The Purple Culture Guide to China

Chapter 1: First Impressions

The first thing that hits you is the noise. Not a specific sound, but a total wall of it. The beeping of scooters, the overlapping announcements from loudspeakers in train stations and shopping malls, the chattering of a dozen conversations happening within arm's reach, someone's phone playing a video at full volume. You'll hear a car horn from your left and another from your right, and then a scooter horn from directly behind you, all layered over a bass thrum of construction somewhere nearby. It's not aggressive, exactly. It's just... on. All the time. After a few days, your ears adjust. But in the first hours, it's overwhelming.

The second thing that hits you is the smell. Cities in China don't have a single scent. They have a patchwork of them. A block of jianbing stalls and dumpling shops gives way to the sharp tang of vinegar on the air. Round a corner and you're hit with the wet, earthy smell of a produce market, where live crabs sit in plastic trays and the floor is slick with water. Then a construction site, dusty and metallic. And then, sometimes, the sweet, slightly sickly smell of burning joss paper from a small street shrine tucked between a hardware store and a nail salon. Your nose, like your ears, will eventually calibrate to the constant input. But for the first day, it feels like someone turned up the volume on all your senses at once.

After the noise