After India I went straight to Australia to start my university studies. During the first semester break in Australia, I went on an exchange program to China together with a group of other students from the same university. This included people from a campus located on the Gold Coast, about an hour’s drive south of Brisbane. I had never been there, so I did not know any of them. As a matter of fact, there was only one guy that I recognised in the whole group, the rest I had not even ran into prior to this.
To be more specific, this was a three-week Chinese course in Hangzhou, which was described to me as a small city by the professor who was in charge of the program. When looking it up myself however, It turned out that Hangzhou “only” had five million people, about half the population of Sweden.
When I look at the population size of Hangzhou now though, I see has it has increased to 13 million people. I don’t know if this is common or not, after all it has been 18 years, but in my world it is still pretty crazy that the population has increased by 8 million people in that time-period.
Now I am going a bit off-topic, but what further adds to the extreme increase of Hangzhou’s population is the fact that time tends to pass so much fucking faster the older you get. At least that is my experience. The China-visit feels like it took place maybe about five years ago, not 18 which is how long ago it is at the time of writing. It is now December 2025, and the China-trip took place in December 2007.
I did not go to China with the rest of the group, but flew there on my own. To be more specific, I flew to Shanghai where I spent two days before continuing to Hangzhou.
I had booked a hotel in Shanghai online before the trip. I would soon realise that it was a pretty different type of accommodation than what I had expected, but not in a bad way. Rather, it was fucking amazing.
After landing, I took a taxi from the Shanghai-airport to the hotel, but when I arrived at the address, I could not see any hotel. I just saw a big high rise-building, but with the help of the cab driver I managed to get in touch with the owner of the hotel. Remember that this was in 2007, so it was before apps such as WhatsApp and the internet being as widely available as it is today.
The cab driver told me to just wait outside, which I did, and a few minutes later an old Chinese lady who did not speak a word of English came down to greet me. I had no idea what she was saying, but she seemed super-friendly, just smiling and laughing all the time and signalling for me to follow her.
I remember thinking that this was definitely not the type of hotel that I had been expecting. Rather, it seemed like I was renting a room in someone’s apartment. I was sceptical to say the least, as I was being led into the room where I was apparently supposed to stay for the following two nights.
At this time, I was still a newbie when it came to travelling, so all of this was super-exciting for me. I remember how the lady made sure that everything was okay, or at least I think so, and then she left.
The room looked alright, it was nothing out of the ordinary, or at least that was my first impression of it. However, I should not have drawn a conclusion that quick, because the curtains in the room were closed.
As I went over to the window to open them, I did not have any expectations. That quickly changed however once I opened them. At first, my jaw just dropped, and I was just thinking “Wow! What an amazing view!” This is because I had a perfect view all over Shanghai’s iconic skyline, which was extra cool to witness at night.
This was actually the first time I had been in a city with that type of skyline, so I was in awe. I pulled an armchair over to the window, and then ended up just sitting there for a long time enjoying the amazing view that I had in front of me. I was no longer regretting choosing that particular hotel, but rather felt as if I had struck gold.
The only problem was that it was cold as hell, but once I was in bed that was easily solved by turning on a function which provided the bed with hot water from a number of small pipes located underneath the mattress. I slept like a baby that night, in a hot bed in a cold room, just the way I like it. Falling asleep while laying in bed and admiring the view was a very pleasant experience.
Lost in Shanghai
When I woke up the next morning, I immediately made myself ready and headed out to explore the city. I did so by walking over to Nanjing Road, which is the main parade avenue in Shanghai. Among many other things, I also went to a skyscraper which at the time was one of the highest in the world.
I cannot remember its name though, but with the help of Wikipedia I managed to figure out that it was the Jin Mao Tower. At that time, it was the tallest building in the whole of China with its 420,5 meters.
The Jin Mao Tower had a Skywalk on its 88th floor. Since I am afraid of heights, I wasn’t very cocky when I visited it, but at the same time it was definitely worth it because of the incredible view.
