As part of my personal studies on China, I have finished reading a 470 page long book on China called “China: Eine Weltmacht kehrt zurück”. As far as I know, this book has also been published in English, but somehow I cannot find any references to that. Also, there seem to be contradicting publication dates out there, but I think it must have been published in 2000. This has several implications such as that there is no 9/11 discussion, predictions which can be tested for more than 15 years (so beginning 2000) and the impact of the internet is hardly discussed.


I think it is a well written book which enables a thorough introduction in the history of China, going all the way back to the dynasties and how these evolved to what China is today. Most important for that is the discussion of the moral values and political attitudes of the Chinese people and how they changed over time. China is just not as simple as “Dynasty-Mao-Deng-Xiaoping”. Multiple steps took place to make the country what it is today.


The book discusses the historical background in the first few hundred pages and then continues with political and economic critique. At about 70% it lost its breath a bit, but finished overall good.


I recommend this book for when you are interested in understanding China a little bit better and for when you are looking for a detailed introduction to the country from a global politics perspective.

At the beginning of July I attended a 3 day conference on computations sustainability, the so called CompSust-2016 4th International Conference on Computational Sustainability (http://www.compsust.net/compsust-2016/) I presented the paper “Text-Mining the Signals of Climate Change Doubt” by Constantine Boussalis and Travis Coan.


I loved it.


There were talks in the morning and afternoon with great networking breaks in between: http://www.compsust.net/compsust-2016/program.php. The topics were by nature quite interdisciplinary. Generally, everyone applied the one or other computational method to a problem of sustainability. The conference concluded with a panel on Expanding the Horizons of Computational Sustainability which gave a great insight into how people things will go and how things will be pushed further. The poster sessions were extremely helpful as well and I had at least ten immensely rewarding conversations.

Sustainability is an important concept. I think it makes sense that there are systems in this universe which have a certain threshold which, when passed, there is no going back. The most prominent one is probably the threshold of runaway climate change, when the CO2 levels reach an irreversible level. But there are sustainability issues in all areas. For example, governments and societies have a threshold of disagreement. If too many people do not agree with the government they will go on streets and protest for a change, sometimes violently.

Now, if you take a step back and take a higher level perspective, then you can observe that countries with high rates of protests more or less move economically slower. Military coups are another source of economics slow down. People need to figure out if a revolution is worth the short-term loss for the estimated long-term gain. If there are too many revolutions, there certainly cannot be long-term growth. I think, that is what China is trying to prevent. Too many demonstrations would be bad for the economy so measures, sometimes harsh but certainly vast, are taken to prevent demonstrations. Sustainability is close the the idea of trade-offs. We need to give up A now to achieve B in the future. Sustainability is especially a problem with humans which tend to prefer short-term gain over long-term gain only then to suffer in the future. That is also part of the learning process. The planet earth is finite. Resources are finite. Human patience is finite. One needs to find the most efficient path through this forrest of complex decisions. Algorithms maybe can help with that. More to come!


I spent some time before and after the conference in Manhattan. I was able to put in two 13ish-mile-runs at central park which is such a nice place especially with all the water fountains. I also met up with people I had met at the conference days before. New York is unique, there is no denying. Also, who knew Staten Island ferry is FREE OF CHARGE? Amazing, right? 

Also, Ithaca is such a nice place in the summer. Great nature, great weather, great pictures, see the first picture.

I just finished reading “Superforecasting” by Philip Fetlock. He initiated the Good Judgement Project, “a multi-year study of the feasibility of improving the accuracy of probability judgments of high-stakes, real-world events”. The project came first in the forecasting challenge by the IARPA, a US intelligence community observer.


The book, in the first part, covers the results of the Good Judgement Project in an interesting not over-academic way. The conclusion of the project, at least from my perspective, is that you should never think binary and always in the Bayesian way. If you are familiar with Bayesian statistic, you will feel that the whole project will culminate in the Bayesian rule already after having the first ten pages. The participants of the forecasting project are described, what they do and what their results are. 


I thought it to be interesting that Fetlock never explicitly states that these participants are just building intuition based Bayesian models of the world which allows them to generate more fine grained forecasts. For me, the book basically summed up an understanding of the world I was familiar with before, but with different words and some empiric evidence. Very useful.


I very much appreciated the remarks in the last chapter about the limits of quantification. I want to cover these in my Bachelor thesis, so this book definitely will get a reference or two.


Overall, this book is a very good read and one more piece of a puzzle called uncertainty I am trying to solve. Recommend. Approx. 18 hours.

