Surviving Shenzhen

All right, so I'm going to be doing a speech here a little later. Um, here's the auditorium over here, and I'm just going through the PPTs and all that nonsense. Well, we'll see how it all turns out. So let's get a good round of applause for Winston Cel.

Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for coming today. I'd like to say thank you to all the other speakers, actually, who have very inspiring things to say, and I just hope I can live up to what they've put in front of me. Anyway, my speech is going to be a little bit of a story. It's going to be a story of how I came to Shenzhen and how I survived Shenzhen, but hopefully there will be something in this story for all of you—something you can learn.

Now, hang on a second; I need to get a microphone from these guys. Okay, sorry about that. The first thing I'm going to do is take my phone over here and make a quick little video of all of you. All right? I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with my videos online, but I have a fairly successful YouTube channel. I recently hit around 30,000 subscribers and about 6 million views, and it's growing on Yoku too. So hang on a second; let me make you all famous.

Okay, all of you in this audience, please wave. Oh, fantastic! Okay, thanks. I don't need my phone anymore; let me put it away. I promise you that all of you will now be seen by thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

Okay, now let's get on to my story: Surviving Shenzhen. All of you live in Shenzhen; you may think that Shenzhen's a very wonderful city, a very easy city to live in, and yes, it certainly is. But it wasn't for me when I first came here. So let me tell you a little bit about how I got here, and let me tell you a little bit about myself.

Okay, this is me on one of my recent trips in Guizhou, and I'll show you a little video clip later about that, actually. But who is Serent, and why do I have such a strange name? Okay, first of all, my real name is Winston. Serent Z is my internet name, and a lot of you might think, "Why do I have such a strange-sounding name?" Well, let me tell you; it's quite simple. Serpent means snake, and "Z" is the country code for South Africa. South Africa is where I was born and grew up, although I am British. I was born there.

This is me when I was 2 years old. As you can see, I have a very big snake wrapped around my waist. I grew up with snakes; my father ran a big snake park, like a zoo for snakes and reptiles. That's where I got the name. Okay, hopefully that explains something.

Now, let's talk about Shenzhen and how I ended up in Shenzhen. Very simple; I'm going to keep it short. I know all of you are getting hungry; it's almost dinner time, isn't it? All right, this is Shenzhen Dongmen in 2006. I came here on a business trip. I used to run an IT company; one of my clients was importing electronic goods from Shenzhen and wanted me to come with him to make sure that they were good enough. So I came. I had no expectations; I knew nothing about China—absolutely nothing—except that I liked Chinese food.

Anyway, I arrived here; we stayed in a hotel just across the way from Dongmen, and in the three days I was here, I was blown away. I was 25 years old at the time, and seeing the vibrant life around me, seeing that things were open until all hours of the night, you could go outside, people drinking beer, eating shao kao, you know, barbecue. This is great for a young man to have all this life around him. I thought, "That's it! I want to be here."

So I went home, sold my cars, sold my furniture, sold everything, paid off all my debts, hopped on a plane, and came back within the course of three weeks. Yeah, so I was back here within three weeks, and then I realized that I didn't really know what I was doing. Seriously, I didn't know anyone here; I didn't have a job; I couldn't speak Chinese. And back in 2006, you couldn't find people speaking English in the streets of Shenzhen. It's much better now, but back then, you could barely see foreigners. In fact, you could walk around for a week, maybe two weeks, without even seeing a single foreigner.

But like I said, I just got to China; everything was amazing. It was an adventure; it was an amazing place to me. Every day I was seeing something new, trying something different, and I loved it. I loved every single minute of it. That is, until I ran out of money.

Okay, now I'd like to maybe give you a little bit of perspective. Just imagine you leave everything you're familiar with—your friends, your family, your job, all of your fallbacks, everything that you rely on—if it's gone, and you end up in a foreign land where you can't speak the language, and you don't know anyone, and you have no money. Reality hits you really hard, and you start looking around and you say, "What have I done?"

I didn't have enough money to buy a plane ticket home; I didn't have enough money to take the bus. I got down to such a bad state that I once had to live an entire week off of five and a half RMB. You know what I did? I bought 11 baozi. Okay, I cut the baozi in half, and I had one half of a baozi every day, and I managed to make it through. I also lost about 10 kg—fantastic weight loss!

