As my hands slipped away from the final hugs from friends at the Beijing Daxing Airport, something in me tightened. In that moment, I felt both sad and happy.
It was the best of times and the worst of times. Best because only oceans, rivers and a few mountains stood between me and my Kenyan family. But it was also the worst of times because those very oceans, rivers and mountains were, inevitably, bound to separate me from the friends that became family in China.
I arrived in Beijing with a suitcase, a notebook, and curiosity. Four months later, I was returning to Nairobi with a heavier bag and a fuller mind, carrying stories I did not set out to find but which insisted on finding me anyway.
Living in China, even briefly, has a way of rearranging your sense of time, scale, and possibility. It is not the China of headlines or stereotypes. It is a place of quiet mornings, relentless motion, and small, intimate details that slowly reveal themselves if you are patient enough to look.
Daniel Ogetta (left) with his course mates Joy Ani and Edward Mumbuu during the closing ceremony of the four-month China International Press Communication Centre (CIPCC) fellowship in Beijing.
Photo credit: Pool
I thought I had prepared for everything. But nothing prepared me for the reality of living life behind a Virtual Private Network (VPN). In China, being online is often a gamble, especially when trying to access most non-Chinese applications. One moment you’re connected. The next, you’re staring at a blank screen, all depending on which VPN you’re using and whether it has decided to cooperate that day. Most days, it played hide and seek.
There are countless apps, of course. But WeChat sits firmly at the centre of it all. With its in-built translation and seamless connection to services like taxis and healthcare, it offers almost everything one needs to survive, all just a screen-tap away. Be it shopping, entertainment, travel, transportation it lives on one screen.
In its very essence, WeChat is both a social space and a financial lifeline. You chat, you pay, you move through life on it. But unlike M-Pesa, there are no transaction costs. You tap, it goes through, and life moves on. I particularly found that fascinating.
But Beijing does not announce itself gently. It arrives in layers. The first is the size of it all: highways stacked like sentences that refuse to end, apartment blocks that stretch into the horizon, subway lines that feel like cities on their own. The second layer is rhythm. The city moves fast, but not hurriedly. People know exactly where they are going, and they go there with purpose. By the time you find your footing, you realise the pace is not chaotic but simply confident.
China introduced itself to me with chopsticks and a small public humiliation. While in Qinghai’s Xining city, I tried to scoop noodles with confidence I did not have. The noodles had other plans. They darted across the table as I chased them, and to this day, that moment still makes me giggle. It was embarrassing, yes, but also my first lesson: China would not be navigated effortlessly. You had to learn your way into it.
That lesson repeated itself in many ways. Scaling the Great Wall was humbling. Then came the Golden Week, which is basically a full seven days of holiday when an entire China seems to exhale at once, travelling, resting, and reclaiming time. I was confused and didn’t know how to best spend this time in a foreign country.
My days began early, often before the city fully woke up. From my apartment window, I would watch elderly residents gather in courtyards and parks, practising tai chi with slow, deliberate movements. There was something deeply grounding about these scenes. In a country racing towards the future, mornings belonged to tradition. It was a reminder that progress here does not necessarily mean abandoning the past.
Food became my first language of survival. Beijing’s cuisine is bold, unapologetic, and communal. But as a vegetarian, I braced myself. Food for me required intentionality. Rice and noodles became staples. Occasionally eggs, sometimes chicken. But Beijing duck? That dish carries the soul of the city.
Meals in China are not rushed affairs. They are shared, negotiated, and savoured. I learned quickly that eating alone was possible, but eating together was preferred. From steaming bowls of hand-pulled noodles to delicate dumplings folded with near-religious precision, every meal carried a story of region, history, and identity. Even street food, eaten standing under flickering lights, felt intentional, and almost ceremonial.
Technology, of course, is the invisible thread running through daily life. Cash is nearly obsolete. A phone is your wallet, your ticket, your map, your translator, and sometimes your lifeline. At first, this was disorienting. Later, it became liberating. Life runs smoothly when systems work. Trains arrive on time. Deliveries are fast. Services are efficient. It is not perfection, but it is functionality at scale, and that in itself was impressive.
As part of the China International Press Communication Centre fellowship, my days were structured around learning: media briefings, field visits, conversations with journalists and scholars. But it was in the in-between moments that the most powerful lessons emerged. A subway ride next to a factory worker scrolling through short videos after a long shift. A late-night conversation with a fellow journalist from Caribbean about home, distance, and responsibility. These unscripted encounters filled the gaps formal sessions could not.
Daniel Ogetta (left) and his course mate Jean Paul Turatsinze from Rwanda pose for a photo at the Renmin University of China.
