to the exchange studies office where I could register as an exchange student. He pointed out our location on the map and gave me clear directions to my destination. He also asked whether or not I had WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, on my phone. Due to my Chinese studies back in the old country, I had that particular app on my phone. We switched IDs on WeChat, I thanked him and was on my way. I ended up finding the office and the exchange student dormitories thanks to him. Later during my stay we went to a local restaurant for hotpot and even visited his hometown near the city I was staying in.

One of the most negative encounters with a local, however, happened quite a while later after I had made friends with more local students and could find my way around the campus. I had gone to the movies with a platonic female friend of mine, who was an authentic Chinese lady. And when I say movies, I don’t mean a movie theater. China has this very peculiar attitudes towards IP protection and cracking down on piracy, which is to say, there is none. When I say movies, I mean this little escape room-like apartment with several rooms furnished with a couch, a TV and a HTPC running Kodi and a variety of movies, the illegality of which I have no question of. Incidentally, the cherry on the IP violation cake was that the particular movie apartment thing was named Platform 9 ¾. But on with the story. After finishing a movie we walked back out. It was getting late and we were quite far from my campus, so we did the normal thing and hailed a taxi. Unlike all the local people I had met thus far, who had been very friendly and welcoming, the driver who stopped to pick us up was quite a different sort of guy. Immediately after our departure he started going off on my lady friend, in Mandarin, about how she should be dating a good, honest Chinese man instead of a dirty Westerner. As I said, this was unlike anything I had ever experienced coming from a Chinese person, so we both were pretty shocked. He then continued his rant on how Caucasians are stealing their jobs and their women and so on and so forth, at which point my friend stopped translating out of a mutual silent agreement. I wasn’t hurt by any means by this random racist, the whole thing just came out of left field. At least nowadays I can remain honest when I say that I have been a victim of racial discrimination.

Another incident, that was sort of embarrassing at the time, but which I laugh at nowadays, took place not so long after I had arrived in China, maybe a couple months or so in. I was riding a rental bike through the city with my two friends. We stopped at a very busy crossroad. The thing about Asian traffic, let alone Chinese, is that is less a rule-based interaction by cars and more of a vehicular battle royale. So naturally, there was a local police officer flailing in the middle of it trying to inject some order in the midst of all the chaos. The officer then gained some hold of the traffic flow and waved the cars to a stop, so the cars from the another direction could pass. At this point, the officer turned his face towards us, and I could feel him looking at me in a very peculiar way. He then hopped down from his stand and started walking towards us. Now, before my journey I had heard some horror stories about how some Chinese police would randomly ask so see your passport on the street and detaining you for a made-up reason for a quick bribe in exchange for one’s freedom. As he was approaching me, these stories popped into my mind en masse. I squeezed my passport in my pocket with my hand and felt a drop of cold sweat sliding down my forehead. By every step he made me wonder more and more if I would ever see the blue sky again from within the walls of a Chinese prison. He then stopped in front of me and asked me if I was an exchange student. I mustered all of my courage and answered yes. He them continued with a smile that his son was a local student and that he rarely saw foreign students in his job. He then proceeded to extend his hand for a handshake, which I provided with enormous relief. We exchanged a couple of nice words and then he returned to his stand. Looking back, I never encountered a shady enforcer of the law during my stay, and now I chuckle when thinking of my brief overreaction.

I probably have more stories up my sleeve, but I’d rather not unload the whole collection on one page. Maybe I’ll continue writing more in the future. Bottom line, whenever I feel down, my memories of China always provide that extra shot of cheer that I need in my life. I hope my stories do even a fraction of the same to you.