Shanghai, China – July 2020
I live in China, I was born here, but I feel very attached to Spain. I studied Hispanic philology at the university. At that time there were very few people in China who spoke Spanish and I considered it a great opportunity for myself. There are many Spanish-speaking countries and so workwise I have more possibilities.
It was a personal decision. I’ve no roots in Spain. My mother is a public officer and my father works at an insurance company. They have never been to Spain, but they know the typical clichés of paella, football, tennis, beach, sun, San Fermin, or ham.
When I graduated, I interviewed for a job in a Spanish company and I got the job. Now I have been with my company for 13 years since 2007. I have been head-hunting for providers to purchase diffusion components, electronics, and marketing materials. I monitor the orders, inspect the merchandise, and organize shipments so that everything arrives safely and smoothly at the destination in Spain.
My job lets me use what I learnt in my studies. And although I was not familiar with the HVAC industry, I was able to learn quite a lot about it, especially about its mechanical and electronic parts.
With the current situation I am still having a lot of difficulties in carrying out my job. I can´t go visit the suppliers and a lot of the orders have been delayed during this crisis. Fortunately, everything is getting calmer and we have more freedom to move around.
This affected our personal lives, too. We had to change our routines. Only one family member could go shopping at a time. We could not get together for our most important holiday, the Chinese New Year. Life has been very boring. But the Chinese know how to enjoy time at home, even though everything has stopped. We still have the cellphones and the TikTok videos.
Sometimes I have been scared but thankfully, I live in a small city of one and a half million people where only six cases have been detected. This gives me a little more peace of mind.
This crisis has changed everything. Now many countries are making the move to produce things domestically instead of importing them from here. I guess eventually, these countries won´t depend that much on China. But I am still positive, and I hope we won´t lose our spot as the export superpower.