Today, I finished my last class of an intensive course in Chinese. For 6 days I commuted to the Konfuzius Institute in Munich in the morning, had lunch after 135 minutes of Chinese, followed by another 135 minutes of Chinese.


It was great! I love it. Learning a new language feels like so many things. Like a new life. Like visiting a foreign country. Like getting to know a completely unfamiliar way of thought. Like a new philosophy. Like committing to a years long adventure. Like doing something you are really bad at, but still liking it.


I decided to continue my studies of Chinese after my visit to Zhejiang University in March. China is massive. Anyone who is not familiar with China is definitely missing out. The same principles holds for Africa or India or Russia or South America. As a European it is easy to reduce the global playground to Europe and USA and, well, this other thing called China. But there is so much more. In fact, there seems to be more than in Europe and the US combined. Yes, the US and EU economy is stronger and more stable compared to the Chinese, but that is the past and things will NOT stay the same in the future. 


Again, it is easy to assume that the world is the world is now and will be fairly similar in the future. But that is wrong — very wrong. The players of this planet are the US, EU and China and many more countries. Reducing your perspective to English speaking countries can hurt you. The best way to engage with another country is to learn its language. 


I want to understand China and its culture. The history of China is very interesting and also significant for its economic and politics future. Getting to know China’s language is probably the best way to understand the country and its people. That is why I want to continue studying Chinese. I already signed up for a year long course during my next two semesters. It’s fun. So much fun!


I recommend anyone to learn a new language, to take the courage of this crazy adventure. Learning a new language is most (non-lazy) human thing there is: trying to make sense of something you do not understand. It will challenge your daily routines and your long-term thought. It’s a certain gain, it is a sure bet. That’s why I study Chinese. :)

ASo, this is the story how I went to Shanghai for two days. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show.


After my Hong Kong trip I had planned another two days of Shanghai before I return to the UK. Even though I only got a single entry visa I was aware of a “city-visa” rule which allows you to stay in big Chinese cities such as Shanghai for up to 72 hours if you have an international flight after that time.


So, on Thursday I arrived back to Mainland China (sigh) and had to make my way through immigration. Well, the immigration officer was familiar with the term, but the had to call his supervisor to handle all the transit visa stuff. I had to sit down in a room for 10 minutes and they came back with my passport with a custom stamp. So far so good, my Shanghai trip could have stopped there already! I made my way to the exit and as always, there was soooooo many scammers at luggage exit. I do not know who runs this airport, but I am pretty sure they have not been there often in the last months. Scammers introduce themselves as airport staff. I’ve been through this exit before the first time I entered China and I should have guessed that there is more (because there was more, see below!)


Shanghai has a magnetic based train from the airport to (roughly) the city center called “Maglev”. I think it is a German engineering project which only the Chinese government was willing to pay for (Germany never built a single on in Germany itself). I paid 40 园 yuan, so roughly £5 for a 15 minute 180miles per hour ride into Shanghai. I liked it. It was quite noisy for a train which is supposed to have a super low friction. There were a lot of Chinese people on there and it was easy to spot that this was a upper-class commodity.


I had to change to Line 2 to go to my hostel at Jingan Temple (?). At the ticket machine I met a student from Hong Kong going to the same hotel so we joined forces on the way to there. At the hotel I met Jannis from StudyChina and we had a late night dinner with the student from Hong Kong. We found a place which had INCREDIBLE Chinese food. It was so good that I actually returned on Sunday. Emma was right, you get the best Chinese food in the smallest no-brand places with mediocre hygiene rating. I went to bed and planned to grab breakfast with Jannis the next morning before he boarded his plane at noon.


After some 5 hours of sleep I already had to get on my way to Jannis. I had an hour of walking from west Shanghai to somewhere at People’s Square. I saw a good portion of the city and it really looks consumer driven. A lot of shops and lot of expensive shops. Fancy advertisements. Clean streets, at least the main ones.


We had breakfast and then Jannis already went his way. Sadness. He recommended me some places to go to and so I did. Because I only had 5 hours of sleep and basically none because TWO out of my 3 roommates where DEAFENING SNORERS. I was really tired and should have gone back to the hostel to get some more sleep. 


This was my FIRST MISTAKE that day which would culminate in a near-catastrophe. Keep reading.


So, I went to the National Museum of China just around the corner of People’s Square. They had four floors of Chinese history and culture. I learned a lot about art and history and the people, but could not really take away a lot from it because I was so tired. Several times I had to take a seat to take rest. I am stupid. I know.


