Poster lesson

While queuing at a cable car I saw this poster and it was striking me as a great example to underline how different Mandarin functions as a language compared to German or English. 

The poster is just a general safety note. While the upper part "安全生产宣传标语" is read in the modern way, from left to right (like most written Mandarin these days), the main content is written in the classical way and should be read from upper right to lower left. Here's a translation word by word:

安全 = Security

一万天 = lit. one ten thousand days 

事故 = Accident

一瞬间 = one blink of an eye

So, first of all, there are no spaces. This means that you have to know which characters belong together semantically. This is not always easy and actually requires you to understand what the whole sentence is supposed to mean. For example, 安 (peace) and 全 (whole, all) also have a meaning just by themselves and thus don't necessarily have to go together. The concept of a word itself is fluid in Chinese, there are widely accepted combinations of characters that create a meaning and they will usually appear in dictionaries, but for a Chinese person with an understanding of the meaning of the single characters, creating a new one or understanding a combination that's unusual wouldn't be a problem either. Now is that a word? 

Second, Chinese is brimming with proverbs and lyrical terms. Take the 万天. The first character means ten thousand, the second one days. Of course, 10 000 days is not a specific amount of time, but rather a symbol for a really, really long time. While in English people tend to use more borrowed words from Latin, French or Greek the more educated they are, Chinese academics and intellectuals would set themselves apart by using four-character proverbs over and over. To say that somebody is scared you could say 恐怖，which means exactly that. But you could also say 不寒而栗, which means not-cold-but-trembling. For reasons I don’t know myself the 4-character-expression is the gold standard of linguistic aesthetic in Mandarin and these proverbs exist by the thousands.

The mixture of a super simplified syntax with a knack for poetic but vague expressions defines Mandarin and causes headaches for foreigners trying to learn it because even though you might have learned the characters and even their meaning, you will still find yourself struggling to wrap your head around the way thoughts are expressed.

Back to the example, it literally translates as:

Security tenthousand days,

Accident in the blink of an eye.

By now, it shouldn't be too hard to guess what the poster is expressing. It's just a reminder to be attentive and careful. Though still - it doesn't entirely reveal its point. Will minding security guarantee you a long life? Or is it a concept that you always (tenthousand days) have to keep in mind? 

Maybe now you can see why it is said that Mandarin is the most beautiful language and nothing compares to its poetry, but it sucks at conveying precise information in a concise way (like say, describing a physics experiment). That is very much the opposite of German, which with its endless capability of combining nouns to super-descriptive megaterms (Krankenkassenbeitragsabrechnungsstelle = The department of a health insurance in charge of charging the contributions) has found the ultimate way of expressing complex concepts without losing words, but is not widely considered beautiful.

Thoughts at the end of an internship

For two months I haven‘t been writing because there hasn’t been anything exciting happening around me. To be honest, there still isn’t, but there soon will be (some travelling before coming back to Germany), plus I always have the urge to wrap things up before a major section of my life ends. In about a week, my internship and consequently my stay in Guangzhou ends, marking the 5^th time in 6 years I’m moving cities. To be sure, all this is of my own choosing, nobody forces me to haste from one place to another. But like most things in life, it comes with a trade-off, namely that apart from a few close friends, you feel like you’re out of touch with the people around you.

I talked about this with a good Chinese friend recently, who was living in Vienna, Manchester and London the last six years and just returned to her home country for her family and work. We agreed that leaving your comfort zone and living in places that are very different from your own can certainly make you a more reflective and ultimately better person, but it can also deprive you of your sense of belonging. I think in her case it’s a lot tougher, because not only was she gone for six years straight, she also left her home at a younger age, so “Western” culture had a bigger impact on her personality than Chinese culture would have on mine. Now she struggles to reintegrate into a society and a workplace that are nothing like the UK.

The practice of sending your kids away while still in high school is in fact more common than you’d think in wealthy Chinese families. Criticism of the brutal education system is not limited to foreign commentators. Chinese for the most part despise it too, but also acknowledge that there are no alternatives to rigorous standardized testing in order to evaluate millions of students annually without giving way to rampant corruption and cheating. As a result, many of those who can afford opt out by sending their kids abroad long before the feared “Gaokao” (equivalent to A-Levels or Abitur) to attend high school in Europe, Australia, Canada or the States. Since being a good parent is equated with giving your kids the best possible education for a successful career, the potential psychological effects of sending a teenager around the globe for years is usually a lesser consideration. I’ve heard quite a few stories of Chinese graduates who came back to their country after many years and felt isolated and alienated by a culture that often is at odds with what they experienced during their adolescence.

Compared to this kind of persistent alienation, my reverse culture shock will be harmless. But unlike the last two times I’ve been abroad for longer, it will definitely emerge in one way or another. One and a half years is a long time and China is a very different country. I remember that both times I was back to Germany briefly in the last 16 months, its tranquility and slow pace of life, even in Berlin, were quite shocking. I will probably be unable to spot any change in my hometown by the time I return. In the meanwhile, Beijing has opened a new airport, a new landmark skyscraper, a new financial hub, a new high-speed railway and the land next to my university that lay waste when I arrived is now a residential area with dozens of apartment towers.

