A month has passed since I returned from China, yet the memories linger. Some journeys remain in photographs, others in the mind
The call came on a Sunday evening. My department head was on the line, and by the time I hung up, I was going to China. That was June 14. Two weeks later I was at the airport with twelve other students and a faculty member, about to board my first flight.
Even now, the beginning of that journey feels surreal. Sitting inside an aircraft for the first time, trying to understand the unfamiliar feeling of being above the clouds, I found myself looking out at a sea of white from the window. The clouds I had always admired from the ground were suddenly beneath me.
I hadn't been given a window seat. I got up and found an empty row anyway and pressed my face to the glass. The clouds I had spent my whole life looking up at were suddenly underneath me. I stayed there longer than I probably should have.
China fascinated me not simply because of its famous landmarks but because it offered me a glimpse of a society that functioned differently from the one I had always known.
China does not ease you in gently. The Great Wall at Badaling is steeper than any photograph suggests — steep enough that your legs start complaining halfway up and you ignore them anyway, because turning around to see the mountain falling away in every direction makes the argument pointless.
The Forbidden City is too large to absorb in one visit; history sits in its gates and proportions and the sheer scale of its courtyards in a way no museum label can replicate.
At Peking University, I stopped moving like a tourist and started thinking like a student, asking questions about linguistics, sitting in on discussions about anthropology, feeling briefly like someone who belonged in a place like that.
What struck me equally was how much attention could be given to the systems behind everyday life. A visit to Beijing Chao-Yang Hospital was particularly revealing. The design of its reproductive and orthopedic sections showed how even colors, room numbers, and physical arrangements could be used to distinguish functions and consider patients’ psychological well-being.
It reminded me that development is not only about impressive buildings or advanced machinery. It can also be seen in the details of how institutions are designed to serve people.
Of course, China was not without its small surprises and inconveniences.
The taste of Chinese food was unfamiliar to my Bengali palate, and after two days, an Indian meal felt almost like returning home.
Shopping also reminded us that tourists are tourists everywhere, as we learned after encountering questionable pricing and a shopping incident involving some of our delegates. Yet these moments made the experience more human.
They gave us something to laugh about, complain about, and remember together.
Some of my strongest memories, however, are not of monuments at all. On the flight to Beijing, a father immediately stood up for his crying child when another passenger harshly confronted the child. In Tianjin, after we took a wrong turn and struggled to find our way back, a Chinese man, noticing our confusion, personally walked us to our destination.
These moments reminded me that beneath the differences in language, culture, and geography, people still respond to one another through familiar forms of kindness and concern.
The journey also introduced me to a level of hospitality that I had never experienced abroad. With the arrangements generously covered by the Chinese Embassy of Bangladesh, we travelled, stayed, and explored in remarkable and premium comfort.
The Astor Hotel in Tianjin, with its palace-like interior and enormous rooms, was itself an experience.
Riding a high-speed train at around 350 kilometers per hour without feeling the slightest vibration was another reminder of the technological advancement I had witnessed throughout the trip.
The experience made me think about how far a country can progress when infrastructure, institutions, and human organization develop together.
Yet, perhaps the greatest value of the journey was not what I saw in China but what I saw differently after returning home. Traveling abroad for the first time made me more conscious of my own country, its comforts, its limitations, and its possibilities.
I began comparing ordinary things that I had previously taken for granted with what I had encountered abroad. At the same time, I realized that traveling does not necessarily make one appreciate another country at the expense of one’s own. Sometimes, it simply gives one a better perspective from which to understand home.
A month later, Dhaka. China surfaces at odd moments—the cloud line from the window seat I wasn't assigned; the wall was steeper than my legs wanted; the hospital corridor was in a particular shade of blue; the stranger in Tianjin who walked us home; the train that moved faster than anything that quiet has any right to move.
Five days. It sits heavier than that.
Yusuf Abdullah Tokee is an undergraduate student at the Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)