At this time, I remember how another skyscraper which looked a bit like a bottle opener was in its final phase of construction. Apparently it was finished shortly after my visit, and the name of it is the Shanghai World Financial Center. With its 492 meters, it replaced the Jin Mao Tower as the highest building in Shanghai and the rest of China. It was even the second highest building in the world at the time.
It was unfortunate that I never got the opportunity to visit the Shanghai World Financial Center, but it is not the end of the world. It is no longer the second highest building in the world though. In fact, it is not even the highest building in Shanghai any more.
The Shanghai World Financial Center was dethroned in 2014 when the construction of the Shanghai Tower was completed. Being 632 meters tall, it is now the tallest building in China and the third tallest building in the world.
My apologies for changing the topic, it is just that tall buildings is something which has always fascinated me.
Back to my first day in Shanghai, I also managed to fall for the so-called tea-scam. I was not even aware of there being such a scam. That was due to me not doing enough research before visiting Shanghai. Nowadays, this is something that I always do in order to prepare and protect myself as much as possible before visiting new places.
The tea scam was not a serious incident however, we are not talking about a lot of money, only a small sum. What happened is that I was approached by a group of women as I was walking on Nanjing Road, who pretended to be really interested in me being a foreigner. Or maybe they were actually interested, either that or they were really good actresses.
The women started asking me where I was from and other things like that, and as we were talking, more and more people came to join. Despite Shanghai being an international business hub, my Scandinavian look made me really stand out there too.
We then went to the tea ceremony, which was pretty cool and just costed a small amount of money. All of us sat down around a table, and then a woman dressed in traditional Chinese clothing would come and serve us a bunch of small cups containing different types of tea.
I have never really been into tea, I prefer coffee, but there was one type that caught my attention and which I therefore decided to buy for my mum. It consisted of something which looked like a big seed, and once it was placed in the hot water, it blossomed and turned into what resembled a mini-version of a jungle-plant.
As previously mentioned, I later realized that the tea-ceremony was a scam, and that’s because I was approached by several groups of young Chinese people, both in Shanghai and later in Beijing.
This brings me to something which I really do not like about myself back then. What I am referring to is the fact that I was way too kind in certain situations, and also very naive and straight out stupid in others. This would later change drastically as the years went by however, and I mainly blame it on being inexperienced at the time.
The saving angel
I would not be the person that I am if the day would just have passed without any type of incident taking place. Being a newbie, I did not realise how few people in the city that spoke English. To be more specific, I made the big mistake of not bringing a card or something similar which had the name of the hotel written in Mandarin on it. Instead, I had only written down the address in English.
To make things even worse, I have always had a terrible sense of direction, so I could not remember which way I had taken to reach Nanjing Road. In other words, I had no idea where I was. And barely anyone that I would ask spoke a word of English. The few ones who did, they did not have a clue about the location of the address.
At this point I started to panic a bit, because I had all my things back at the hotel, including my luggage, my passport, my clothes and so forth. It went so far that I even considered going to the Swedish consulate, because I had no fucking clue what to do.
This is when I would come across a saving angel for the first time. I had been walking around looking for the hotel aimlessly for more than six hours when all of a sudden, a local man turned up out of nowhere on a motorbike. He asked me if I was alright. I told him about the situation, that I did not have a clue about where I was and needed help to find the hotel.
I showed him the address, and he told me that he knew where it was and asked me to get on his bike. I was sceptical at the time, thinking that it was probably yet another sort of scam, but I did not really have any alternatives. In a desperate state of mind, I therefore got on the bike, we rode for a little while, and then we arrived at the hotel.
I can barely describe how extremely relieved I was. God bless that guy! Even more so, he refused to accept the money I wanted to pay him for saving my day, and possibly my whole stay in Shanghai. I try to think of genuinely good people like him whenever I am in a negative mood, because they are living proof that there are still kindness in this world.