The other major thing I’ll have to readapt to is, as strange as that sounds, being the average. I spent the last one and a half years with a crowd of Chinese, German, American, Ukrainian and other international people, all from very different backgrounds and in very different personal circumstances. Going back, I’ll be surrounded by people that look like me, have a similar background and speak my mother tongue. Should feel familiar, but I guess familiar is what you’re used and if you’re used to an environment that is not predominantly German or even European, going back to that does feel unnatural first.

Personal thoughts aside, before I’m heading into an unbeknownst future in Germany (Graduate program? Where? What to do until then?), I’m gonna have some fun in Asia. And by fun I mean going to Taiwan yet another time because honestly there’s no better place. In addition, because Taiwan holds its presidential elections on the 11^th of January and does not allow postal voting, most of my local friends are going to return as well from their second homes abroad to cast their ballots. Other stops in my last few weeks here include Hainan (surfing on Christmas all by myself – would be sad if I actually was in the mood for Christmas but that does not arise in China), Hongkong to see a friend and ultimately Beijing because well, this is where it all started and for some reason one-way flights from there to Europe are 200€ cheaper and include a second piece of luggage. I should have enough time to write one or two posts during this brief journey. And then, on the 17^th of January, when the snow slush on the streets takes on the same color as the sky from the exhaust of the many cars people use to get everywhere because the weather is so grisly nobody steps outside if they don’t have to – that time of the year, I’ll set foot on German soil again, inquisitive where life is going to take me in the next decade.

Some actual travelling on this travel blog

China is turning 70 years the very day I’m writing this! Besides gargantuan parades and tightened security controls all over the country, the birthday also brings a whole week of public holidays. My colleague and I added another three gap days so that in total we’d have 12 days at our disposition. That’s enough time to go beyond China’s well-connected coastal areas into its vast wild west. The five provinces Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu, Tibet and Inner Mongolia make up about half of the country’s surface but contain less than 8% of its population. Their territory is marked by deserts, high plateaus and some of the world’s highest mountains. The Chinese government is investing huge amounts of money in their infrastructure to spur economic development and strengthen “national unity “, but despite those efforts most places there are still only accessible by plane or endless bus rides through extensive and empty landscapes.

Flying into Qinghai...

Even 12 days are not nearly enough to really go deep in this far-off part of China, but we tried our best to get off the beaten track for a couple days.

Going west in China means seeing people and places that don’t resemble the dominant Han Chinese culture at all. It is for that reason the party puts in extra efforts to mark these territories as definitely and rightfully Chinese by means of innumerable China flags and propaganda posters wherever you look. The relation between the 90% Han population and the 10% that make up China’s 55 official minority groups ranges from sentimentalizing to patronizing to hostile. Some Chinese tourists still act like they’re in a zoo with the minorities practicing their rituals being the exotic animals, though this seems to be getting better. Especially in the case of Muslims there’s the concern that foreign influence might radicalize members of the communities. This is not entirely unfounded, but the means of dealing with it are everything but liberal and continue to raise media attention in the western world. I’m mentioning all this because most of China’s Muslims live in the north west where we start off our journey. Not all Muslims are equal to the party however, and the Hui group that is making up a big part of Qinghai’s population enjoys considerably more freedoms than their unfortunate Uighur counterparts in the adjoining Xinjiang province. The deal is basically that minority groups respect the party’s primacy over everything and in exchange are allowed to practice their non-Han culture as long as it doesn’t call for independence or opposes party positions.

Besides Islam, Buddhism is very visible in the foothills of the Himalayas and the closer you get to Tibet, the more stupas and fewer mosques appear around you. The bordering areas of Qinghai and Sichuan are merely different from Tibet itself, with the advantage that you don‘t need a special permit or travel group to be allowed to enter. Though you will definitely get a lot of curious looks if you’re white, because you’ll be one of a very few. Mandarin will also be essential, unless you happen to speak Tibetan.

The reward for full-day bus rides and altitude induced headaches is first and foremost a stunning scenery, which in turn makes the time spent in vehicles a lot more sufferable. Due to the elevation vegetation just like human settlements is scarce, so most of the time you‘ll be glancing at endless mountain ridges with gentle slopes and grass growing on them. Here and there you see pristine mountain lakes sprinkled into the landscape and in the background you might catch sight of a couple snow-capped 6000+m high peaks.

Our first stop was at Chaka Salt Lake, which is a tourist spot and salt mine at the same time. Chinese tourists love it for its instagrammable (e.g. Wechattable) surface reflections and there are many hawkers at its entrance selling brightly colored scarfs to fully capture the photographic potential of the scenery for one’s social media feed. It’s easy though to walk past the impromptu photo shootings and catch a glimpse of the vast unaffected lake surface beyond the entrance are. The strong wind on the high plateau is reminiscent of a sea breeze and I caught myself expecting to hear seagulls any second. Given the salinity of the water and the land surrounding it it’s surprising there’s any life at all. But some bird swarms and grasses are unimpressed by their extreme surroundings.

