I am going to visit Zephyr, my Chinese friend, whom I met back in September on a curb in China. She squatted down next to me, we talked for an hour, exchanged emails, and from there a friendship began. Now I am sitting on the plane on my way to the Chinese megacity Chongqing, because that is where Zephyr lives.
I have sat down on a curb to draw.
For the first time during a total 14-day journey through the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, I am the one staying still and observing what is happening around me.
It is afternoon in Shangri-La, a city in northwestern Yunnan province and the capital of the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
The city lies at approximately 3,400 meters above sea level, and the cool evening breeze is therefore beginning to set in.
I spent the early afternoon climbing one of the many sacred mountains that rise around the city, and now, back among the many souvenir shops and Chinese tourists in Tibetan costumes, I take out my sketchbook to draw the stupa in the city center.
With My Eyes Fixed on the Buddhist Monument…
… I let all the passing Chinese people with their selfie sticks become one large blurred mass, like when you increase the shutter time on a camera and let all movement leave a trail behind it.
Many of them looked curiously over my shoulder to see what I was doing.
Soon someone spotted the opportunity to take a picture of me, and then the panda effect set in, as Holger Dahl would call it: the idea that something is something, without actually being it.
Yes, my blue eyes, light hair, and pointed nose are impossible to hide in this country. Especially not when I make myself even more noticeable by sitting completely still and simply drawing instead of chasing the best location for a photoshoot in my Tibetan costume and documenting it on RedNote (the Chinese TikTok).
But not everyone simply shuffled past giggling after a few clicks of the camera.
As the final details on the stupa were nearing completion, a girl came over and squatted down next to me. Just like that. As if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Her English was limited, but fortunately she had a couple of friends with her whom she waved over to help with translation.
The Girl’s English Name Is Zephyr; Her Chinese Name Is 刘珍宇
We sat there for an hour trying to understand who the other person was and where we came from. Zephyr is from Chongqing, a city in the middle of China with around 3.4 million inhabitants. She has lived there for all of her 22 years. Now she studies, and alongside that she works 10 hours every day at a training center as a content creator, as I understood it. She does not sleep much. She goes to bed late and gets up early. But here in Shangri-La she is on holiday and spends the time hiking in nature with her friends.
There is only so much you can learn about a person in an hour, especially when the language slows the conversation down a little. But from the moment she sat down on the curb beside me, I could feel that this was someone I had to stay in contact with. And now I am sitting on the plane on my way to Chongqing, and Zephyr will be waiting at the airport when I land.