Summer 2020

in ,

The Lost Summer

Well summer 2020 was a flop. Realistically I shouldn’t complain. A lot of people had it a lot worse than I did. I was in China when COVID-19 hit and after it started spreading the country locked down hard. And unlike in…some other places people here were willing to follow the rules. Between the two the virus never got out of hand in Shenzhen where I live. And now most things are back to normal here. But it’s hard not to lament the loss of my summer traveling season.

I don’t get any floating vacation time at my job. We get lots of time off for Chinese New Year at the beginning of the year and then even more for summer. Since we get all of that we don’t get any other time off. Normally this is the better deal since the time I have to travel is way more than I had when I used to get like 15 days paid vacation or whatever. But although things were mostly normal in China travel was still largely off the table.

I usually travel some during Chinese New Year but I usually travel a lot more during the summer. Summer 2018 Max and I went to Malaysia and the Philippines. Then summer 2019 I met up with an old friend for a couple days in Tokyo, then went to Indonesia with Max, and finally wrapped the summer up with a short trip to Quanzhou. I try to squeeze in as much as I can during the summer. But summer 2020 Max and I just took a quick trip to Huizhou. Quite the change. And like I said, I realize how lucky I was here but I’m still bummed I missed out on my big trips.

Flights were running and stuff but most people couldn’t get into China. So we could have gone somewhere outside of the country but I probably wouldn’t have been able to get back in. The country only seems to be slowly opening back up to people with jobs now. And we could have traveled around China more but I’m always shocked by how much it costs to travel domestically here, which is why I haven’t traveled too much outside of Guangdong. I haven’t even been to Shanghai.

So travel wise it was kind of a lost summer. And it doesn’t look like anything will be changing soon. I would be VERY surprised if international travel had opened back up much by Chinese New Year 2021. Maaaaaaybe I’ll be able to travel again next summer but I think more realistically I’ll be grounded until 2022. If that’s the case I’ll be looking to film some more local travel videos around Shenzhen. The city is very big and this might be just the push I need to show you all around it a little.

Plus since I was at home all summer I got a great start on my kung fu training vlogs. I started JKD again in May, started tai chi in June, and then at the end of July got back to wing chun. Had I been traveling most of the summer I wouldn’t have had that opportunity. Silver linings.

If you want to see what summers are supposed to be like check out my Tokyo vlog from the summer 2019 trip and definitely check out the kung fu vlogs. I’ve embedded some of them below!

Summer 2020 wasn’t what I expected it to be. Or really what I wanted it to be. But maybe it was what I needed. I’d been dragging my feet getting back into martial arts for…years really. But not anymore.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.