This blog is written for my own pleasure, a reminder to my older self of my years in China and East Africa, of the friends I have made and the strange things which have happened to me. Having spent 10 years in the Middle Kingdom, I cannot pretend that I have complete understanding of the Chinese culture. Just as I think I understand them, something happens and I am reminded how little I know this place. Now I am in East Africa and the people are at least easy to understand and speak better English. Life is easier although slower which makes it more frustrating.
I was encouraged to start a blog by a Frenchman in Nanjing who said that people wouldn’t believe all the strange things that happened to me and that I should write them down. So I started this blog and have been keeping it ever since. Shanghai isn’t as funny as Nanjing but every day there is something to make me smile. Sometimes it’s dogs in ridiculous clothes, crazy teen fashion, boys carrying their girlfriend’s handbags or dancing aunties on every wide pavement after dark.
I have travelled to almost all the provinces in China and without exception, people have been welcoming, kind and generous towards me. In the countryside and smaller cities people come up to me and start speaking English and invite me to sit and eat with them. A smattering of Chinese opens up many doors which would otherwise be closed to a foreigner. It’s really not very difficult to learn the basics but many foreigners come here for many years without learning anything at all. They are missing out.
Favourite places in China will remain Guilin, Xin Jiang Province, Yunnan Province and the highlands of Tibetan Gansu.
East Africa is the cradle of humanity and a place I first discovered in 1983 as a young woman walking through the bush with camels, running out food and water, being attacked by lions and then losing all our money. Strangely, that experience left me wanting more and that’s the reason I went back in the most amazing place in the world. However, if you think work visas are hard to get in China, you should try Tanzania – they are almost impossible and if they are granted, take months and months to arrive (mine was 10 month and 1 week). But on the positive side, I got in an inexpensive house on the beach in a COVID-denying country and then a president who died of COVID!
A few years later on and I’m back in the UK with only occasional trips abroad now including a very long-awaited three week Indian trip unusually this time with some friends. If I don’t post on my blog for a long time, it means I am at home not travelling. There is nothing much exciting about being at home, even though I’m in the mountains.