Okay, anyway, I'd like to try and explain to you how I got out of this situation. Now, of course, I could have phoned my parents, and I could have pleaded for them to send me money and go back, but my pride didn't allow me to do this. Right before I left to come to China, a lot of my friends and a lot of my relatives told me, "You know what? You go to China; you're going to regret it. China is a terrible place. Why do you want to go to China?" I said to them, "You don't know what you're talking about. I've been there; I've seen it with my own eyes, and it's nothing—absolutely nothing—like what we think it is, and I'm going there."

And they all said, "Okay, go. We'll be back in about two months." So I thought, "You know what? I would rather starve and end up in a gutter somewhere than go back and have them all laugh at me and say, 'Yes, you see, you're back.'" So I stayed, and I made friends. I tried my absolute best to meet as many English-speaking people as I could, and this is when I met my friend Eddie, who is currently traveling around the world somewhere. But I met my friend Eddie through some foreigners—actually, one guy I'd like to make a shout-out to, Jimmy. If you ever see this, Jimmy, I owe you a lot. Thank you very much! And Carl too.

Anyway, I met this guy, and he allowed me to stay in his apartment. Now, his apartment was in SH. Now, at that time, it was the red-light district of Shenzhen. I was living in a room, sharing an apartment with my friend Eddie and some prostitutes. I'm not joking; it's serious. I got to see what China was really like at the very, very bottom.

Okay, I come from this, you know, I had money when I first arrived—this lavish lifestyle, going out to lovely restaurants, touring this amazing city, seeing all these great things—down to not being able to afford to eat, sleeping on the floor in my friend's apartment in a scummy red-light district. And it opened my eyes.

These are some pictures I took maybe a few years later in the same village, and I used to just walk around. I had nothing else to do; I used to just walk around and explore. One night, I walked from there all the way to Dongmen, and then from Dongmen all the way to Shao, you know, until the sun came up. I just used to walk and explore. I know so many of the small little back alleys that you can find around Shenzhen. I absolutely love and adore the city.

Anyway, long story short, it got to a point where my friend Eddie also ran out of money, and he had to go stay with his family, and I no longer had a place to stay. But as luck would have it, he knew an agent. He got me in touch with this agent—a Taiwanese bloke who was running some kind of a scheme where he would find foreigners jobs and then take a huge cut of the salary but set them up. So, for instance, if you were earning a 10,000 RMB salary, he'd take about 4,000 of that, but he'd get you the job.

So he let me come and stay on his couch, and he got me a job. I got on my feet, and after the first two months, I earned enough money to move into a lovely apartment. These are pictures from my apartment in Fuyuan, which overlooked Hong Kong on one side, and you can see Dawang. I'm sure you can see there's no King Key 100 at that time. It was a long time ago—probably right near the end of 2006 when I finally got myself on my feet.

So what got me through all this? Because I tell you what, there were some really tough times. In fact, during this whole process, I found myself on the streets for two days with nowhere to go—just my bag; that was it. I ended up staying in McDonald's overnight because there was no other place to go.

So what actually kept me going? It's quite simple: the people that I met and the idea that I had about China was enough to keep me going. I knew that this is where I wanted to be, and I knew that this was the place for me, and I knew that I had to try, and I couldn't give up. I just had to keep going.

And that is the message I really want to push to all of you today: to never give up. This is a story of how I was stuck in Shenzhen with nowhere to go, but you have your own story; everybody does. Maybe you're in a terrible situation right now—your parents are trying to force you to study something you don't want to study. Maybe you're in a terrible marriage or a terrible relationship. Maybe you're just in a bad situation, and you don't know what to do with your life.

All of us have these really, really tough periods in our lives, and I mean really tough. Nobody can really understand what you're going through except yourself. We don't all have the same tools; not all of us are handsome or beautiful; not all of us are very smart or intelligent. But we all know what's good for ourselves. We all really do know, in the bottom of our hearts, what we want to be doing, right?

