Artur
There is something wrong with this world. This thought didn’t give me a rest. I felt I need to do some legwork. That’s why instead of work in glass skyscraper, mortgage and couch from Ikea I chosen a travel to unknown. That’s how I landed in China.
Let’s get back to 2012, when I finished my master’s degree in Computer Studies. I was free like I never had been before. I was the only one to chose where and how I want to live. Inspired by reportage masterpieces of Terzani and Kapuściński, I decided to live a life of an exile.
China attracted me with it’s otherness, but it wasn’t the major reason I chosen that country. China was just an excuse for me to look at the world from a different perspective. Point of view barely know in my home country, where most of people look at the West with admiration and jealousy, and at the East with distrust and ridicule. But… are we right? That’s what I wanted to check.
I started with the intensive study of Chinese language. After six minths I passed HSK2 exam and applied for Confucius Scholarship. Another six months later I was packing my backpack for the longest journey in my life. Together with Magda, my Chinese tutor, we made over 10,000 km traveling by Transsiberian Railway through Russia and Mongolia to finally reach Hangzhou in China.
This is how NoMoreMaps orignated, as a mean to share mine experience with like-minded dreamers, daredevils and adventurers.
On-site I started six-month language course. I met many friends from such exotic places as Madagascar, Yemen, or even Suriname. Then I met Marie from Vladivostok, far reaches of Russia. Once, we went for a walk together and seems like we haven’t got back yet.
We were lost together in Nepalese jungle, together we explored the nooks and crannies of Shanghai and when the time was right, we moved together to Vladivostok, counting ships passing by our window in old khrushchevka. There spend a year living like a Russian, eating like Russian and swearing like Russian. Again I studied language, but this time — Russian together with my Vietnamese fellows, that once will become captains. That way, between bites of black bread and red caviar I tried to crack secrets of the Russian soul.
In 2014 we came back to China for good. We live in Xiamen, city with blue sky and unlimited access to mango. I work from here remotely for Shanghainese start-up, and carve other interesting internet projects with people all around the globe and write on NoMoreMaps.
If you’re thinking about baking doughnuts with us in China (that’s not a joke!) or you have any other ideas or questions — just write to me: