I left Thailand at night time with a direct flight to the capital of China. When I arrived in town at 07:00 in the morning I took the Airport Express and a local metro train to arrive at my hostel. The place has no 24 hour reception but is a reasonable design studio that rents out a couple of sleeping places that could be also very well used by the staff of the shop.

I waited outside on the streets drinking milk tea and eating sweet waffles for breakfast. The first impressions I got during this short period of time were so much different from what I had initially expected. The town is 180 degree opposite from what I thought it’ll be. The people are polite, friendly and very concerned with my wellbeing so far. I was honestly surprised after what I’ve seen from the Chinese population that I met outside of this country.

I was able to drop my bags around 10:00 AM in the morning and immediately ventured out into the streets of this amazing and exciting place. But not without downloading a new application to my smartphone which allows me to rent bikes all across the city without any costs. You just find the next bike on the map or see one standing around in the streets. A short 2D Barcode scan later and you get the lock combination to open the bike. There are hundreds if not thousands of these bikes in the 20 million people maze. The next bike is literally always a stone throw away.

Using this convenient method of transportation and walking the rest of the day I found the area around the Xihai and Houhai lakes to be very approachable. I found a bunch of men fishing the lakes while this would be officially forbidden. I went into the former residence of the revolutionary widow Soong Ching Ling and was amazed by the sensations this gave me.

China is a strange place. The city despite it’s size feels very safe. Even small alleyways feel fine at night. The internet is very closed. This is the first time I do encounter a situation where information is so obviously filtered based on it’s source. Mainly western websites like Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and Instagram are partially or completely blocked (Google Maps anyone?). I can get around this by using  a VPN tunnel to relocate my internet access point to another spot of the world. But I feel this is a good training for the upcoming weeks in the DPRK.

There is so much more in my mind right now. More than I could possibly write down before I start annoying people. Just one thing became clear immediately. I totally underestimated China.