So stick with it. Stick with what you think is right. I just now, in all my videos, at the end, I always say, "Stay awesome." That's the thing I say, and that is really a simplified way of saying, "Stay true to yourself and don't give up. Just keep going through the crap that you're going through."

So I did keep going through, and I managed to really find a place for myself in this city. I've been in the newspapers many times now—about 13 or 14 times. I was on TV here. I'm fairly well-known, and that stuff's not important. What's important is that I actually have a good life here—good relationships, good friends—and I started my own motorcycle company up in Huo. I now build custom motorcycles in my spare time while still living here in Shenzhen.

Now, I also go on these adventures. I love China, and I love exploring China. So having stayed here, having gone through the crap, has allowed me to actually reach a stage in my life where I'm doing things that I really, really want to do. It's so difficult for all of us to get to that stage in life—to be doing what we actually want to do—and it's not easy. But if you stick with it, you can.

This is from a short while ago. You can see we went into Guizhou Province, Kunan. We went up through Gui. I've been through Fujian; I've been through so many different provinces. You can see on the side of my helmet, every time I go through a province, I put a new sticker on.

Okay, you can see here meeting people on the side of the road—just random other people that are riding on bikes, forming like a brotherhood with these different Chinese riders around the whole country. I've met so many interesting people during these trips, and I've had such amazing experiences.

And with my two partners from the motorcycle company, we do these big epic things now together. I actually wanted to show you all a little clip—a little video clip of our recent journey—because it's difficult to explain to you the kind of freedom and just what China has to offer when you get out of the big cities. So I think the best way is to show you. So if you don't mind indulging me, I have a little four-minute video for you to watch. So please enjoy.

[Music]

Thank you very much, everybody. I just can't explain to you how much I appreciate what China has given me. I'm not trying to say something strange to the party line or anything like this; just from a personal point of view, I have had such an adventure being in China. Everything has been an adventure here, and it can be for you too. For the foreigners that are here, I mean, you probably know yourself; China's an amazing place. But if you can, try to get out of the cities; you'll see a hell of a lot more.

Anyway, guys, this is my final message to all of you, and that is: stay awesome. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life; the worst, most terrible thing that could be happening to you right now can be overcome with a little bit of perseverance.

And for all of you who would like, you can add me on WeChat, and you can follow my videos. This video I took today with all of you—instead of uploading it to YouTube first, I'm going to upload it to Yoku first so all of you can see it here, and then I'll put it up on my WeChat.

So thank you very much, everybody. Awesome speech! Awesome!

I just want to say something real quick. From watching that video, I think I speak for myself and for a lot of foreigners that come to China. We get in a taxi or we have friends; they always ask us, "Why did you come here?" And it's not an easy question to answer, but I think your video really answers it well for you and for a lot of us that just want to explore. So that was just awesome. Thank you!

So now we'll have a few more questions. I'm sure you guys have some questions for Winston, so raise your hands. I see one already right there.

I like your speech very much, and lovely and interesting video also. And I think tonight you look very great. And then my question is: What's your dream in Shenzhen after you just struggled for many years? And what makes you enjoy life during a long hard time? Thank you.

Okay, I know I'm supposed to keep my answer short, but I'd like to just maybe make this one. During the hard times, what kept me going were these little incidents, and I'd like to just tell you about one quickly.

It was really when I was running out of money, and I probably had less than 50 RMB left to my name. I was walking around on a Friday night in Shajing, as I used to, and there was a beggar who was always there. This beggar always had this very sad look on his face. You know, that's what beggars do; they want money, so they look as sad as they possibly can, as miserable as possible.

So I thought, "You know, this is Friday night, and everybody deserves a beer on a Friday night." So I went and I bought a couple of beers and a couple of sticks of barbecue, and I sat down next to the beggar, and we started having a beer together. The guy smiled for the first time I've ever seen.

But what happened next was quite curious. A crowd started to form, and in fact, there was eventually a crowd of maybe two or three hundred people just around us. The police busted into the middle of the crowd, saying, "You know, what's going on here?" They broke the crowd up, and they're like, "Oh, just the guy and a beggar? Okay, let's get out of here."