Next up was walking further east towards The Bund, which is the place where all tourist take their pictures. I walked further down Ninjiang road, a road with more shops than any other city I have seen in my life. I got lunch at starbucks and slept there for an hour or something (they had very comfy seats!).


I arrived at The Bund around 2 o’clock and it was a good view, not lying. I went up and then back down and then on the other side, the financial center (?). You know, you can see all this stuff on google, there is nothing big to say really. 


Because all Shanghai pictures are taken during night when all the towers light up pretty, I went back to the other side.


THIS IS WHERE THINGS WENT WRONG. Let me start by telling you the story from the perspective I experienced it the first time and after that we can reflect on what happened. I try to get all details right. Stay with me.


I left East Ninjiang Subway station and had a map in my hand to check wether I need to go left or right to get to The Bund. I turned left and turned right. I think actually had figured out where to go already. A girl and her friend walked past me (not a coincidence) and she asked me where I a want to go. I said “The Bund for the view”. She said, oh yes, she can point me that way and asked “Where are you from?” I said I am from Germany. She said “Ah, i see, so you are here for business?”. I said no. I am a student. We started walking towards the bund and I asked her where she is from and what she is doing here in Shanghai. She said she is studying English and from a province a train hour away from Thailand (between China and Thailand you either need to pass Laos or Burma, I don’t know how this makes sense. she also said it’s only a three hour train ride from Shanghai. Once again, that would be a bit too short.)


She said that she and her friend, who was in the city for business, do want to go out tonight and if I wanted join for some drinks. Sure, I said, because I did not have any idea what else to do that night and having some locals (or at least something close to a local) on your side might prove helpful in navigating and managing the place. Well, we walked further and I said that we maybe want to go somewhere else, because this streets looks expensive. No response. Ok, so we go into a lounge of one of the many shopping buildings and into an elevator. We get out on a fifth floor restaurant which looked average and sat down with a window view over Ninjiang road. The girl order three saki shots and a coke and I ordered a tea. I thought “Oh wow, it’s not even 8pm. They are rushing. I guess that is part of their culture. Better not confront but play along.” So I did.


They were quite nice to talk to (or pretending to do so at least) and I got to learn the one or other Chinese word. The one girl, who I now will call the leading girl (she introduced herself as “Shainxi”, any native speakers know what that means? Maybe something like “seamer”?. The other girl was called “mei”, which she said means “flower”. 


So the leading girl was quite upfront and said she wants to party to night, because she broke up with there boyfriend a month ago. I said, “a month, how long was the relationship?”. She said “One year”. I said “Oh, ok so it was no super serious.” Weird looks from the girls.


Her friend suggested that the prettiest babies are Chinese German as she can tell from her friend. I say “Ok, I don’t think that there is a correlation and I have never seen any so …”. They keep pushing.


“Come on, Jakob. Have some fun with us tonight!” They repeatedly raise their saki glasses and I tag along, because CULTURE. 


I am taking it slow on the drinking and balance it with my tea. The leading girl finishes her saki early and orders another one, having almost forced me to get another one as well, but I refused.


She drinks some and then puts a half into my glass. What do I do? I guess I have to drink it. I am not a trained drinker at all and I start to feel the effects, but I am still thinking ok. So, the girls wanna go and I say, sure let’s get the bill.


The bill comes around. 708 YUAN. 7-0-8. I am bit shocked. Maybe they did a mistake. Something is fishy here! The girls look at me and expect me to pay. I am like “Ah, no, let’s split!” They pretend like they did not understand. I get a pen and make the calculation. They are like


“Oh, noo, nononono!”
“We don’t have money”


Oh, ok. I am thinking. Well, I guess if they are “poor” Chinese students I can take some one me. I ask them to give them all the money they have. The one friend shows me some 240 yuan. I want to take it, but then she says, nononono. 40 Yuan for Taxi. I am like, ok, if she says so. 


But then, she gives the 200 Yuan to the waiter. Why would she give the 200 Yuan to the waiter instead of me? Why would she do that? Well, the reason is easy. The bill is not us three against the restaurant. It’s me against the restaurant and its two professional scammers. They get a provision for each single saki shot which was ordered for a whopping £15. (I only understood that fact later, at that point I still assumed that it’s the restaurant against us, but I also knew these girls were dangerous.)


So, it was at that point that he knew he had f*cked up. 


BAIL. NOW.


