Plastering China on T-shirts

• Source: Global Times
• [18:22 September 24 2009]
• Comments

By Zhu Shanshan

Seventeen years ago, when Dominic Johnson-Hill first arrived in China with his backpack, he never thought he would stay here for long.

“I didn't fall in love with China at the first sight at that time,” he recalled. “Before I arrived, I thought of Chairman Mao, people riding bicycles and wearing the same color clothes, but when I got here, I felt Beijing was ugly and nothing special from the appearance.”

The socialist society Johnson-Hill dreamed about had taken earth-shaking changes in the 1980s after China implemented reform and opening up. Everything just started to have a brand-new look and the last remnants of old-style socialism and Cultural Revolution had been faded away in 1993 after more than a decade of economic and social development.

What also made Johnson-Hill, now 36, upset was that foreigners like him were treated differently.

“We had to pay a higher rent for houses and prices for air tickets; and even we can't use renminbi because we are foreigners. When I took a taxi, taxi drivers always asked me to pay in FEC (Foreign exchange currency),” he complained, adding that the renminbi he earned in China doing part time jobs was almost impossible to use because of his western face.

Because of this, the Briton told himself, “I am not going to stay here for long”.

It wasn't until he moved in with a Chinese family that he started to love China and people here.

“The first morning I woke up in my Chinese family, I was awakened by my Chinese parents who stood at either side of my bed looking at me sleeping and murmuring about cooking breakfast for me,” Johnson-Hill remembered. “It felt so good to me. I was just like their little baby.”

To survive in China, Johnson-Hill began working as a manager of a language school and then he opened a small marketing company doing market research for British companies doing business in China.

Johnson-Hill traveled all over China while doing this research and his Chinese and his understanding of China improved greatly during that period. It contributed to his later career where he put images of China on his T-shirts.