I was just about to hit “Send” when the power went off on Monday night, or rather on Tuesday morning at 3 a.m.

Damn it. I had to send the assignment.

I’m not exactly new to power outages—hello Canada, Brazil and China. I took a deep breath and waited for a few seconds. It’s China, China never sleeps. Surely, there were people eating, working and building stuff around me and they probably needed power as much as I did. Maybe if we just all sighed loud enough, the power would be back on shortly.

I mean, I sighed loud enough to have my backpack flown to China, finally. It can work.

This was the biggest accomplishment of the day. The airport had called around 5 p.m. I had just left the guys at McDonald’s’—I know, don’t judge, Mark wanted some familiar food—to go for a walk around Xidan. My phone rang, I picked up, and I had a very fun five-minute conversation with an airport employee.

“Do you have my bag?” I asked.

“Maybe. It could be here.”

“But… you must know since you’re calling me.”

“We do call many people. I just can’t remember.”

“But you called me two seconds ago!”

Then I had to spell my full name and trust me, it doesn’t translate well in Chinese. But eventually, I found the luggage tracking number, and I was told my backpack was definitely at the airport. So we took the subway and the Airport Express one more time, and we were greeted by a very cheery employee who gave Mark candies and recommended eating a hot pot meal.

“But it’s 49°C!” I replied, translating for Mark.

“Hot pot in a restaurant with air-con. It’s the best,” the employee assured me.

We came back to the hotel, didn’t eat a hot pot meal, I marvelled at the fact I had my own clothes, shampoo, soap, coffee, and more, and eventually I started working.

And now, no power.

I got up and took a look outside. Contruction workers were still constructing.

I open the door of the apartment. There was light in the hallway.

Looked like we were the only ones without power.

I woke Feng up. We needed power. We had food in the fridge, I had an assignment to complete, and worst, our phones weren’t charged. All payments are made with WeChat or Alipay—no phone, no subway, food, or fun.

“The guy didn’t pay his bill,” he muttered, putting a t-shirt on.

“How do you know?”

“I saw the electric meter this morning when I opened a closet. There wasn’t much left. I’m going to call him…”

We rented the apartment through an Airbnb-style Chinese website. Feng went into the hallway to call either the third party or the owner. I kept on sighing.

“Get dressed, he said someone is going to come.”

“Like now?”

Two seconds later, someone knocked at the door. I opened it and saw a very serious-looking guy in uniform—the building manager, I guess. Without a word, he opened the closet, inserted a card into the meter and the power went back on. He nodded and left.

“Wow. That was… quick and efficient.”

“Didn’t it feel like a secret police was coming to arrest us?”

“Totally!”

And this pretty much epitomizes China today. It’s a very modern country with bullet trains, an amazing digital payment system used throughout the country, giant towers, and great subway systems.

But at the same time you still hear words like “hùkǒu” (the household registration system, Chinese can’t just move wherever they want within China) or “dān wèi” (work unit, and by extension the economics of an entire neighbourhood working for the same employer). There are still modern-style dàzìbào (big-character posters) encouraging people to behave like responsible citizens—the 2024 version includes tips to be environmentally friendly but also the classic “Without the Communist Party there would be no modern China.”

China is a fascinating place, and we roamed around Beijing to figure out how it works these days.

We spent a lot of time in Qianmen, a gate in Beijing’s historic city wall to the south of Tiananmen Square. It’s a fun neighbourhood with a main pedestrian avenue and tons of narrow hútòng, the traditional streets. We went to Xidan for modern malls, and to Nán Luógǔ Xiàng for more hútòng.

Going to Tiān’ānmén Square is a bit more complicated than before. You used to be able to just wander around—it’s a public square, after all—but now the whole neighbourhood has gates. You have to register a day ahead to visit and go through security. It’s still free and easy, it just took us a while to figure out how to book through WeChat.

And this is how we sweat our way around Beijing for four days. We will be back, this was just our introduction to China!