Because I did not want the girls to know that I wanted to leave ASAP, I played along and pretended that I am fine with paying 500 yuan for some shots and a tea. I typed in my PIN code for my visa card (they were very attentive at that moment…) and we left. We left the building and I said I had to take a call. They were (pretending to be) sad and I made my way to the subway station. They wanted to give goodbye hugs (and roll a last scam on me). The leading girl jumped in front of me and hugged me wholeheartedly, while the other one was out of my sight. Well, TOO BAD JAKOB DOES NOT STORE ANY VALUABLE GOODS IN HIS BACK POCKETS BECAUSE I COULD FEEL THAT YOUR HANDS COULD NOT FIND ANYTHING, YOU THIEF!


I escaped into the subway. On the way to the hostel. I slowly realised what had just happened. I also realised that scam artist that involve alcohol also involve other drugs, so I needed to get to a safe place ASAP, because I don’t know what they potentially had done to my drinks. (They luckily did not get that far). I arrived at the hostel, drank a lot of water and started ranting on the StudyChina (unofficial) WeChat group (sorry my friends, but I was in shock!).


Ok, all good so far. Let us examine how this could go so wrong.


A) I was very tired that day. I was slow to think and slow to think ahead.
B) During past travels I have meet strangers on the street. All these strangers, mostly students, I could verify from where they were coming from and going to that they were not a threat. These girls introduced themselves as students. I failed to filed this properly. They knew I would not expect anything bad from students. They went with the role I am familiar with and trust as a student: students.
C) I WAS looking for something to do that night. They offered a solution to this problem. I saw an easy fix.


Ok, REEEEEEEEWIND.


Let’s do this story again. But this time, I am will point out all the hints I should have gotten that something was wrong.


Their stories were not cohesive. They improvised them. And they verified them on the go by talking Chinese. From time to time they would switch to Chinese and talk very professional and straight to the point. When I told them I know some Chinese. They never spoke Chinese to each other again. They probably feared I would be able to guess that they were scheming to scam me right in front of my in Chinese.


They were acting as a team. They leading Chinese girl was always jumping ahead and drinking fast while the other one was bringing here back down. These were not their characters. These were their roles. The leading character was supposed to look like a girl I could stay the night with (while they then take all my valuables, phone, credit card of which the PIN they could read before and my watch when I was passed out either by alcohol or by their drugs).


The leading Chiense girl was very confident. She has done this before. A lot. The other girl was a bit shy. She was new to the game. Here role play was also not that great. In fact, the leading girl had to plot here character out many times. She was talking for her friend. I thought that her friend was shy. In fact, her friend just was a bad actor.


So, how sophisticated were they? Sophisticated, but not sophisticated enough to take all things I had. I was lucky to get away with 500 yuan. I could have been much worse.


How was I so stupid? Well, as soon as they introduced themselves as students, they were trustworthy for me.


What is the learning? Never, ever trust a stranger. Even more, never expose yourself as a target. I was a Westerner in China. I had a fancy watch (it really is not, but they think so). For scammers, I look like business. This isn’t just a lesson for travelling, it is a lesson for life. Most people will go for money, always. There are few exceptions. 


THIS IS ALSO NOT ABOUT CHINA. This can happen to you anywhere, probably most likely in places where you obviously are easy to exploit, but still. 


I hope this benefits someone else who is reading this. I was very down after this experience. I went through the stages of shock, realisation, fear, anger, more anger, angerangeranger. It had a big impact on my China experience. 


My China experience was amazing to this point. This whole thing reversed my experience 180 degrees. But overall, i think I should be happy. Again, this was a bad travel experience which coincided with a stay in China. Yes, China maybe has more scammers, but really this should not have a dominant impact on my stay there. This is how I see it now and I hope you can understand why.


Finally, a poll:

ALSO, here is another story, which is just another very interesting variation of this scam:
https://vimeo.com/6942629
Thanks, Fredrik Lind, for sharing!

The StudyChina program had concluded on Friday evening, so on Saturday morning we got shuttles to Shanghai Pudong Airport for our flights. The majority of students went back to the UK for University work, but some stayed some time longer for travel. I chose to go to Hong Kong for 5 nights.


Hong Kong is close and cheap to get to from Shanghai. It is a decent three hour flight and I arrived in the evening at about 6pm. Because Hong Kong technically is part of China, you would assume it is similar to China. Well, YOU ARE WRONG. Hong Kong is everything except China.


It used to be British colony and you need to treat it like that. Hong Kong is like London New York mixture on a Stockholm island formation where by chance mostly Chinese people are living on. It is more Western than most Eastern European countries. You have an incredibly infrastructure. Highly efficient transport, well planned living and people are as polite as the British!


