The First Foreigner

My friend Mads Singers told me: "China is the future. You should go there." So I did.

On a high-speed train somewhere in China, I sat next to a young Chinese guy. We started talking. He told me I was the first foreigner he had ever spoken to. Not just on a train — ever. In his entire life.

He didn't have an English name yet. Many Chinese people choose one when they start working with internationals. So we picked one together, with the help of AI on my phone.

His name became Harvey.

In return, Harvey gave me a Chinese name: 杜明 (Dù Míng).

That conversation stuck with me. Here I was, a German doctor who dropped everything to explore China, sitting next to someone for whom I was his first window into the Western world. And he was mine into China.

First Foreigner is what this project became. It's for people like me who want to understand China firsthand — not through headlines, not through stereotypes, but through real stories from the ground.