Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

It was a cold and grey afternoon in November 2019 when I left England with a one way ticket to a new life in China. I still don't regret not having that return ticket. A lot has happened in China during my time here and there's been personal victories and failures, as well as the events of the global pandemic. There isn’t any deep reason behind why I choose to move to China. I don’t have a fascination with martial arts, I can’t speak a word of Mandarin as I get on the plane and I don’t particularly care for Chinese food. The honest truth is the destination could be anywhere as long as it's far away from here. Also I applied for only a handful of jobs while doing CELTA in the summer;  these guys got in touch. So for better or worse I fled County Durham for Dalian, China. 

I left English soil on a KLM flight from Newcastle with well wishers along the way. The taxi driver and a few supportive friends. Friends I worked with at the most recent factory who want to see me go on to something better. There was also a lot of people who didn’t have a fuck to give either way and that’s fine too. I respect the art of not giving a fuck when done right. As for my family they think I'm still working night shifts at the Nissan factory rather than in China teaching kids something close to English. An indifferent family vibe such as this makes it easier to up sticks and move half the world away. As the wheels pull up from the runway beneath a grey sky I take what could be my last glimpse of England. I had little desire to return in that moment and a year later I miss only bacon and go-kart racing. The green hills of home were beautiful despite all the depressing grey hanging heavy above our heads. We climbed through the clouds and England was gone. 

The flight landed at Amsterdam Airport an hour later where I boarded a bigger plane, a 747 bound for Beijing. This is the third time I've been through Amsterdam's huge Schiphol airport yet I've never been to Amsterdam. Too many tourists. I'd rather visit the lesser known towns of the Netherlands. Brits and Americans make some of the worst tourists and I’d rather see the sights less visited than the Irish Bars and hear that winey 'Oh, geee' American accent while they take snaps of any town hall or toilet block older than 1776. Maybe when I return to Europe I'll have a blue passport courtesy of Brexit. Will I even be British on a return 10 years later? There might only be England and Wales left! A citizen of, 'The Former Anglo-Welsh Kingdom'. Fuck me, what's going to be left in 10 years if things continue as they are. 2020 hasn't exactly been kind to Britain. Anyway, teaching English doesn't pay so well in Europe so it may be a while. Sometime after I've paid off my debts from struggling to make ends meet since uni.

The flight to Beijing was depressing more than exciting. The thought of leaving everyone and everything behind. More so the thought that I wasn't leaving much behind. I brought one suitcase which was half full with my one prized possession, a red and gold custom painted crash helmet from my karting days. Like Mika Hakkinen I haven't officially retired. My other meager possessions were textbooks and two novels, Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, wrongly assuming I could get more novels in China. The problem isn't so much getting English books here it's getting them unabridged rather than simplified. I thought I should improve my reading with some Jane Austen as I now claim to be an English teacher, of all things. I hope Mr. Bancroft from Durham Johnston is spinning in his grave, sooner or later. In my carry-on was my trusty seven year old MacBook Pro which is still going strong despite the occasional electric shock, and my indestructible Nokia 5 phone which I smashed to bits on a Prague cobblestone six weeks earlier.

After years of trying and failing I've gotten the fuck out of Dodge but I can't help mourn the past. Wasted time is what I was mourning. Days, weeks and years spent on nightshifts. Scrapping ice off the car at 5:00am to race to a job I hate. I regret having nothing to show for it.

I had no fear for my Chinese future. My fear was to feel stuck at places like 3M Aycliffe, the Husqvarna lawn mower factory or Metal Drum; the worst of the lot. Sitting in a centre column seat I was cramed in like a sardine. On my left is a beautiful Chinese woman and on my right two Mexican businessmen who didn't pause for breath in their conversation until Siberia. We land in Beijing sometime in the morning. Very early in the morning and it's already bright outside and hot. The November heat is from dryness in the Chinese winter. English winters are humid and as grey as it ever is. I have a connecting flight to Dalian, my final destination. I wouldn't have had my bags if I wasn't lucky. They were meant to go straight onto the final flight but I saw what looked like my plastic silver suitcase doing laps on the conveyor belt. Two things stood out at Beijing airport. Firstly a policewoman in a short skirt was really giving me the eye, like some female Benny Hill character. A good omen, surely. I’ve never had such attention from an English woman. Secondly, the word 'foreigner' is blazoned everywhere. In England it's bad manners to call someone a foreigner. In China there's less politically correct language, hopefully I can get away from having to constantly censor myself and ‘walk on eggshells’ to avoid hurting feelings.

The flight to Dalian was a short trip over the Bohai Sea to the Liaodong peninsula and a city of nine million souls; which I'd ever heard of until Rafa Benitez left Newcastle United to come here. I knew close to zero about this city but it can't be as bad as life in County Durham. Back home there’s nothing but endless, temporary factory jobs and slim prospects of improving my situation. China is a new start for me, and a much better place to be than what the British media would have us believe.