So, I effectively had 4 days to spend and get the most out of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the weather was very cloudy and foggy, so I did not do any of the walking tours on the hills, but only stayed in the city. On Sunday, I visited the local Saddleback church and it was only there that I realised that all Hong Kong people one or the other education are very good speakers of the English language. It literally felt like the UK, because it technically used to be the UK. Yes, they were handed over to China some 25 years ago, but they do not look and feel like it. Theses Chinese people have tasted freedom and they are not going to give it back. It is as easy as that. For the rest of Sunday I walked around Central on Hong Kong island and took a double decker tram (!) to the east.


On Monday, I went to Macau with Adam from StudyChina who also was staying in Hong Kong. Macau is another special administrative region of China, and a former Portuguese colony. It really is just a Las Vegas clone in Asia. We got there at about noon and left at about 8pm. We saw Chinese people gamble away my tuition of three years in at least three casinos in less than 5 minutes. I have never seen so much pain in a man’s face, haha. They all had fun for some seconds and then they suffered — a lot. Casino cities are weird and you never really find a meaning to them, because they do not have a meaning. Everything is tailored towards you gambling. Everything. It was fun in the beginning, but it got really boring in the end, because it was just about taking money from rich bored people (Chinese business man) to other rich bored people (the casino owners). Nothing else to see there.


On Tuesday, I went to the local Science and Technology Museum which was very good. They had shows on both the Hadron Collider AND Climate Change and both were very well executed. I had pizza with my amazing AirBnB host in the evening.


On Wednesday, I met with a friend who did an exchange semester at Exeter University last September. We had sushi (sooooo good in Hong Kong!) at Central. I planned to go to two museums that day, but somehow failed to find the way to each and ende up just walking around campus and Hong Kong. You cannot always get what you want.


On Thursday, it was already time to leave for another two days of Shanghai. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) my flight was delayed by 5 hours, so I could go into Hong Kong for some more time. I bought some outlet shoes and had a sandwich. 


Overall, I really enjoyed going to Hong Kong and I think that any China experience without Hong Kong is a very skewed experience. Hong Kong is part of China, but so much different. It will reverse any expectations you have of China and give a PROPER picture of all the kind of people you meet in Asia.

This was the last week of the StudyChina program and it was fairly quiet, so not a lot of excursions which means more free time to spend by yourself! We still had Chinese classes every day in the morning and because we had to do at least 12 chapters we had to rush through 4 chapters in two days, because we were not able to cover them before. That was quite intense, but I guess you need to pick up speed sooner or later anyway!


After the extended weekend, classes started again on Tuesday. We also had a speaker from Generation UK who talked about scholarships for all kind of program levels, though, as I am not British citizen I am not eligible for this kind of support so I did not go there. I think on Tuesday afternoon I was doing some work for University or some other project, but either way I took it slow.


On Wednesday, we had our last culture class and we continued with all things business. We covered the laws and how Chinese businesses work with them. I cannot remember too much actually, but, as always, it was quite interesting how different the Chinese state does things.


On Thursday, we had a free afternoon as well and Oliver and I took up the offer from Fang for a museum visit. We went to the national (!) museum of tea which was nearby and saw all the different kinds of tea (there are so many!). It was very interesting and we even had a tea tasting (I think Fang set that up for us) with all the ceremony and things. In the end, I bought some Jasmine tea which is something like a flower you put into hot water which then expands and looks really, really nice. In the evening we went to a Sichuan Hotpot meal with the Chinese volunteer students. You have two “hotspots” in the middle of the table which are heated up. One is just hot water and the other one is chilli water which over time gets very, very spicy (I do not know how exactly, but it gets reaaaaally spicy). You order lots of different food and put it into the hotpot which surprisingly cooks the food very fast. Also, sharing food is the common way to go out for dinner. You order different bits and everyone can take them into their own little bowl. It’s very different to the European way of going out for a dinner, but also a very fun one! Finally, in the end we took a nice group photo and went back to the campus.


Friday was our last official day at the University and of the program as a whole. We had language classes in the morning, though, because we had our exam already on Thursday morning, we were discussing Chinese culture with our teacher, who was incredibly nice and brought us each a single gift! We also rehearsed our performance for the closing ceremony and the afternoon was once again free. The ceremony began in a local hotel at about 5pm and we had typical Chinese food on a round table and soon after we heard some speeches. After that each class had its performance, beginning with class A, my class. With these things, it is always a definite yes or definite no of how and even if people participate. Luckily, everyone joined in and we did have a great time. At about 8, the ceremony closed (we also got our certificates for the courses and all) and we went back to campus. 


