I’m back in Beijing for my second semester after a much needed seven week break in the UK. At home I got pretty sick of being asked “How’s China?” or “What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen?” The craziest thing I actually saw was a guy who had passed out on the street at midnight in freezing temperatures, and nobody went to help him. You can imagine a person’s typical reaction towards
this – he could quite easily have been dead.
But when I arrived at my mate’s flat and said “I think I saw a dead guy”, he just replied, “Well that makes two of us.” China hardens you up. But never mind the oppressive state, gutter oil, or terrorist attacks – I’ve had tonnes of fun. I’ve met guys like Cameron Blades who studies English. He’s never been abroad but
he’s almost perfected a cockney accent by watching Eastenders. There’s Da Xing, who latched onto us just because he liked my mate’s dulcet public school tones, and of course Legolas, our neighbour who speaks English and really, really likes Lord of The Rings.
It’s not easy being a foreigner – I felt like a babbling baby for about a month and some locals got more frustrated than I did. Making Chinese friends can be really hard unless you already have a friend in common, plus a lot of ex-pats are upsettingly bitter people and you get ‘seasonal depression’ for half the week if the pollution’s bad. But if you try hard enough, you realize that Legolas actually isn’t an elf. Legolas is a human being like the rest of us. He wants to have fun with us like a few other Chinese bros, and with a bit of respect, it can be the best cultural exchange ever seen.
