I had just finished an exchange year in Singapore as part of my University of Strathclyde Engineering course. It was March 2013 when I was to fly out to Guangzhou and then on to Shanghai. Shanghai had been romanticized in Looper and Guangzhou was the manufacturing hub of China. I was drawn less to Beijing at this point. Though I did later visit Beijing. I would spend a few days in each of Guangzhou and Shanghai. I decided to use an website called Couchsurfing. I had first heard of a website called Couchsurfing when I was in Glasgow at a Toastmasters social event, where an American guy I had met told me about it. The whole idea of the site was to facilitate culture exchange by having the host providing free accommodation in return for hanging out with them and teaching them something. The website itself is still going strong in 2026. The members of the site were mainly students and young professionals, a bit like Facebook in its early days. 

There is a reference system and the online community seems pretty good overall as far as online communities go. I contacted a few hosts and soon had lots of replies. I eventually settled on 1 female student in Guangzhou and a few days with one young male professional in Shanghai and then a few days with another female professional 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 and I got a bit lost. I remember being tired from walking. Google maps didn’t work in China (without a VPN) and this was something I was unprepared for. Nobody spoke English when I tried to strike up a conversation to get help,  again something I hadn’t come up against in other parts of Asia. The Chinese were all zooming past me on their ebikes and bicycles, paying little attention to me. The air looked misty at first but it was dry and I knew that the ‘mist’ was actually air pollution. Eventually I managed to navigate and rendezvous with my host. Yang Yang was a quiet and kind young 20 year old. She didn’t seem to speak English that well. She brought her friend along and we three walked along the central downtown area of Guangzhou. Her friend was more jovial and kept making jokes to Yang Yang. I remember it being dark and downtown was alive with different coloured lights. Wherever we went there were lots of people. On the pavement, in the park, on the bus. Yang Yang took me back to her dormitory where I slept on the living room couch. I remember finding it quite cold. So we went to the local market and bought a thermal base layer for me. 

Of course all the road signs were in Chinese characters. The messenger apps were different, PRC’s used Wechat instead of Whatsapp. 

China was different to Indonesia. People in China were all moving with purpose. In Java there were lots of people sitting around in the villages surrounding Mount Bromo. Everyone was going somewhere, doing something, hustling in some way. There were vendors everywhere selling various wares, all at very reasonable prices. The streets and pavements were alive with activity. The electric bike was probably the commonest mode of transport. The buses were packed full of people. The footpaths had a steady stream of pedestrians.

Eventually my time on her couch was up. Yang Yang wanted my picture for her Couch Surfing Wall of Travellers photo montage at the end. I didn’t mind.

Then on to Shanghai by plane. 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. Almost a little too talkative.The American guy was a little irritable. He was on a student visa but he was also teaching English for 200rmb/hour. I remember him bragging about his side hustle pay. He had a set of workout weights in the living room. His friend came over and the four of us played a board game in the living room. Clint kindly left me a positive reference on my CS profile once I left. Its still there on Couchsurfing. He described me as being ‘a nice guy’ who is ‘ambitious, has life goals and enjoys his life.’

In Shanghai I walked to the Bund by the riverside and got a passerby to take a picture of me just like in my favourite film Looper. I walked around the French Concession and ate a baguette with filling for lunch.

One criticism I had early of China was the food quality of food vendors. Whereas in Singapore and Europe there were strict rules and regulations on hygiene and health and safety, in Shanghai I didn’t feel so good in my stomach after having the street food.

Finally I met with a young professional called Haze in another part of Shanghai. At Haze’s there was no couch, just a basic bed on the floor in her bedroom (an unusual setup). I remember Haze being quite stressed out about her work. I guess Shanghai was a stressful place to live.

While I was in Shanghai I had an interview with the private teaching company English First. I must have already been having thoughts of leaving my university course. My interviewer was a fierce young Texan woman. My memory of the interview was her shooting questions at me in a interrogation-like-way, perhaps to test me. Unfortunately I had no teaching experience and we didn’t particularly hit it off in terms of making a favorable impression. She didn’t even email me to say I was being turned down.

Overall there was a lot to criticize about China regarding my first impressions. The air pollution, the variable food vendor standards. There were lots of barriers too, the language barrier, the internet firewall blocking apps such as Google maps. It certainly wasn’t all fun and games.

Thirteen years later, looking back at that sole photograph of myself standing in front of the Bund, I see a traveler caught between two worlds. My first impressions of China weren’t romantic; they were marked by the grey haze of heavy air pollution, the predictable consequence of unsafe street food, the sudden anxiety of an interrogation-like interview with English First, and the isolating wall of the Great Firewall. It was a place that forced me to confront my own boundaries and, perhaps, the realization that I was already pulling away from the university path I was on. Yet, despite the friction, there was a profound energy to it all. Clint’s old reference is still sitting there on my Couchsurfing profile, describing me as “ambitious” and possessing “life goals.” Reading those words now, I realize that China didn’t need to be perfect or comfortable to be exactly what I needed at the time. It was a gritty, high-octane glimpse into a world moving at breakneck speed, forcing me to figure out exactly where I wanted my own ambition to take me next.