The climb from 50m altitude in Guangzhou to 3200m in Chaka caused some headaches in the literal sense, so after a day we headed back down to Xining (2500m) for recovery and one night with the amenities of a big city before heading into the wild. Well, not exactly wild maybe, but certainly less developed than what I’ve been used to in China. The overnight bus from Xining to Yushu takes an impressive 16 hours for the 800km. With passengers hopping on and off and parcels being stored and unloaded at street corners, the trip reminded me a bit of traveling in India or South East Asia. It was also an olfactory experience since many people in rural western China still don’t have access to warm water, shower less and thus create an odor that resembles a mixture of stale diary products and sweat. As the bus driver decided to take his own 3 hour nap on the highest point of the trip at 4400m, sleeping was all but impossible while I fought a pesky headache and nausea.

Yushu is the kind of place you’d imagine when thinking about Tibet or maybe Nepal. There are buddhist monasteries and stupas everywhere and the mountains surrounding it are dotted with prayer flags. Most Han Chinese you see are tourists themselves, the locals live in an entirely different cultural sphere where religion still plays a central role in life. What’s indubitably Chinese are the massive government buildings as well as ever present flags and propaganda. Yushu has been nearly eradicated by an earthquake in 2010 with thousands of casualties. The government’s response was swift and after only 4 years the city center was rebuilt, more tidy and modern than before and with possibly even bigger administrative buildings.

Prayer flags wrapping a holy site near Yushu 

Yushu's main temple complex

After a day in the city’s European-autumn like climate with barely any altitude sickness, we drove over the highest pass of our route. Reaching 4700m, it separates Qinghai from Sichuan and is considered a sensitive area. In our case this meant increased police presence and lots of roadside checks. The police got really curious – not in a negative sense – when they spotted me, but even more surprising to them was the existence of Karin. A Chinese looking girl with ethnic Chinese parents that is not a Chinese?? How could this be possible?? Her attempts to explain why she only had a foreign passport instead of a Chinese ID – parents migrated, born in Germany, never lived in China – were more or less futile, her passport was accepted but you could recognize that our interrogators didn’t actually comprehend what she told them. Chinese still very much define themselves by bloodline, not by identification documents. If you look Chinese, speak Chinese and your elders came from China, well how could you not be Chinese? On the other hand, if you look foreign and have foreign parents, you definitely can’t be Chinese. Not that I’d want to, but this clear-cut distinction that would be considered racist in the West is totally unquestioned here and applied by peasants in Sichuan and urbanites in Shanghai alike. The comparison is not fair – China is a very homogenous, developing country with little immigration in recent history – but the fact that Chinese deny racism even exists in their country because it is a “western construct” always gets me pissed in the face of these experiences. Just imagine how unacceptable a German 6-year-old pointing its fingers at random Asian and Black people excitedly shouting “Ausländer!” would be.

The highest elevation on our trip - the border between Sichuan and Qinghai

Either way we made it through the numerous roadside checks and spent a night in Shiqu, the capital of Sichuans westernmost, highest and poorest county. There’s not a lot to see and do. Matter of fact, there are barely restaurants to have dinner and only two hotels that accept foreigners (and even there we’d be such a rare attraction that police was coming over from their local headquarters to personally question and register us). The place was just a quick stopover to catch a bus to the bigger and more developed city of Ganzi 300km further. The ride there was full of stunning landscapes and herds of yaks being driven down the main road, thus blocking all traffic. There are certainly more yaks than humans in these areas! Ganzi then was the last stop for us in primarily Tibetan-Buddhist West-Sichuan and though there are not a lot of tourist spots either, we stayed for two days simply to enjoy the serenity, crisp air and space for one last time before diving back into the crowds of your typical 10 million people Chinese metropolis.

A crowd of locals waiting for a bus in Ganzi

In our case that metropolis would be Chengdu, capital of Sichuan and a brief 15-hours by bus from Ganzi. On the long way down you can witness the slow transition from dry grasslands as far as the eye can see to lush green vegetation and from empty, small provincial roads to highways congested by thousands of vacationers. Chengdu itself then was quite pleasant and fun. The temperatures in autumn are just right, tourists only flock to a small number of attractions, the city is otherwise empty and has a very chill vibe. The latter is probably because it’s not as developed as Beijing or Shanghai and known mostly for pandas, hotpot and rap music, less so for finance, banking or politics. For some reason or another, Chengdu’s youth is a lot more alternative than their peers elsewhere in China. Not only did they define rap music in China and continue to have stand-offs with censors, they can also choose from a range of bar and nightclub areas that don’t have to shun any comparison to Sanlitun and the French Concession. Just the one night I “went out” (basically just hopping from one place to another to see what it’s like) I found a couple low-key, hidden bars on the rooftop of apartment buildings, a techno club curiously located in a modern office complex and a corner bar with walls made invisible by graffiti tags and stickers hosting a live e-saxophone gig so noisy and weird I thought I was back in Berlin for a second.

Chengdu is also home to the world's largest shopping complex... 

