Spending Chinese New Year in China (as a foreigner)

It’s late 2015 and the end of a long day at work. I check my emails one last time before leaving and see an unusual message.

“We would like to invite you to spend 3 months in the city of Qingdao, China.”

For a brief moment, I’d forgotten that I raised my metaphorical hand to show interest in working in China for my company a while back. It was one of those, “I probably won’t ever get picked” situations.

And sure enough, a couple of months later I embarked on my first ever trip outside of Western Europe – an 18 hour journey to China’s east coast.

The view of China from the window seat. (Photo by author)

A whole new world

Up until this point, at age 24, I had only ever been abroad from my native England to travel to the Netherlands, Spain and Disneyland Paris.

From what I understood (or didn’t understand) about China, it was very different to anywhere I’d been before.

I didn’t know who I was going to meet on this project and was apprehensive about the possibility of not being able to communicate much with anyone.

During my travel, I stopped off at a Shenyang airport, close to the border with North Korea.

It clearly wasn’t built for tourists as signs in English were few and far between. Up until this…