My China

I’ll never forget the “pinch-me!” moments I had at the top of the Great Wall and walking down East Nanjing Road to the Bund in Shanghai but anyone can go there and do that, that could be anyone’s China.  My China is a glorious paradox, it’s like nothing (and nowhere) else. It’s chaotic and still, beautiful and repellent, completely alien and welcoming, the big touristy sights and the corners of Handan where foreigners are a spectacle.

My China is brilliantly lit in the night by fireworks, lanterns and neon. Everything seems to have a fine coating of dust, sugar or sequins. It’s a place with synchronised dancing before work, a shower that plays jingle bells when it’s hot, an ancient and toothless man pedalling a bike-van delivering rocking unicorns and black cotton buds.

In my China I’ve got the couple at the market’s outdoor kitchen stalls who make the best fried rice in the world, the taxi drivers who know exactly where I want to go and manage to take me a different way each time and the granny who lives opposite, laughs whenever she sees me and worries that I’m not wearing enough clothes.

My China is full of plans and even more memories. There’s the gut-wrenching fear I felt walking into Kindergarten for the first time, hiding a grin at four year olds confidently shouting ‘TORTURE’ instead of ‘talk show’, laughing so hard at two teams of ten year olds racing to mime the sentence ‘I want to go the washroom!’ that I fell over.

I’ve got a fair few nights with patchy memories and hilarious photos because of the word GAMBEI! And I’ve got several memories of endurance train riding… the crush of humanity, dodging being hit in the face by luggage, the jokes, the aching and the numbness, practicing Mandarin with curious passengers, climbing over people to get to the toilets, being used as a back rest by a series of fat women and the utter joy of getting off after eighteen hours!

My China is a place to say ‘yeah, why not?’ to all kinds of things. I have represented the UK at a sporting event… the opening ceremony of an international Tai-Chi competition! I’ve eaten cold donkey sausage, frogs, cheese flavoured sponge cake, watermelon mashed potato and jam cake, chicken hearts and live shrimp whose antennae twitched on my plate after I’d decapitated them…  

It’s a place where Cadbury’s chocolate, teabags and Skype are more precious than gold. It’s in haggling for silk dresses, dodging bikes and phlegm, the peace of my local park, empty, on a cold Sunday afternoon, the glow of finding really bizarre things in common with people and innumerable moments with friends I’ll never forget. The good, the bad, the weird, the infuriating, the dull, the touching, the hilarious and the strangely sticky… they’re all part of MY China.