...with an integrated indoor water park.

Of course, we didn’t miss out on the two bucket-list items for anyone travelling to Chengdu: Yelping at the cute clumsiness of pandas and groaning at the numbing spiciness of local the local hotpot, said to be among the spiciest in China.

I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves here. Watching a Panda climb a tree shows very clearly they never had to face predators in the wild, otherwise this species would long be extinct. As for the hotpot, you should have an emergency response plan with toilets in close proximity for the 12 hours following consumption…

Pandas are many things, but elegant animals they are not

What spicy looks like

After 3 days in Chengdu, work was calling and so on a Sunday morning we hopped on a bullet train and just 8 hours / 1600km later (you’re probably getting tired of my endless praise for Chinese high speed rail but ugghh I want this in Europe) arrived in Guangzhou were temperatures and humidity still defy the fact it’s autumn in the northern hemisphere.

Nightscape in Chengdu

One country, one defiant peninsula

I’ve always been quite proud that I don’t have a problem with tropical climates and don’t mind living in such areas. Sure, you sweat a lot and need repellent if you sit outside at night, but on the other hand there’s beautiful, lush vegetation, you don’t need to worry about what kind of clothes you wear at night (it’s always t-shirt and shorts) and it’s simply more lively outside in places where temperatures never become uncomfortable. And if the sun is beaming down around midday and it’s becoming unbearable, just go somewhere inside, air-conditioning is present everywhere.

This time I misjudged my robustness against the constant switching between sweat-inducing humidity and cold air blowing right at me in the office and at home, resulting in a sizable two week cold that reliably returned whenever I thought it was over. As a consequence, I didn’t really do a lot besides reading, cooking and trying my best to work. Just kidding, dumb as I am I of course didn’t limit my activities, which didn’t help nursing the cold. Particularly going to Hongkong for a weekend two weeks ago wasn’t the smartest move. My lifestlye in Guangzhou is quite structured and healthy, not to say mature, but Hongkong offers two things I can’t resist: An amazing nightlife and friends willing to explore it with me. More generally, the reason I like going to Hongkong so much is because it has many amenities I’m missing in China, like good bread, an international flair or free internet.

I just upload these pictures so that this text doesn't look too bulky and also to show
that Hongkong is more than the Victoria Harbour skyline

If you don’t live under a rock, you read about the enormous and ongoing protests in the city meant to preserve those freedoms. Or wasn’t it because of some extradition bill? Or because Hongkong has become a playground for the global financial elite, rendering owning your own apartment nothing but a pipe dream for average inhabitants? Or because the CIA incited demonstrations that flared up? (Well ok the last one is laughable unless you exclusively consume news within the Chinese internet). There’s some confusion and unclarities about the goal and motivation of the movement, so I’ll offer just the right amount of information for you to appear in the know for your next geopolitical dispute at a house party.

Why did it start?

In short, because of the extradition bill. That bill would’ve allowed the Hongkong jurisdiction to extradite felons who committed crimes in either Taiwan, Macao or Mainland China back to those places, if the crime is punishable with 3 or more years in prison by local law. The fear of the protesters and a large share of the general public was that this law would allow the Mainland jurisdiction to come up with fabricated accusations and evidence to have political opponents delivered to its doorstep. Though this fear is certainly justified, a financial markets insider told me that the priority of the Communist Party was never to silence the few publishers and intellectuals criticizing it from across the border (it does that anyways when they’re becoming too vexatious, applying abductions or intimidation tactics), but to get a hold of the riches that Mainlanders – many of them from the Party – funneled to their country’s quasi domestic tax haven. A lot of that money was accumulated through corruption and given Xi’s pledge to eradicate it from the party, officials parking their black money a few kilometers of Mainland China’s border can be seen as a challenge to the government’s authority. Needless to say this is unacceptable. I can’t appraise how true this is, but it makes a lot of sense and definitely deserves being mentioned.

Funny side note: The fig leaf to provide a case for the necessity of the law came from Taiwan out of all places. The precedent was that of a guy murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan before fleeing to Hongkong to escape prosecution. The Taiwanese government didn’t want to play the devil’s advocate though and from the outset maintained that it wouldn’t request extradition even if the law was passed and besides didn’t think the bill was a smart move.

Hongkong’s city government had to learn this the hard way as protests didn’t stop but instead grew ever larger. I don’t think anyone saw coming the scale and intensity of the movement against the extradition bill. But of course, while that might have been the spark that lit up protests, the underlying causes are more complex and varied.

What else is behind those protests?

First of all, most likely not the CIA. Apparently these ridiculous accusations against evil foreign forces still work as a propaganda tactic. Hongkong, as the more liberal, open small brother to the Mainland is the perfect canvas to project those conspiracy theories. Another one implies that police in Hongkong can’t effectively control the “riots” (Chinese media approved term) because the Hongkong judiciary is full of foreign judges who are blinded by their sympathy for pro-Western protesters and hand out unjustly harsh sentences to those that attack them. Matter of fact, what makes Hongkong so successful is its independent, international body of judges among others. If its judges were as patriotic and bound to Chinese unity and harmony as people seem to wish, international business would seek a quick way out of that place (the business community too voiced grave concern over the extradition bill, fearing for Hongkong’s ability to make business with China without being restrained by Chinese law).

