Travel with me #1: MY LIFE IN CHINA - Follow my life in Beijing, China!

It's raining right now which rarely happens in the always dry city of Beijing. When people ask me why the hell I moved to China, I have a very simple answer. Why the hell not?! The main reasons for people to not have any positive affiliation with mainland China are human right violations, censorship and smog. But is that all there is? No, of course not! I hope I can get you some deeper insights into China and tell you exactly why I love living in mainland China.

But, first of all. Does internet censorship exist in mainland China? Yes, it does and it is vey strict. Is there smog in Beijing? Yes, and it's dangerous but it's getting much better year after year. Are there human rights violations in China? That is a very difficult question to answer. Generally, in every country there are human rights violations. Does the Chinese government actively commit or encourage them? No, they don't. To be honest, I traveled all over China already and I never encountered anything that got even close to a human rights violation.

But let's start at the beginning: Why did I even move to China? I did a student exchange and originally decided that I wanted to live in Japan for a year, nevertheless I was literally too tall to be allowed to become part of the exchange. I am 1,96m/6 ft 4. So, my decision was to go some other place in Asia and what I was looking for was an adventure, so I decided to go to mainland China.

During my exchange year, I visited Lu He Middle School 潞河中学, the oldest High school in China with more than 3000 students.

I stayed in a Chinese host family with my host father Zhijie, my host mother Lifeng and their daughter Lizhi.

And my three best friend Johanna from Switzerland, Mateenah from South Africa and Yurun 雨润, who would later be my girlfriend, from China.

In my time in China, we did a lot of traveling, whether to the North Korean border, Shanghai, all the way up to the north to Harbin or Qinhuangdao, or just simply inside Beijing. The Chinese landscape and culture is as rich as you think and the people in China are truly open-minded and respectful towards Westerners.

Here are a couple of photos from our trips:

Somewhere in the South China sea heading towards the shores of North Korea...

At a fish market in Qinhuangdao, a little town in the North of China...

At the end of the Great Wall of China in Hebei...

In Shanghai's busiest shopping street...

Eating Chinese hot pot in Beijing ...

At the 2007 world exhibition Shanghai palace...

Inside the forbidden city in Beijing...

Somewhere outside of Beijing...

I can only recommend everyone reading this article to overthink China. I think to some degree there has been a lot of false propaganda against China. China is a beautiful place and the people, food and culture are just marvelous. Living here completely changed my view on the world and I hope I can change yours a little bit as well. I will post more China stories and articles here on this profile, so you can get insights into the country of the sleeping lion...

Many greetings from Beijing, China,
Leon

PS Please UPVOTE and COMMENT on this article! It would mean the world to me!