Flying into China feels like flying into a black box – not knowing what to expect. It’s been 5.5 years since I left Beijing with a carry-on to visit John for three weeks. Only days after I left, an epidemic spread and became a global pandemic that lasted several years.
So much has changed: the world is a different one now.
While everything is on hold and in the grip of the coronavirus (not only) in China, I don’t want to miss out on sharing some travelling I did, before things went crazy. After…
Ready to get back to the mainland I stepped onto a super fancy high speed train that would bring me to Guangzhou within not even an hour and with an average speed of 300 km/h. The landscape outside looks like I recall it: little fields of whatever crops, banana plantations, garbage piles along the tracks, run down houses, factories and skyscrapers in the distance, huge bridges, broad highways and over it all hoovers that very visual heavy subtropical hazy air.
The moment I entered the arrivals hall at Hong Kong airport I could feel the difference. I entered not just a different world, but a different system. Everything suddenly seemed to be more colorful, more vibrant; people looked more individual, representing a different life style by behaving more individually. The speed of the city is a faster one, even the walking patterns differ a lot from what I am used to in Beijing. The crowds are more heterogenous, people from many different places. Mandarin, English, Cantonese, Dutch, German – many languages can be heard in the shadows of those sky rising towers.