It’s not a conspiracy theory that economic problems laid the groundwork for the demonstration’s most ardent supporters – the youth. The city’s ultra-liberal economy made it rich, but now the repercussions are felt. The government missed its chance to protect its normal citizens from the side effects of an unregulated housing market with heaps of global capital flowing in – the result is an apartment the size of a German living room for the rent of a pretty family-sized flat in central Munich. Unless your family already owns property you can either live with your parents forever or rent for a hole in the wall will suck up your income. That is, if you have an income. As the Mainland’s universities become better, their graduates can compete for jobs in Hongkong that were previously distributed among homegrown talent. Quite a few of the young people decide to use the one privilege they definitely still hold over Mainlanders – a passport enabling them to travel, study and work hassle-free in most parts of the world – and leave their home for good. Those that stay are often frustrated and don’t see a future for themselves and their city.

Lastly there’s also a psychological factor in play I assume. Hongkongers are used to be special among Chinese, which has to do both with their liberties and wealth. Now China is eroding those liberties while becoming rich itself. The fear of becoming just another Chinese city is palpable. Losing special privileges hurts, even more so when there’s nothing you can do about it because your competitor is like a hundred times as big as you are. Which brings us to the third questions.

Why is this going on for three months with no end in sight?

One of the answers is exactly that people know there’s nothing they can do about it. But instead of going home and just let it happen, they want to take to the streets one more, maybe the last time. Surprisingly, they have the city behind them. Average Hongkongers as well as businesspeople (in private, on the job they have to bow to the money machine that is the Mainland market) support them, at times symbolically, at times by joining the demonstrations. There have been two occasions on which the number of protesters came close to a third of the city’s population. These people are less nihilistic about the status quo than Hongkong’s youth, they mostly really just want to protect their freedoms.

Another, very profane reason the protests are not subsiding is that the city government has not given in an inch on a single of the five demands that constitute the basis for negotiations in the eyes of the movement. At this point though, the city government is merely a puppet obeying Beijing’s orders. If Carrie Lam, Hongkong’s chief governor, had any common sense and say on this matter, she would either step down or start to make concessions. However, the city government has been in a stasis for the last two months, with absolutely no proposals coming out of their mouths, only entreaties for harmony and an end to civil unrest.

To understand why China won’t let Hongkong’s administration compromise even a bit, you have to understand just how much the CCP detests displaying weakness. Stepping down and negotiating with an opponent you could easily crush and mute is as much of a display of weakness as it gets in Beijing’s worldview. The protests also touch upon a territory where the CCP would never make concessions: its ultimate authority. There are many things you can complain about, criticize and sometimes even publicly protest in China: the education system, corrupt party cadres or road congestion to name a few. What you can’t do by any means is doubting the legitimacy of the party. In other words, it’s ok to ask for reforms within the system, but not to criticize the system itself, which is what the Hongkong protesters are doing.

What is going to happen?

I have no clue and I don’t dare to make predictions. So far none of the two sides backed down and after weeks of enormous public support and peaceful protests, last weekend was the most violent so far. The police force chased protesters into a metro train, where they seemingly arbitrary started to beat up and pepper-spray people in chaotic scenes that caused an outcry. On the other hand, three men stabbed an off-duty police officer on his way home in what looks like an attempted assassination, and protesters increasingly turn towards wantonly destroying public amenities. The governments’ calculus is that the activists’ behavior will become so violent that the wider public will turn away from them (you have to keep in mind that we’re still talking about East-Asia, where stability, harmony and obedience are valued much more than in Western Europe). At that point, it will be easy to crack down on them without making any actual concessions to their demands. If this strategy won’t work, another option is to simply sit it out and hope that the protests will lose momentum, as they did in 2014 during the umbrella movement. The central government has shown surprisingly much patience so far by not interfering with its own police squads (using the people’s liberations army is – despite some assertions – out of the question as doing so would lead to major sanctions from all developed countries and cause irreparable damage to China’s diplomatic efforts), but there’s a possible deadline looming, the PRC’s 70^th birthday on the 1^st of October. Besides displaying weakness, having beautifully arranged military parades, jubilees and international conferences overshadowed by undesired side events is another thing the CCP really, really can’t stand. It’s anybody’s guess if they will be able to swallow their pride and accept that demonstrations in Hongkong will make global headlines instead of pictures celebrating 70 years of progress, harmony and socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Anyone hoping for more updates about my private life, sorry, sometimes the things happening around you are just a lot more interesting than the ones going on inside you. Next time…

New life new paperwork

Hi there from Guangzhou! It‘s been a few weeks, I was enjoying myself in Germany (though I’ve been there during the shitty weather period right between record-breaking heatwave number 1 and record-breaking heatwave number 2), and then struggling with bureaucratic errands and more generally starting a new life in a new place.

