Just 11 days until I have to get driven to Dusseldorf by a random willing family member and fly to Hong Kong and from there take a ferry to Shenzhen. The oddest thing is that I’m not anxious, scared, worried or concerned about it at all. Mostly I guess I’m just excited about the prospect of new horizons and ‘adventures’. Also, while I’m really quite fond of my family I don’t really feel like sticking around just now.

Lots of people have been asking me about exactly where it is I’m going. Most of the reactions I’ve been getting are along the line of: “China?! Why the hell would you go to that rat-infested stinkhole?!” Seriously, the prejudice is incredible. And also rather annoying, because hearing “wow, China, that’ll probably be really interesting and cool” would make for some nice encouragement. But no. Usually I will just say Hong Kong because people know where that is. Anyway, let me enlighten you a little bit.

Shenzhen is a city of approximately 8 million people in it’s greater area. Pretty much half of the Netherlands’s population in one city. I find it pretty damn near impossible to consider how huge that is. I know pretty much a hundred people. It’s just weird if you start thinking about it.

Shenzhen has pretty much emerged out of nothing in the last 30 to 40 years. Since then it has become one of the richest and most successful cities in China, with the highest education levels and highest average wealth. Located in the Guangdong province which is near the tropic of Cancer it’s got a subtropical climate, which seems rather agreeable. But we’ll see about that. I’ve already been told not to bring winter clothes which is something I quite liked to hear. Of course this rapid growth has its downsides. The wealth works like a glittering beacon attracting people from all over China to the city. Low education levels and poor government regulation for these illegal immigrants (apparently in China you can be an illegal immigrant even in your own country) has caused an increase in crime recently, but of course everywhere has its downsides.

As you can see in the Google Earth screenshot it’s situated along the sea. I’ve been browsing Flickr for some interesting screenshots to add to this rather dry semi-essay I just wrote, and here you go.

Credits to arjalvaran for those two pictures.

Anyway, I hope this managed to inform you a little bit about the city. And sorry for the terribly infrequent posting, but there has simply not been much going on here lately. The most interesting thing I’ve been working on lately is making a garden table for the backyard out of the old wood from my grandmother’s old house, which is looking fairly promising but will weigh a ton and need a small army to move, hehe.

Being back home, well, it’s a rather ambiguous thing. On the one side it’s nice to see my whole family again and spend some time with them, but on the other side you feel rather restless. Restless to get back on the road and see the world, meet new people and old friends.

It’s as if time moves differently when you’re away. Your personal time slows down and seems to be extended, but the rest of the world moves at the same pace. For me my month in Spain felt like an eternity. Every day had new people, new places and new events. While back home the same daily routine was carrying on. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course. It just makes you feel displaced and ill at ease. Suddenly you’re ripped from your personal time back into real time and you find you have trouble getting back into it. It’s like when you’re driving on a highway at 120 kmph one minute and suddenly there’s a traffic jam. It just feels agonisingly slow.

Sure, they progressed on repaving the streets, the trees are suddenly in bloom and it’s a bit warmer. But it’s just the same. I can’t do this here much longer. Thankfully, a way out has already presented itself. According to the current plan I leave to Hong Kong on the 29th of April. I haven’t booked the flight yet as I’m just checking to make sure it works for everyone, but once it does I’m booking it and getting on that plane. There the plan is to educate some of these Chinese in the ancient art of English.

And hopefully my personal time will go into slow motion again.