In 2016, I was unloading containers of chilli powder on a forklift in Felixstowe, six in the morning to six at night, living in a caravan, when one of my boxing students messaged from Asia: "I got you a job in China." I left with one suitcase, a backpack, an iPad, a phone, a passport, and £1,495 after paying for the flight.

Getting there was its own ordeal. A 12-hour layover in Mumbai where I couldn't leave the terminal, a lost suitcase that contained my only clean boxer shorts, and a work visa process that involved handing my passport to a man with glasses and a brown bag at the top of an escalator in a Hong Kong underground station. I had a one-way ticket and no backup plan, so I handed it over.

Two days later I had my passport back, a visa stamped inside it, and a WeChat message with a train booking number. My bags arrived at 2 p.m. and I needed to be at the border crossing by 3. Standing there, about to step into mainland China for the first time, I had no idea what the next ten years were going to look like. Ten years on, I'm writing this from a rented apartment in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, having just left China after a decade of teaching English as a second language.

Published on Subwave

https://subwave.app/@e3113/post/one-suitcase-to-china-on-1495