The Beijing office for foreigners really didn’t make it easy for me. After two nights with a combined amount of 7 hours sleep, I arrived in Beijing on a Friday morning with few things I could think of that I would want to do less than going queue for an appointment with a public servant. But well, that was the deal for enjoying myself a week in Manila and Singapore. And so I went after dumping my stuff at a friend’s place and having a quick shower.

I’m not a person that usually gets anxious or excited easily, but for this appointment I admit I was. The aftermath of a rejected application would be such an enormous pain in the ass that I didn’t dare to think of it. Matter of fact, there was little to worry about, my friend got the visa with exactly the same type of documentation I would provide, down to the wording in the contract and papers provided by the university and our employer. China might not be democratic, but it does have an efficient and rule-based bureaucracy.

Well so I thought. My application got rejected because the contract included a clause stating a (symbolic) income for me. This is technically illegal for foreign interns in China, however, firstly simply calling the income “remuneration” instead would apparently suffice to comply with the law, secondly, other people I know personally have had the same clause in their contracts and no problems getting their applications processed. Which, after some pondering, led me to the conclusion that either the party policy had changed unofficially (China is definitely assuming a harder line against foreigners recently) or that I was just unlucky, coming across the wrong civil servant. Either way, a second more forceful attempt might achieve a different result. When it comes to being forceful in Mandarin, few people could beat my friend XiǎoCàn (小灿 – little Volcano, and that nickname exists for a reason), so I was very glad when she agreed to go off work earlier to help me.

Same place – same counter – different person. XiǎoCàn didn’t even have to be assertive, just explaining the situation in fluent Mandarin and making a knowing appearance achieved the desired result. Now – two weeks later – I’m finally holding my passport with my new internship visa in my hands and can take the last bureaucratic hurdle to a perfectly legal existence as a foreigner in China – register with the local police.

Guangzhou's landmark - the 610 meter high,slender Canton Tower

Seen from Canton Tower, Tianhe District with Guangzhou's skyline

Finding a flat in Guangzhou was another challenge that took a toll on my nerves during the first week, not so much because I couldn’t find anything, but rather because of the restrictions on foreigners and the Chinese way of managing transactions. It involves making lots of promises about things one does actually not know so that a potential client won’t look further. On top of that, there were always hidden costs that would add up to a considerable amount of the original price and make cheap offers much less alluring. But the biggest problem was certainly that I am quite visibly not Chinese. I doubt that most landlords are really racist (well, at least to white people), but foreigners in China always come with increased attention from the authorities and who would want that when he might as well have a Chinese tenant and stay under the radar? I think it is for this reason that most of the landlords would not even consider me. Again, what helped me wasn’t luck or ingenuity but knowing someone. In this case Karin, my co-worker with extensive family ties in Guangdong. Our vocabulary is insufficient to describe all the people that are considered part of the family in China. With Mandarin however, all it takes to describe that someone is your mother’s younger sister’s husband is two syllables. Anyways, out of this big network, there was one auntie (this term is clearly simplifying her family ties to Karin) whose friend had a vacant apartment located right between Guangzhou’s two city centers Old town and New town in a modern condo building. The price was way below market rate and the flat spacious for one person even by German standards. It all sounded too good to be true, and at first it seemed like it was, because when I agreed to sign the contract, all of a sudden there were countless reasons for why it wouldn’t be possible on this day or that day. My landlord had to go see the doctor, she wasn’t sure where the documents (required for registration with the police) were, she didn’t have the time yet to send cleaners to the apartment… This is quite a common strategy in China to veil a different, bigger problem that one doesn’t want to admit. After 5 days or so, I had already given up on the flat mentally, Karin received a call telling us I could come there, take the keys, sign the contract and move in the next hour – that, too, is not uncommon in business in China. Things might appear to have come to a standstill, and then all of a sudden, within a few hours, the whole situation changes and you’ll probably never know the actual reason behind it. But I’m not complaining, I got the apartment now, got the registration (1 day passed since I wrote the first part of this text…) and will be free from bureaucratic hassle for the next few months.

Home for five months

And not all has been dire the last weeks. Matter of fact, it might’ve been the best time of the year so far. Most importantly of course because I was seeing my family and friends in Germany and could get a glimpse of the summer in Europe. The three weeks came as a welcome variation to and break from life in China. I was enjoying clean air, nature and free space, all of which are scarce here. And then there was Feel festival, maybe my personal highlight of the year. But this is a blog about China, not Germany, so let’s get back on track.

I'm really not a nature lover, but this was such a relief after Beijing

Feel festival...

On the way back to China - can you spot Tiergarten and Alexanderplatz?

After getting back to Beijing and eventually handing in my request for visa extension, I said goodbye to my remaining friends there one more time (it still wasn’t the last time being there though – I’ll have to go back end of October again to meet up with my co-scholars as well as the new class of scholars from the DAAD program), trying really hard not to fall asleep as we were wandering through Beijing’s Hutongs. The next day, I took a 22-hour sleeper train to Guangzhou, arriving there on a hot and humid Sunday morning. Actually every morning is hot and humid here, except when there are typhoons.

