China travel sketchbook

In mid-2019 – before a virus came along and the world turned upside down – I went to China. It was one of those cheap tour packages and we spent two weeks crammed onto buses and trains, traversing the Chinese countryside with the most oddball bunch of fellow travellers, under the leadership of some very patient tour guides.

Tour bus shenanigans aside, it was a trip that left a lasting impact on me, and probably more so in spite of the geopolitics at the time. China seemed to me in a precarious balancing act – straining and pulling eagerly into the future, towards all the promises of modernity and globalisation, and at the same time withholding, leaning back into the embrace of its ancient history, its slower and more gentle pace of life. You see this in the hutongs of Beijing, a glimpse into a mysterious, imperialist past, surrounded by the skyscrapers of progress. There’s so much delight and wonder to be found in this juxtaposition.

Despite the strong impressions my China trip left on me, it wasn’t until December 2020 – the tail end of that long, arduous, and most of all, “unprecented” year – that I bought a new sketchbook, unearthed my pan of watercolours, and starting working on this project. I trawled through the thousands of photos I’d taken on the trip, looked at hundreds of urban sketch posts on Instagram for inspiration, and, well, almost five years later, here we are.

These watercolour sketches capture, to me, the energy and intrigue that is China, a country lurching forward but also pulling back, that wants to be like everyone else but also stubbornly its own person. This is China through my eyes and through my memories, coloured as they are by the passage of time, a global pandemic, and the antics of our ridiculous travel companions (stories for another day).