Ten years in China: Interview with Loredana

Today we will speak with Loredana Cesarino, a Neopolitan girl that has lived in Beijing, Nanjing, Tianjin and Hong Kong (where she currently resides). By her own admission, Loredana enrolled in the Chinese language department back in 1998, when in Napoli there wasn’t even a shadow of a Chinese person on the street.

Loredana, when did you arrive in China and why.

The first time I stepped foot in China was back in 2003. I was 22 years old, traveling alone and it was my first experience studying abroad. I arrived in Beijing full of dreams and expectations. Sadly, however, after only three months, I had to return to Italy due to SARS which raged through Beijing that Spring. But that didn’t stop me and a year later I was again back in China with a student visa for a year.

Besides studying, in China you’ve done various jobs: Italian teacher, commercial interpreter, literary translator, etcetera. What advice would you give to someone seeking work in China?

Don’t be scared off by the initial difficulty, be patient and, above all, look for work in non-conventional channels. In China you’ll rarely find work through agencies or online sites but rather through the famous “guanxi”, or the acquaintances you have. Those who wish to work in China must search, speak with people and form friendships with the locals, and after a little time, you’ll find yourself flooded with requests for various jobs.

You lived in Beijing, Tianjin & Nanjing. Which is your favorite city and why.

Without a doubt Nanjing. In Beijing I didn’t stay there long enough to leave my heart there and it is too big a city for my taste. The year spent in Tianjin was very intense, but I don’t think that I would return to live there.

Nanjing, instead, is the city that changed my life and allowed me to fulfill many dreams. Despite being a city with eight million inhabitants, rather polluted (but what city in China isn’t?) and terribly sticky, the center is absolutely on a human scale. And the university, the Ming walls, the parks, the lakes and the good food make it a truly unique place. There I met wonderful people and felt part of a very active international community. People from Nanjing are pretty closed off and leery about being friends in the beginning, but once you enter into their good graces, they are exceptional people, practical and extremely helpful.

China is one of the countries that, in the last ten years, has changed the most. In your opinion what have been the greatest changes, both positive and negative?

Urbanization has completely redesigned the face of the city. Entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground to make space for enormous commercial centers and skyscrapers of soaring heights. To give a practical example, between 2010 and 2014 I saw Nanjing gutted and rebuilt. Many of the buildings found in the center weren’t there when I arrived four years ago and probably won’t be there within the next four years.
Source: http://www.saporedicina.com/english/ten-years-in-china-interview-with-loredana/