On the way to Guangzhou

For my internship, I spend most of the time in front of my notebook at a WeWork office with amazing view in Guangzhou’s old city center, writing blog-posts like this one, just more professionally, and getting into the CNC-milling business. Mechanical engineering is full of wonderful words I’ve never heard before and standards and norms for just about everything. No wonder Germans are so good at it. I will probably never be able to get excited about the precision with which a portal milling machine can mill even the largest metal sheets (to name an example), but I enjoy getting an insight into this most German of all industries.

View from my office

Working aside, after just a few weeks I obviously haven’t settled here yet. Though I like Guangzhou a lot more than Beijing as a city – it’s easier to get around, greener, air quality is generally better and you can easily get to other great places like Shenzhen and Hongkong – finding friends is tricky when you’re just working, not attending university classes. On the other hand, not taking Chinese classes with a bunch of other foreigners forces me to use a lot more Chinese in everyday interactions. Guangzhou is by no means as international as Shanghai or Beijing and the foreigners that live here are often not from Europe or the US but from Africa and the Middle East. Guangzhou has a recent history as a trading hub for Africans, primarily from Nigeria and Mali. However, the black community that supposedly consisted of more than 100 000 people just five years ago has been severely decimated by an increasingly harsh immigration policy. I wouldn’t say the official line was racist however, as a matter of fact a big share of the African population was living in China illegally or used tourist visas for purposes other than touristic ones. On top of that, no other group of foreigners in China is involved in drug-related offences as frequently as people from the Middle East and Africa. Given the extremely tough stance of all East-Asian countries on these kinds of offences, the big raids didn’t really come as a surprise.

Unrelated picture of Chinese using IKEA as their living room

Another things Guangzhou is famous for is food. A Chinese saying, slightly edited for translation goes like this:

“If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

The cuisine is being famed for its huge amount of ingredients and minimalist approach to preparing meals, often just steaming the raw stuff and adding a bit of sauce. Call me a picky eater, but I don’t buy it. Do I really want to know how steamed turtle meat tastes? Braised Abalone? One thing you can’t deny is that the food here is very healthy though, as most ways of preparing ingredients consist of steaming, boiling etc., there’s usually no oil included. No wonder then that Hongkong and Macao, the richer but culturally similar cities adjoining Guangdong have some of the highest life expentancies in the world.

Stage 1: Completed

There is always a sense of nostalgia when your life changes dramatically. I guess even prisoners might feel a hint of it on the day of their release. Which is not say that Beijing was a prison. It’s just a city I could never really get warm with that nonetheless is home to a lot of people I will miss. Except for one weeklong trip I didn’t travel recently, trying instead to spend my remaining weekends with my local friends. The Hutongs become more inviting in late spring and summer, with lots of cafés and bars opening up their rooftops and alleys that remain lively until the wee hours.

Time for a resume, the most important question being the one that I will have to answer an estimated 100 times when I’m in Germany: 

My room

My class

My mates

How’s your Chinese? Depending on the day and my mood, my answer will range from “I manage to get around” to “I’m pretty impressed by my progress”. Objectively speaking, I still can’t read a newspaper properly, I still fail to understand conversations that are not about everyday topics, I still fail to express nuances or emotional content. But as it is our nature, we don’t usually compare ourselves against an ideal but against others and on this measure, I’m pretty satisfied. I learnt faster than expected by the university and particularly in speaking and listening (as a pretty social person these two were always more important to me) I’m well above the level I’ve been tested in (HSK5). And even for the challenges that lay ahead of me I can see light at the end of tunnel as my Chinese slowly becomes good enough for unsupervised learning, meaning I can read a magazine or hold a conversation and while not getting 100% right I’m still good enough to get the gist and thereby improve. One thing I should’ve done better and more is talking Chinese to Chinese, not just exchanging phrases with cashiers and waiters, but longer conversations with friends. To be fair, there’s barely a foreigner I know doing that, since the kind of Chinese people you become friends with are the ones who’ve experienced Western culture in some way, which usually means they know English pretty well. Which brings me to my thesis that I’ve learnt more spoken Chinese in the few weeks traveling alone in China than in the eight months studying in Beijing in an international environment.

How’s China? I think I talked about that in length before, so I’ll just drop a few words here: Big, fast-paced, competitive, cold, miraculous, challenging, inhospitable, crowded, delicious, exhausting.

Could you imagine living there long-term? Not really

Did you find a girlfriend? No, fortunately I won’t have to make a decision between breaking up or maintaining a long-distance relationship with limited chances for survival

What’s next? First, holidays from China. Since the guidelines for when to start our internships are relatively loose, I can afford to go to Germany for nearly three weeks in exchange for working a bit longer at the end of the program in December/January. I am really looking forward to the time with my family and friends. For once, simply because it’s time spent with them, but also because I do need a reminder of my other, normal life as a German among 80 million others every now and then. China has a lot of annoying sides, but one thing is undeniable: It is exciting and challenging. Just compare the burgeoning app-economy with the current situation in Germany where I still have to go through a fucking bank transfer or have the right amount of hard cash with me if I owe a friend money. On top of that, as an expat in China you automatically live kind of a high-live (not necessarily in terms of money spent, but rather because the expat community mostly consists of people in politics and business). I am objectively very well aware that quality of living and my environment in Germany are far better, but I do need to see it with my own eyes every now and then to not get trapped in my fascination for the pace of live and opportunities that come with it in China.

