First impressions of Fuzhou

During the past five days, Shiqi and I have been able to get our first impressions of our new home, the city of Fuzhou in Southeast China.
And I am glad to be able to say that this first impression has been a positive one. Of course, I already visited the city on a few business trips before. But as a future residence, you look at a city with different eyes.

We visited the house we are most likely going to live in, checked out our neighbourhood, visited kindergartens, the military hospital, some good restaurants, some shops, and met quite a few people already. Shiqi care of many "practical things" (how great it is that she talks Chinese!!) while I had the chance to spend the first few days in the office, to also get a first impression there.

I included a few pictures here.

The house











Military hospital











Kindergarten








Delicious food









More can be found here.

The house is more than big enough, and looks very nice as well ... at least from a distance. When you take a closer look, it is quite clear that the quality standard here is not as high as we are used to in Europe. This is rather symptomatic for China, to my opinion. Optics is often paid more attention to than quality. The packaging usually looks beautiful, but the details are often neglected. No doubt we are going to notice the consequences of this, when we live here. So, more about that later, I predict.

Yet, we are confident that we will be able to have quite a comfortable life here in Fuzhou. And we are looking forward to it!!