Chinese communism and lost loves.

January 29, 2012. Written in Taipei, Taiwan.

Chinese communism and lost loves.

On the morning of January 9, it was finally time for me to leave the city of Hong Kong. I came by train, but as advised by Nicolas, I left the city by bus. It was a big coincidence that Nicolas had to go to Guangzhou too for an exam the day before, so we would meet each other there again. One month ago, I met him in Guangzhou, and now, after staying at his apartment for 1 month, we would say goodbye in the same city.

At the border, it took surprisingly long to pass the immigration office. The inspector looked at every single passport for at least 5 minutes, so even if there was not really a long line, I had to wait for quite a while. At my passport too, the lady looked incredibly carefully, checking every single page multiple times, holding it beneath some laser and checking it with a magnifying glass. Was there a criminal expected to cross the border today or something?

After having passed the border, I had to take another bus to bring me to Guangzhou. The other side of the border was completely different. It was as if I had made a jump of at least 20 years. Old, gray buildings were standing there, showing no character or whatsoever. Yes, I was back again in spokey mainland China for sure.

Nicolas was waiting for me in front of the bus stop in Guangzhou. He would depart from here a few hours later himself to head back to Hong Kong. Together we went to have lunch at a local noodle restaurant. The noodles were pretty good and Nicolas called them "Hong Kong quality". We strolled through a nice park for a while, and slowly headed back to the bus station. The last month, me and Nicolas became very good friends. In the evening we would have long talks about each others life's, and I would go visit him during his lunch break and drink some bubble tea  together. Yes, I was going to miss him for sure. I hugged my friend and waved  him goodbye.

For the first time in nearly 2 months, I was again traveling all on my own. I had no idea what would happen to me, or whom I would meet the coming days. But that is what traveling is supposed to be all about.

I decided to head for Taiwan next. In Taiwan I have a good old friend whom I had wanted to visit for a long time.

As I had researched before, since 2010, due to the improvement in the relationships between China, it has become possible to go to Taiwan by ferry from a city called Xiamen. I headed to the train station of Guangzhou to buy myself a ticket to go to this city, but after arrival I was amazed by the enormous amount of people at the station. This was because the Chinese new year was narrowing. In this period, millions of people travel through the country to visit their family. Would I be able to get a ticket!?

Luckily though, Chinese new year was still 2 weeks ahead, and most people were at the station to reserve tickets for this period. A seat was of course not available, but a standing seat was no problem. I decided to depart the same day, and left for Xiamen at 9 O'clock at night.

In the train, I was standing next to a young, friendly looking guy. He approached me, asking were I was heading in Chinese. I showed him my ticket. He himself was going somewhere else. Standing in between two coupe's, we had a long talk about all sorts of stuff. We filled countless papers writing each other characters. In this way, we were able to have a conversation about Chinese communism, lost loves, video-games, if Taiwan was supposed to be a part of China or not, Japanese adult video's and martial arts. When we arrived at his station, he was almost too late to get out, and jumped out of the door of the already moving train. I threw his bag that I had been holding out of the train, and waved him goodbye.

After standing until the afternoon of the next day, I finally arrived in Xiamen.