After that break I’m heading back to Beijing to extend my visa under adventurous circumstances. A Chinese philosophy of living or dealing with problems is subsumed as yĭróu-kègāng (以柔克刚), overcoming hardness with flexibility. I was always skeptical of this approach, and trying to get my visa extension for the internship clearly showed its limits. While the company which is supposed to provide the documents and lots and lots of stamps (Chinese really love stamps, no matter if they actually make sense or give authority to a piece of paper) took a flexible approach, meaning everything they did was about right, but not entirely up to standards, Beijing’s foreigners office preferred to take a hard stance, meaning they rejected my first application due to insufficient documentation. The extension process, once initiated, takes 10 days during which the foreigners office retains your passport, so travelling internationally is impossible. Because of my limited time in Beijing I had two options, I could either cancel my weeklong trip to Manila and Singapore in the week before my final exams to guarantee that the visa extension would run smoothly, wasting 300€ in the process, or use my one remaining day in Beijing after coming back from Germany and before continuing to Guangzhou to go the office and apply. The latter option has the risk that if my application is rejected again I’ll have to somehow start my internship later or travel back and forth between Beijing and Guangzhou (2500km distance), since the only place to extend my visa is Beijing. I took the risk nonetheless since I didn’t see why I should (literally) pay for the stupidity of whoever at the company had so carelessly drawn up the first application document. Whether to regret or rejoice at that decision, I’ll know in three weeks.

For now I’m pretty happy I took this one week to meet to old friends briefly. One is a mathematician / data-scientist in Manila’s start-up scene (the type of qualifications that make company’s HR departments drool uncontrollably) during the week and a DJ on weekends (the kind of qualification that is the foundation of our friendship – we met at a techno club in Manila two and a half years ago). The other one used to be my student buddy during my exchange semester in Taiwan and thus one of my gateways to Chinese language and culture, though she herself is more Latina than Taiwanese. Born and raised to Taiwanese parents in Latin America, she studied in Taiwan and is now working in Singapore.

I spent only two days in Manila, just enough to see my friend, go out twice and visit one amazing art museum in the outskirts overlooking the city. There are a lot of positive things to say about Filipinos, like their openness, friendliness and relaxed composure. There are unfortunately at least as many negative things to say about their government and Manila as a city. Under Duterte, the country went from economic gridlock to economic gridlock and killing drug traffickers and -users indiscriminately. Inflation is high and the country remains a poorhouse in a booming region. Gridlock is also the first word that comes into mind when thinking of Manila. In the absence of a larger plan, the city is mostly a product of private investments through which traffic somehow has to find its way. Streets are zig-zagging between high-rises, highways end all of a sudden and for 15 million inhabitants there are 3 metro lines. Jakarta and Manila compete annually for the title most congested city on the this planet and studies have repeatedly named dizzying numbers for the cost to the economy of the hour-long commutes their inhabitants have to endure. Maybe growing up there one assumes an air of resignation towards the chaos around, but I would seriously go insane if I had to get to work and back every day in this traffic. On average, walking is about as fast as taking a car in Manila (to get to the museum in the suburbs 20km away, we needed about 2,5 hours on a Saturday).

The traffic is horrible...

The poverty is striking...

But you really can't complain about the nightlife in Manila

Singapore then is about as opposed to Manila as it gets. I don’t know if there’s a place more orderly, organized and planned-out than this tax haven at Eurasia’s southernmost bit of land. The downside: It’s expensive and quite boring. Though I have to admit that after uninterrupted months of Beijing’s gigantism and coming straight from Manila, I did appreciate this dull flawlessness. If you are an ambitious, talented person in your 20s or 30s and primarily concerned with your career and making money, this is the place to go. Salaries are high, standard of living is high, pressure is high and people define themselves through their jobs even more than in other large cities. I think there’s a direct correlation between the amount of urban-affluent generation Y people in a given area and the number of third-wave coffee shops that also sell instagrammable salads, super food, juices and avocado + x dishes and somehow manage to appear like they all belong to one franchise despite usually being individual stores. Well, in Singapore those are everywhere.

Having a pool at 1,5m distance from your bed is one of the better
features of living in a tropical country

My friend works in HR for a local competitor to Amazon and managed to find time for me even though I came from Monday to Friday (being able to leave work at 6pm is anything but sure in office jobs in Singapore). She’s no doubt ambitious and really likes her surroundings for now, but her long-term plan is to save up money for an MBA program in Europe that will make it easier for her to get a work visa for the Schengen area and eventually settle there. Smart move, if you ask me. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post – I should be grateful for the privilege of being able to live and work in Europe without a visa and think twice if I wanna exchange that for smog-suffused Chinese cities just for the thrill of being “where things happen”.