What can you write about your trip to China? I want to write so much that I foresee that my fingers are going to hurt.
For us, China was always an opaque notion. Yes, almost everything we use is Made in China, including our car and phone, yes - we've learnt about the Great Wall of China and the 1.4b people, yes, we have heard about the Chinese fried rice but beyond that, we've barely seen any photos or given a second thought to the 2nd largest economy in the world.
To be honest, traveling to China was never part of our plan in the near future, we had our entire trip booked to Japan but we never received our visa on time and were in a pickle, and on a whim, last moment, decided to go to Beijing and Shanghai. After traveling there, I'm cautious of not saying I traveled to China, it's like saying you traveled to India after seeing a part of Delhi. India does not equal a part of a city, it's too vast.
We did 4 days in Beijing and 3 in Shanghai. We did so much, saw so much, this was an extreme cultural immersion. I loved every moment of my trip. Like always, I thought it would be amazing to live and work there. This is a never-ending problem in my life, whether in Hanoi or Singapore, Amsterdam or Barcelona.
I enjoyed the marriage of old and new in Beijing, and liked the very-modern city that Shanghai is - it's one of the finest cities that I have visited in my life. And that it houses 25m people is very hard to believe unless you've been there and seen the housing, transit system and the infrastructure built.
I took a total of 563 photos and videos, and this is a miniseries in order for me to remember my trip.
Here is part 1.
Part 2 is Buildings of Beijing.
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