If I recall correctly it must have been during the 2nd semester of my NTU course that I visited Mainland China (maybe Easter 2013). I visited Thailand and Malaysia with Ryan during the break between semester 1 and the beginning of semester 2. A lot of my Strathclyde cohort travelled back to Scotland during this holiday period (this would have been the Christmas break, in late December to early January). I can specifically remember 2 other guys from Strathclyde travelled back, they both had girlfriends back in Glasgow and they missed their families. For them this year was a sort of long holiday I suppose and a chance to build their curriculum vitae (CV). One of those guys was particularly focused on joining the engineering company Rolls Royce. He had previously worked in South Africa on an internship. Now he wanted to work with the Singapore branch of Rolls Royce. However he never really left the Strathclyde clique in all the times I saw him at NTU. He went to see a Formula one race in Singapore which was pretty normal for a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate. He worked the second semester with his dream company as far as I know. He didn’t go wandering off the beaten track, as I did (metaphorically).

For me I had no girlfriend back in Scotland. I had struggled to make friends in 1st and 2nd year of Strathclyde. So I suppose I was more at risk of ‘going native’ or straying so to speak.

I had first heard of a website called Couchsurfer when I was in Glasgow at a social event, where an American guy I had met told me about it. The purpose of the site is cultural exchange between travelling strangers but there is a reference system and the online community seems pretty good overall as far as online communities go. Travellers can contact hosts for a free couch to sleep on, hence the name. However I had not yet got a chance to use Couchsurfing in Glasgow. I decided to visit Guangzhou first and then Shanghai using Couchsurfing, two of the biggest and most successful cities. Shanghai had the Bund and a lot of financial industry and Guangzhou was in the manufacturing heartland of China, where all the cheap goods come from that end up all over the world. I contacted a few hosts and soon had lots of replies. I eventually settled on 1 student in Guangzhou and a few days with one young professional in Shanghai and then a few days with another in Shanghai.

I have a few memories from that trip and one photograph of me in front of the Bund. My first memory was in Guangzhou on a big university campus getting stuck. I think Google maps didn’t work in China (without a VPN). Nobody spoke English when I asked some of the strangers around me, zooming past on their ebikes. My host even spoke English poorly. All the signs were in Chinese characters. The messenger apps were different, PRC’s used Wechat instead of Whatsapp. Anyway I must have found my host somehow. 

In terms of first impressions, wherever I went in China, there were people, people and people. Even an old basic dirt country path going towards the  highway road where you would not expect much people to use, there were lots of people. Everyone seemed to have a purpose, unlike some other parts of Asia I had been to like in Indonesia. Everyone was going somewhere, doing something, hustling in some way. The electric bike was probably the commonest mode of transport and there was often two people plus luggage on them. The buses were packed full of people. The footpaths had a steady stream of pedestrians.

In terms of my first couch surfer host I remember her being kind. I was cold at one point and there had been a cheap thermal clothes seller a bit back along the route we had walked and I asked to go back even though we were both tired. She patiently granted my request. She wanted my picture for her Couch Surfing Wall of Travellers at the end. I didn’t mind.

My second Couchsurfing host was a young man called Clint and he stayed with an American in a high rise apartment in Shanghai. I remember him being very talkative and sociable. We played some sort of board game with the American guy (sorry forgot his name), his friend, Clint and me. I remember the American guy was teaching English as a side hustle but was there on a student visa. He had an impressive set of workout weights in the living room. He was a little moody though but not unfriendly. 

I have another memory of attending an interview in Shanghai for the private company English First. The position must have been for after my course ended. The interviewer was a young woman from Texas if I recall right. The interview went pretty terribly with her shooting questions at me in an unpleasant fashion, perhaps to test me. She didn’t get back to me ultimately.

I can’t remember much else about Shanghai other than the riverside and The Bund, the large metro system and the cheap baguettes rolls the street food vendors sold.

And so ended my first trip to mainland China.