So, we had one night left in Hangzhou, what do you do? Well, we decided to go up to Laohe Shan one last time. I organised a group, we went to the shop before and then headed up. I remember that there was a gate which was open during and the day and I feared it might be closed during the night. Well, it was closed! When we arrived, we saw a Chinese couple on the other side trying to get out. We actually managed to get her out by beding the gates against each other, but he was stuck. Long story short, someone had the idea to just lift the gate. NOT KIDDING. The gate had a big chain and was all locked, but you could just lift it and put it on the side. This basically describes my whole experience of China, haha. Everything is well done (or copied from somewhere else), but due to the missing understanding of the concept behind something, the quality is lacking. It might sound a bit “Western” to say that and it’s always easy to point out mistake instead of pointing out things which are well done. But this concept of copying without the deeper understanding stems from an agenda coming from the top. Just last week, the Chinese government announced a plan to become the world’s best football country by 2050. They will invest money and they will train a lot of Chinese football players and pick the best. But, as long as they do not import the intellectual property, the understanding of how to win at football, just copying the appearance will not be enough. (China has been successful with these strategy at the olympics, so it does work here or there). Once again, it’s easy to point out mistakes and I am very interested in how Chinese people think of Europe and the US and if they can see any “mistakes” there.


ANYWAY, we lifted the gate and switched sites with the Chinese couple who just looked at us in disbelief. We made our way up to the top (some 800 steps) and enjoyed the (unfortunately polluted) view of the campus and all around. It was fascinating to see the city from the top at night. You could spot all the big places, West Lake and the temple. We descended at about 11pm and sooner or later went to sleep, because our shuttle left at 6am.


This is it. These where the three weeks of StudyChina UK at Zhejiang University. I did not put much effort into reviewing the things I wrote so these articles are my honest and authentic opinion I would tell you if you would ask me on the street. I COULD go on and discuss all the little details and the politics and the business and the people. And I might do in the future. But I wanted to separate my off the top of my head experience from the reflections, because that way it is easier to enjoy the fun bits and more effective and helpful to discuss the details.


My trip did not end there, I went on to Hong Kong and Shanghai for two days, see the other articles!

Week Two
Well, it had to come to this (it is apparently completely normal to fall ill at least once during the trip) and I was in bed all day except for classes which I survived with one or two painkillers and lots of water.


On Tuesday, I was not sure if I would come along to the all-day excursion to Wuzhen, but went for it. I was still feeling not well, but I forced my way through it. Wuzhen is an old Chinese town (related to the colour black or something, I did not get that). It is more like a Chinese Venice with some pseudo artefacts of Chinese history. Apparently, this is also the town where the Chinese government decide to put its “we are the best at the Internet (better than the west)” conference, though I cannot set how that is an adequate location for a conference. It was interesting, but overrun by tourists — by Chinese tourist. This is an observation which I was surprised by again and again. Chinese tourist attractions are visited 95% by Chinese people themselves. If you go to Venice, you see maybe Italien locals, but no Italien tourists. If you go to Wuzhen, as a non Chinese person, you are a definite minority and Chinese people will take lots of pictures with you (because they have never seen someone from the west?; I never understood that).


On Wednesday, we were invited to present in front of a (random?) crowd of Chinese (business, government?) people from the Zhejiang area at the local science museum. There was a significant information mismatch and we did not know what to expect neither seemed the Chinese people. During the break, at least of them left, so it was some kind of weird overblown event with lots of cameras and press, but no real content. China.


On Thursday, we went to the Song Dynasty Town (reconstruction) which is a freak Theme park of Chinese history with a massive high tech theatre in the middle. We attend a one hour show on (four?) famous Chinese stories with at least 1900 other Chinese people. There we’re horses, cannons and waterfalls on stage and great action and dancing and music. Not sure if there are many musical productions that compete with this globallyy! It was definitely worth going!


On Friday, two Kong Fu/Tai Chi (?!?) teachers came by and taught us for one hour. It was so much fun, but also a quite hot day. For the rest of the day I visited the other campus again with Nicolae and our Chinese teacher.


This weekend was special as it was the weekend of the Qing Ming festival, i.e. “tomb sweeping” for Chinese. Initially, I had planned to go to Beijing for three days (the festival was Friday to Monday), but ticket prices were high. Many deviated to yellow mountains (环山 ？）and had a great time there. I personally think, I maxed out this weekend by more than 100%. 


