My first blog-post in english and only for my “flat-mate” Sam Province, who left China on 17th of July… I met Sam last year in Beibei, where he studied chinese. First of all he was convinced that his level of spoken chinese is much better than mine, what I, as it seemed that he don´t wan´t to use it in front of me, had to believe in the first point. Afterwards, we had some tutoring by some nice chinese students, I figured out that he had to be in a beginners class (we once shared a teacher, as he showed up to late for the tutoring and there was, for sure, no teacher anymore who could help him with his questions and homework). After a couple of seconds I decided to join my former roommate Sultan from Kyrgistan and where aware that Sam´s chinese, compared to mine, sucked (I appreciate it that he is, not like 99,9% of all Americans, is able to speak more than one language, ha ha <– don´t take that serious, this is called “German humour”, if something like that exists).

His only problem was that his mother tongue is english, and therefore the language ALL chinese students want to practice. It seems a kind like that he also appreciated communicating in his mother tongue, so he forgot that he, in first, he came to China to improve HIS chinese…

The months passed by and, after my chinese girlfriend Mei Ling and I opened our first bar here in Chongqing / Beibei, Sam got one of our first customers and friend (not our first one, but a good and reliable one)… A couple of months later we closed our bar, after we also opened and closed a german style beergarden, located next to the most expensive karaoke bar here in Beibei, but, not as other friends that passed by, Sam was still there.

He moved up while moving out the so called foreign students dormitory, together with his new flat mate Norbert from Germany. They suffered some problems, so Sam, afraid of being homeless, asked me if he could move to Mei Lings and my flat for a couple of days. For sure he could, why he spend his last days together with me (as Mei Ling went to another part of Chongqing to organize her own english camp for primary school students). This is how the story ends, as Sam decided going back to the States, always looking forward for new opportunities.

Take care my friend, maybe we´ll see each other again and we don´t mind if it is in China, in the States or somewhere else…

Cheers, Samu Jiaoyou,
Doupi (our dog) , Mei ling and Sven