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This is an account of my trip to China in 2018 and a little of my advice on what to do when you travel to China for the first time. A few weeks before the trip, I tried to learn Chinese. To cut the long story short, I felt like vocal training was better than trying to learn Chinese so I gave up.
After 20 hours of travel time, we landed in China. I was so tired and hungry. It was raining but there was a very uncomfortable heatwave accompanying the overcast sky. Anyway, that wasn’t my biggest problem, I jumped into a taxi/cab ready to head to the hotel to take a bath, eat and sleep. However, the driver didn’t speak English and couldn’t read English so I had to deal with that. We had to drive around the airport looking for someone who could translate my English hotel booking to Chinese. With no google to help me with directions and English as the only language I could speak and understand, I started to get frustrated. Finally, we got the directions, it was a long and dangerous drive which reminded me I had forgotten to take travel insurance. I will never understand China’s driving rules. Moreover, the driver overcharged me because seeing that I don’t speak Chinese, he switched off the meter. Man, it’s hard out there!
Finally, I got to the hotel and guess what, no one spoke English. They called one of the managers who speaks English to come and assist me and I waited for the longest time. After checking in, my stomach reminded me I had missed the last two meals during the flight, that’s how awful the food was for me. When we booked this hotel, the hotel profile told us that they have two on-site restaurants – one offering Chinese cuisine and the other offering Western cuisine. To worsen my frustration, there was no restaurant offering Western cuisine and I really didn’t want to have Chinese food cause I was still feeling sick from that food I had on the plane. Argh! I really wanted familiar food. They never updated information on the website and I was so disappointed. I ended up walking to some restaurant, ordered a Hawaiian pizza, an all-fruit Hawaiian pizza. Good thing is it was so delicious even though it had no meat.
Later on, I managed to steal some sleep but when time to wake up came, it was a mountain to climb. I had to miss breakfast so I could sleep a little bit more since back home it was about midnight. Jet-lag is a monster. I almost missed the last shuttle to Pazhou Complex, where the China Export and Import Fair was taking place. All this was happening while I didn’t have access to whatsapp, no whatsapp, no facebook, no google apps. Now I get it, this is why Taku always told me to keep up with current affairs. I learnt the hard way cause as always, whenever I travel, I forget to put my Econet line on roaming. More than 12 hours has passed and I had not communicated with anyone back home to let them know I had travelled well. The saddest thing was there’s free wifi everywhere but I had no idea that google doesn’t work, neither does facebook nor whatsapp, if you don’t have VPN.
First day at the Fair I met Jorasy (her English name), her Chinese name is Yh, she works at the Post Office desk and she was selling sim cards. She was a great help, she assisted me to get We Chat and we only realised later after a couple of failed attempts that we couldn’t download it from Google Playstore and had to use Baidu. Thank you to this amazing lady and the guy that helped us. While at this desk, a couple from Spain came and yah, language barriers are real. It is frustrating, I get what it feels like when your partner communicates to you in a love language that only they understand. Anyway, the most amazing thing happened, after I tried to help the two even though I don’t speak Spanish, they ask me where I am from and I tell them I’m from Zimbabwe. The husband then tells me he spent 30 years of his life in Jo’burg, South Africa. Guess what, we instantly switched to speaking in Zulu. Ha ha, here I am in China, I meet a Spanish person who can speak Zulu. Amazing! We had a lot of fun and went our separate ways to start on the business that had brought us to Guangzhou.
I managed to get hold of my family and friends and realised that Skype and LinkedIn worked without VPN. Fortunately, the hotel switched on the VPN every once in a while and I managed to use my whatsapp. Sleeping and waking up the next two days was hectic cause of jet-lag, I really struggled with the jump in time zones. I missed home too and realised my experience would have been better if I had a local contact who could assist me with communication. Anyway, I found a great translation app and it made things more bearable for me.
Though it was a business trip, I got to do a few activities. We went on a ferry cruise to see the Canton tower. I really enjoyed it.
Canton tower in the afternoon. 
Canton tower at night.
Things to do when you travel to China:
- Make sure you have VPN on your phone, you will need it.
- Travel with someone who’s been there before or get a local “tour” guide.
- Ask your hotel to send their card. This shows hotel information and map in both English and Chinese.
- Get a translation app.
- Get travel insurance, they drive dangerously and you will come across a lot of accidents.
- Have fun!
On our way to the Ferry Ride 
Nice morning and tired too. 
Ferry ride with some Tanzanian friends 
Beautiful view from the Ferry 
On my way back home, I was the happiest person on earth!
Travel more and be inspired to your ultimate emergence!
Nono Nyathi