On Saturday we took a bus at 6:30 in the morning to the bottom of the hill which was 4 hours to the west of Zhejiang. We arrived at 10:30 at the hotel and decide to do the nine dragon waterfall hike. Indeed, there nine waterfalls and the views were magnificent. At about 3pm we came back and there were rumours that there was a hot spring or something. Well, it turns out, there were thirty of them in a spa pool thingy. And because everyone had the same idea, about 35 of us went there independently and all met at the hot springs. We stayed there for at least six hours and time passed so fast. It was incredibly relaxing. 10 out of 10, would do it again! We arrived back in the hotel at about 10pm and had dinner. 


On Sunday, it was raining quite a lot in the morning, but we still decided to climb the actual mountain, yellow mountain. We took a bus to the foot of the hill and made our way up. I arrived after about three hours and the views were so nice. But after 15 minutes it started raining and would not stop until we went back to campus in the late afternoon. We were soaking wet and had been trying to find a way back to the busses for about 2 hours. On the 4 hour bus ride back home, I kind of warmed up, but only a hot shower later then did the job. But the weekend was not done, yet!


On Monday, Josh, Oliver and I decided to climb the hill line of Laohe Shan which went all around campus and down to West Lake. We did 33 kilometres in 12 hours and it was so, so nice. We did not have a set path, so we just went by rough directions towards a temple on the last hill. We see tea plantations with people plucking tea, empty houses (I guess for the press during the G20 in September, it looked like a press town), LOTS of Chinese people enjoying their Qing Ming festival next to tomb stones in the woods (even though fire was prohibited they brought candles!) and the whole of West Lake.

Last September I applied for a program called “StudyChina” which is run by the British Council. I got through in the second round and booked my flights right away with an additional week to the three weeks of the program. Months passed an end of Term 2 was arriving and I was finishing up projects and board my flight on the 19th from London to Shanghai via Moscow! So, three weeks might sound short for China, but it we managed to do so much.


Generally, the program consisted of Mandarin Chinese classes in the morning and excursions in the afternoon. There was also lots of free time to explore the area we stayed in. There are three Universities you can apply for with StudyChina and I chose Zhejiang, because it seemed relatively professional and also fit my end-of-term schedule quite well. And, indeed, the University did deliver!

​WARNING: I have been made aware that my article might sound like I did not enjoy my stay. I hope that is not the picture I am drawing here!  The experience was indeed very good. The time in China solved the riddle of my perspective of Asia in the most efficient way possible. Overall I recommend going to China as a "Westerner" for some weeks. But I think that, generally, there is only a small group of "Westerners" that will benefit from a long term stay there e.g. University or work. Only people that truly want to and are able to leverage their combined knowledge of Western and Asian knowledge will find "happiness" there. Anything else "does not make sense" as a Westerner you will benefit more from opportunities in the "West". I hope that makes sense!

Week One
We arrived on Sunday and had a campus tour in the dark on Sunday evening. Monday was the first full day on campus. We had an “orientation” in the morning. I think the key points were: do not get run over on the streets (Chinese traffic is VERY different to Europe/US traffic, I guess you can call it “Asian” traffic), do not leave the campus alone and make the most out of it! The traffic in Hangzhou, the city of Zhejiang University is basically suicide from 6am to 11pm, because apparently all Chinese cities (I saw Hangzhou and Shanghai) shut down after 11pm, so streets are empty.
    After the orientation, we had our first language class in Chinese Mandarin. The 80 students of StudyChina were split into four classes and some advanced students were put into local classes (which apparently you are not allowed to even attend for the experience, I tried …). I was in class A and our teacher （老师）was called Tong Lin. She is a Masters student in Translation and apparently has never taught before, but still did a very good job. Unfortunately, as there were only three weeks, the courses focused on daily Chinese and omitted characters most of the time. This did not stop me from actually studying the characters. Some people say that if you do not get the stroke order right and all, then it is bad. I think, that for my needs, I should be able to get along by copying them just fine and multiple students have confirmed that, so I did study the characters on the side as well!
    The classes usually ran for three hours and because I was still jet lagged I woke up at 6am during the first week and used the time to revise some Chinese. At 7am I would go for run to the hill nearby called Laohe Shan (老和山，I hope that is right!). This leads me to one of the main experiences of China: pollution.
    Pollution in China is the worst. If you have only seen pollution on the TV you think “well, it is bad, but probably not that bad”. Well, it is bad. Really bad. The moment we left the air-conditioned Terminal in Shanghai we were hit by wall of pollution. You can feel and smell (ok, maybe I am hallucinating this) how bad the air is. If pollution is high you can barely see 500 meters. From our fifth floor skyscraper dorm room, at least on three days I was just about able to guess that there was a skyscraper on the other side of the road. It’s crazy and it’s true.
    Oh yes, during the orientation, the Chinese volunteers which were supporting us during the three weeks were asked to open their mobile internet hotspots so we could let our parents know that we have arrived BECAUSE AT THE UNIVERSITY YOU HAD TO SIGN UP FOR INTERNET WITH YOUR PASSPORT WHICH LITERALLY TOOK DAYS, so we did not have a chance to phone back home and so parents called up the StudyChina office. Internet in China is not a sure thing and on top of that it is censored. Not cool, but I guess that is part of the experience!
    Anyway, on Monday evening we had our opening ceremony with the Dean of the International College. There was some speeches including one by our program manager, Professor Minjie, who knows how to properly entertain! Afterwards, we had a buffet dinner with the volunteers and later went “downtown” to a bar which I guess was luxury for Chinese price levels, but about UK outside London bar levels, so we could liked it there. They had free Wifi as well, I think that is the main reason why I stayed.