But you know, it was these interesting little experiences which you cannot really have anywhere else in the world that kept me going and kept me here in Shenzhen.

As for my dream now, I'm living it. I'm enjoying my life here; I'm meeting interesting people, and it really can't get any better than this.

Hi, what's your name again? Sorry, it doesn't matter. Is that your question? Just kidding. Okay, my question is: Have you ever seen "How I Met Your Mother"?

Yes, I did see that. B.B. Stinson from the show says "stay awesome" a lot. I thought there's something to do with that.

Oh, I actually wasn't aware of that. No, it's—I'm sure there are lots of people who say "stay awesome," but it just came to me. I'm a kind of guy who wings it. Actually, you might not believe this, but I didn't do any preparation for this speech. So, yeah, it just came out of my mouth when I was making the video. I actually have a video that's called "Stay Awesome," and you can watch it and see where it came from.

[Music]

Hi, Mr. Winston. I have two simple questions. The first one is: Are you from a wealthy family?

Do I come? Okay, let me answer that. No, I don't. I come from a fairly middle-class family. My parents are entrepreneurs, and they do run their own business, but I've never been a, I'd say, a rich kid—definitely not.

Okay, then next question is: How much did it cost when you were using your motorcycles traveling in and out?

How much did it cost? Yeah, the entire trip that we did was about a 4,000 km trip. Including hotels, petrol, food, and beer, everything was about 5,000 RMB for 10 days. Yeah, that was it. But it was incredible, and we were just spending left and right. You know, you can do it for a lot less in China if you want.

All right, any other questions? I see a couple in the back there.

Hello, it's a really nice speech. I want to ask you a question: How to conquer your fear? Sometimes you are racing a motorcycle in dangerous situations or so. How to conquer the fears in your life? Thank you.

Okay, that's a pretty difficult question, but okay, I do understand what you're trying to say. There is something that we are all very afraid of; it doesn't matter what it is, but we all are afraid of things, and it's really difficult to overcome that fear.

My suggestion to you would be to just push yourself and to overcome it. I mean, really just do it. Like, I couldn't always stand up in front of people. It took a long time before I could actually get the courage to stand up and talk in front of people.

And it took me a lot of courage to do anything, and all you need to do is try. You know what? You will find yourself hitting barriers where you can't pass. Think about it: when you're in high school, you wanted to tell that one boy or that one girl that you really like them or you love them, but you couldn't because you were just held back by your fear of rejection. Forget about that fear; forget about the rejection. Just do it. What happens will happen. Just go ahead and do it. That's what I suggest.

Any other questions?

Hey, I'm really enjoying your video, and through your video, I see you've been to many villages, and they are undeveloped. They are not as developed as Shenzhen. So what do you feel when traveling there? Thank you.

Okay, what do I feel? First, well, I feel they should fix their roads. Okay, but that aside, it's actually really nice to see because when you go to the undeveloped parts of China, you get to see what I like to call a different side of China. Some people might say the real China, but that's not true because Shenzhen is the real China too. It's just another side of China that we don't see in the cities, and it could be quite interesting.

The people are usually very hospitable, and they're very, very welcoming. They always want to look after you and give you food and talk to you. In fact, we stopped in a village, and we had an entire village come to talk to us. They were phoning their friends to come and look at the foreigners. It's quite interesting—all bringing little kids, you know, to talk to us. It was a lot of fun.

And we were at the local shop, and we said, "We were drinking something; we said, 'Where can we throw this?'" And they say, "San R." I said, "No, is there a rubbish bin?" Anyway, I said, "No, San R." Okay, fine, swing room; here you go.

Hi, I learned from your story and your conclusion to one advice, which is always try something. Keep on trying if you want to do something you really want to do. And I completely agree with you. I have a simple question for you; it's also an invitation, which is: If I invite you over one day to share your experience and encourage some of the people in Shenzhen who are actually willing to learn English and practice spoken English, will you come?

Well, of course, if I got the time, I'll be there. Yeah, if you got the time, sure. Yeah, look me up afterward, and we'll exchange contact.

All right, thank you. One or two more questions. I see Anthony's really excited back there.

So where will your next motorcycle trip be?

