The Land of People
This year, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to embark on an action-packed, 11-day trip in China with a group of enthusiastic students selected by the Confucius Institute of Leipzig.
A flight from Frankfurt took us to the first stop: Shanghai. This was my first time entering Asian ground. The hour-long drive from Pudong Airport into the central business district conveyed an idea of just how vast a Chinese megacity can be in contrast to typical urban areas in Europe. Passing by large expanses of squatter settlements and polluted waters, I immediately received a first-hand impression of the struggle China faces with achieving sustainability whilst providing the land and resources to support a population soaring above one billion.
Besides the evidence of major inequality in terms of wealth, my stay in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing also exposed a plethora of things that western society could adopt. Be it the elderly navigating on the heavily intoxicated rivers that shape Suzhou’s image as the “Venice of the East” to fish out plastic bottles and organic waste in separate baskets or employees of “China railway high-speed” carefully fitting your luggage in the overhead compartments- it appears like almost every Chinese is a small cog in the machine that enabled the People’s Republic to establish the immense industrial power the nation is renowned for across the globe.
Enjoy the visual documentations of my diverse travel experience in the gallery below:
GALLERY