On Tuesday, we had a trip to the West Lake, which is a scenic lake nearby the campus with lots of culture to explore. Unfortunately, I had an online exam due that day at 9am CET, so 5pm CTZ, and could not attend. During the exam I also had the best Internet for the whole trip, so I really was lucky there. The trip to West Lake was apparently a success and I was able to catch up all the things of that afternoon trip in the coming days.


On Wednesday, we had our first business culture class in the afternoon. A local Chinese businesswomen gave the first of three lectures on the how “business” is done in China. It is a different culture and differences are something to be expected. It is hard to express a summary of her classes diplomatically. I guess the best way is to say that they call tax evasion “saving money for your business”, bribery “business relationships” and corruption “being close to the government”. The classes on Chinese business were indeed interesting, but the conclusion I heard from many students was that they know feel even less confident in doing business in China. There is the law and there is what the people do and the former is just not enforced sufficiently enough, yet.


On Thursday we were able to choose one of four trips to local “businesses” organised by a government organisation called “ZAST” which supports (?) technology and science in the Zhejiang area. I chose to have a tour in each a robot and plane assembly facility and it was quite interesting, because it really was not that different from Europe. I think for the employees there, we looked like foreign investors or something, so when we came around they tried to look really busy, but I think they were not. I saw a group of 5 (!) Chinese workers standing around another worker turning a screw and pretending to focus on this incredibly hard task. It was a bit surreal, but I guess that is China. Overall, it was a great insight into a Chinese industry area. When we arrived back, we joined other students at a local restaurant chain called “Grandma’s” (?) which has UK level priced food which is really, really good. Really good.


On Friday, we visited the main campus of the five campuses of Zhejiang University. We were split into 8 or so groups and matched with the same number of Chinese students from that campus. For the whole afternoon (!) they had planned different activities such as going to scenic places of the campus, Kong Fu (?), shuttlecock “football”, calligraphy and more. During the activities on the walk to each activity we had time to chat with the students which is such a good way to understand Chinese better and where it is going. These students in theory are the indicator of China’s future as the government invests into them to build the future. Competition is apparently intense and they have a lot of exams (for me, this is always a useful indicator that quality is missing so all they can do is crank up quantity) In the evening, they gave a show with all kinds of societies from the campus. They stared with a very cool inlined-skating show, then some African music and dancing (haha, in China!), many music performances and also a very, very good magician. It was incredibly, except from that it was so cold. At 9pm, our bus shuttle took us back to the other campus and it was at that point that I started feeling sick.


Over the course of the weekend I felt worse and worse and on Monday I was in bed all day except for classes (of which there were three that day, but I did not want to miss them!). I do not know if I got sick because of the food, or the climate or the coldness during the show or something else. But I fell ill and it was not nice. 


On Saturday, we had the opportunity to have a “authentic Chinese family visit” and Oliver, Rhys and I signed up for it. We were matched with a local family with a 9 year old girl called Mary who just did not stop talking Chinese to me despite me being unable to respond. I actually did pick up one or two words by the learn  by pointing method! As Oliver and Rhys left for Shanghai at 4pm, our visit was cut short a bit and Fang invited us to go with him to a museum some other day (which we did!). That evening, many students were in Shanghai for clubbing while others including me stayed in Hangzhou and enjoyed the evening there, though I went to bed early, because I was just not feeling well.


On Sunday, I think I had a sleep in and in the afternoon cycled to West Lake with Grace, a local student, and Josh from Manchester University. This was my opportunity to catch up with all things West Lake. We went to He Fang street, some pseudo Chinese ancient street where you can buy a lot of Chinese stuff and street food (which maybe is what made me sick!).