Take out your best china

One funny evening at home in front of the television, when the last year was approaching its end, I asked Huzzy if he wanted to go on the epic Asia trip with me next year. He looked at me gooped and said that I was crazy and that wouldn’t be doable, and we were tired after this crazy year, and I was obviously a phony. Two days later, he was convinced.

Going to Asia was my life’s dream. As a child I took those geography encyclopedias, the baby Ady in Barnaul Russia, looking and feeling so misplaced there, looked through the frosted windows and dreamt: one day I will see the Great Chinese Wall, and Machu Picchu and Niagara Falls, and the Empire State Building. Spoiler alert: the dreams (are) coming true.

The first and foremost country on my list was always and forever Japan, but when we both realized how long we would have to fly there, we had to come up with the plan B. And although not planned from the very beginning, I thought this is karma, and we just have to make a stop in China. I have a plenty of friends who were there, and Barnaul is 500 km from the Chinese border. When I was a kid, sometimes my father would bring me to the city center, where the market next to the main station was, and it was full of Chinese people. In the quite a middle of nowhere that Barnaul is, it was the only opportunity to meet foreigners, the heroes of my imaginary worlds I was going to visit when I was going to get big.

They were mysterious, sometimes rude and distant, but also bizarre and inexplicably attractive in their otherworldliness. They spoke weirdly, and so many of my peers and adults found that funny to parody them. I found that just pathetic. Already then I realized that me speaking broken English has the same nature as them speaking broken Russian.

What brought them to Russia at those times? Need, greed, sheer wish for a better life? Once in my teens, a ware from that market became quite a fad and all the cool kids at school had it. It was something like two glass balls you could twist in your palm, a funny fidget toy. If you got it right, they would produce a subtle chime. I’ve had never had my own, I’d rather envy other kids who could, but at the same time, those toys were as deeply imprinted in my memory, as 9/11 or Putin slowly getting to power and corrupt the entirety of the young Russian democracy.

And now, in 2025, I finally get to visit China. How ironic is that I, the ex-Russian now German national, don’t need a visa and Huzzy does. Well, we fly in with China Southern, top and on the notch, comfy and rested (almost), we came prepared. Alipay, whatnot. The first days in Beijing scream to me: Russia. The way the subway is built, the streets are built, the way people are built. Security screenings after security checks. Serious faces, serious people. And, as in Russia, actually curious faces, curious to see someone from outside the glorious communist empire.

I saw people trying to approach us, sometimes the contact getting a little awkward, but at the same time absolutely not forced. “Where are you from? Do you like China? How long will you stay here?“. Our hotel, although not very distant from the city center, but then again what is not far away on the Chinese scale (?), was situated in a rather poor neighborhood. Collapsed roofs, dirty streets, weary clothing. And then again: Maybachs, Gucci, Tiffanies. If I squint, Russia, is that you?

The Forbidden City is something I will remember forever. Never in my life, I could imagine being in such a tremendous concentration of arts and history, and yet so unseen and rather consciously ignored by the West, as this outstanding piece of art, the heritage of the glorious past of the Chinese civilization. The scale, this is what China is, the astonishing scale everywhere. And efficiency. Scary, knowing the political background, but is it for us to decide?

Russia has known 4 years of true democracy at best throughout its entire history, China has known none (at least in the modern history). Being in Beijing made me wonder if democracy is really for everyone.

After almost a week in there, we moved to Shanghai, and I’ve heard a lot, but speaking about Shanghai is nothing in comparison to being there. Everything that you would associate with the Future: electric cars, walkable city space, working and functional IT, all of that is a given in Shanghai. Clean, safe and supercharged with technology, it serves it so casually, so effortlessly, it’s almost unbelievable this city has 24 million people population, three times as large as New York. Three times as large, three times as glorious, three times as attractive. New York sucks dick big time in comparison. Shanghai is the true manifestation of China’s commitment of their nation to the future, and it’s impressive and the stagnant West just fades in comparison. The ugly truth of the first quarter of the 21st century and the clear winners and losers.

Walking those streets, seeing things with my own eyes made it clear to me, how much the arrogance has blinded us, and for this blindness we are going to pay. Time to learn Chinese and take out yout best china, people.