Photo credit: Pool
One of the most striking things about living in China is the relationship between order and freedom. There are rules, many of them. But there is also space, especially in personal life, to pursue interests, to dream quietly, and to build. Creativity here is not always loud. Sometimes it is coded into systems, embedded in efficiency, or expressed through discipline. It challenged my assumptions about what innovation looks like and where it lives.
I spent many afternoons walking aimlessly, a habit Nairobi taught me well. Beijing rewards wandering. Turn a corner and you might find a centuries-old hutong squeezed between modern buildings, laundry hanging from windows, children playing with improvised toys and so much more.
I arrived in late summer when the air was thick and humid. The weather was relentless. Autumn followed with crisp mornings and trees turning shades of gold and red. Then winter happened and Beijing cold was sharp and cutting but honest. But leaving in each season altered how the city felt and how I moved through it.
My Mandarin remained basic and often clumsy. A few words spoken badly were often met with encouragement, laughter, and help. Communication extended beyond language anyway. Gestures, patience, and shared humanity filled the gaps. I learned that listening, truly listening, is as important as speaking, especially in a place where you are a guest.
Homesickness arrived quietly, usually at night. It came in waves: the smell of rain on Nairobi soil, the sound of Swahili in public spaces, and the ease of familiarity. But it never overwhelmed me. Instead, it sharpened my appreciation of both places. Distance, I learned, does not dilute belonging; it often clarifies it. Except for moments of little inconveniences, I often thought about Nairobi and how I would have easily waded through the situation without depending on assistance.
China forced me to rethink how stories are told. Narratives here are layered, controlled, sometimes cautious. But beneath that is a deep awareness of image, perception, and legacy. Everyone is conscious of how the country is seen, and how it sees itself. As a journalist, this was both challenging and enlightening. It reminded me that storytelling is always shaped by context, power, and intention.
There were moments of discomfort. Moments of confusion. Moments when I felt acutely foreign. But there were also moments of kindness that linger. A stranger guiding me through a complicated subway transfer. A shopkeeper insisting that I take change I had forgotten. An organiser checking in long after their official duty ended. These gestures mattered. They softened the edges of difference.
Living in China is to live with contradiction. Ancient temples stand next to skyscrapers. Tradition coexists with ambition. Silence shares space with noise. It is not a country that fits neatly into a single narrative, and perhaps that is its greatest lesson.
Learning Mandarin was another doorway. Bargaining clumsily, but trying. The joy on people’s faces when we spoke their language — even badly, even butchered — carried me through. China felt difficult and overwhelming at first. Then, suddenly, it didn’t. Something clicked.
There were bikes everywhere and you ride to wherever you’d want within the city. But there was also the subway. Once you cracked the rail system, stress evaporated. And if all else failed, Amap never did. It told you where you were, where you were going, and how long it would take with frightening accuracy.
The bullet train experience felt unreal. Smooth, silent, deceptively fast until another train flashed past like a mirror reminder of speed. Then the weather: my first snow. Three seasons in four months. I arrived sweating and left shivering, thrilled by negative degrees.
Daniel Ogetta (left) and his course mate Jean Paul Turatsinze from Rwanda on a snow-covered street in Beijing.
Photo credit: Pool
From the world’s largest solar power station in Qinghai to the dust of Xinjiang, from the North Bund to Shanghai’s skyline seen from above, from a press conference on a moving yacht on the Yangtze to the sheer spectacle of a military parade, China unfolded in layers.
I tried acupuncture for the first time and felt instant relief. Traditional Chinese Medicine challenged everything I thought I knew about healing.
By the time I left Beijing, routines had formed. Favourite walking routes. Preferred meals. Evening bike rides. Familiar faces at nearby shops. Leaving felt premature, like ending a book mid-chapter. But it also felt complete. Four months was enough to unsettle my assumptions and expand my worldview. Enough to remind me that the world is far bigger, and far more nuanced.
Back in Nairobi, the city greeted me with its own chaos and warmth. Matatus roar. Conversations overlap. Life felt immediate again. And yet, something had shifted. I moved differently. I observed more. I questioned more. China did not give me answers, it gave me better questions.
Perhaps that is the true gift of living elsewhere, even briefly. It teaches you to see home with new eyes and the world with softer judgment. My time in China was not about becoming Chinese or mastering the country. It was about learning how to sit with difference without rushing to explain it away.
It was so many sunrises and sunsets later, but between August and December when I returned only felt like a thin blur of moments. On the other side, some four months ago, I sat on the benches in company of other travellers, my passport and the boarding pass thinking of what relocating to China meant for me, my family, and my career.
Now, on this side and some 2,500 miles away from Beijing, all that mattered in the beginning still mattered in the end. My life, my family and my career.