Okay, our next motorcycle trip will be through Yunnan and Sichuan—quite easy. Yeah, but we will leave from Shenzhen, so we'll go to a bunch of provinces to get there. Should be fun!

Great! All right, and we've got time for one more question. I see two hands over there. Choose one.

Thanks again for this very inspirational talk. I was very touched because, as a foreigner, I came to China ten years ago. I went to Southeast Asia with little money, and I know what it is to spend two days, three days without eating or looking for a hotel.

Well, my question is very simple: What will be your next adventure? Do you see yourself always in Shenzhen for the rest of your life, or do you have other plans for the next 10 or 15 years?

Thank you for that question. This is actually something I'd like to put forward to all of my fellow Chinese Shenzhen residents here. Being a foreigner living in Shenzhen—well, just in China in general—you can never settle down. There's just no way for a foreigner to get any kind of permanent residence, and it's really frustrating.

So every year, we have to renew our visas, and every year, somebody changes the rules, and so we can never really relax. So to answer your question, I'd say my next adventure is probably going to be forced upon me when one day I go to the visa office, and they say, "Sorry, not this year." So I'll find out when I get there. But for now, I'm just going to enjoy life to the fullest here in Shenzhen with my friends, including you, by the way, since you are a subscriber. Thank you for coming, by the way!

Yeah, and that's all of you. All right, thank you, everyone. Excellent questions and excellent answers. Great speech, Winston! Thank you very much. Absolute pleasure.

[Music]

Mate, as you can see, it's quite full here today. Hi! Really good to see you at last. Thank you. I just met a subscriber here.

Yes, yes, definitely! So what's your name?

My name is W.

W? Yes, before I came back to Shenzhen, I watched your video, so I get to put it down street level—what really you like. Yeah, I thought you were doing a great job.

Thank you very much, mate! Thank you for coming. I hope you enjoy this.

Yeah, so like I said, it's quite a nice turnout. I've been recognized by a bunch of people so far. It's actually really interesting. And yeah, so far, so good. Let's take a look, walk around, and see what we can see. You know, it's all nonprofit. I'm not getting any kind of payment or anything to do this, which is the reason why I'm doing it, to be honest. I like this kind of thing, and I'm really happy to see it taking off, so it's awesome.

Yeah, so how about an introduction?

Okay, so my name is CLA Chipley. I'm originally from the Caribbean, right? And I'm in Shenzhen doing an MBA at Bada University.

Oh, awesome! So I'll be here for the next two years, basically just enjoying the city life and meeting new people today.

Yeah, excellent, excellent! So this gentleman has seen a lot of my videos, right? What do you think?

Good job!

Oh, thank you very much! Yeah, much appreciated. Cool, you'll be on next!

Yeah, I'm really happy to hear, man. That's cool! Really just came here for me.

Thank you! Well, what's your name?

Uh, my name is...

Oh, very nice to meet you guys! Seriously, cool! This will go online; you'll see.

Not at all! Thank you! It's quite overwhelming. I'm being cornered every five minutes by people that recognize me. It's really nice; it's really cool.

Hey, hi! I want to ask you some questions. So this is to me. What did you think of the speech?

This speech is the best one, but it is the last one, but last not least. You know, the way you approach, the way you answer the questions, the way you smile is amazing.

Thank you! Very subscriber, right?

Yeah!

How about an introduction?

My name is Mike Cameron. My wife was reluctant to come to China, but after she watched this guy's videos, she finally came, and now she loves it.

So, fantastic! I owe him dinner!

I'll take you!

And everyone here wants my...

Wee!

Hi! Let's go on YouTube! What do you want to say?

I love Serent!

Serent Z!

Yeah, this is Gibson, like Z. This is my good buddy.

I love this presentation today!

Yeah, great adventures! Maybe I can go on a bike ride sometime with them!

Yeah, too awesome!

I'm Sila from France, and I love to hear W. He gave me a very inspirational lesson about how life can be, especially in Shenzhen and China. So I really love to share his experience, and maybe next time we can share mine because I experienced hard times 10 years ago in Asia.

Nice! Well, very nice to meet you!

Well, hey there, guys! I'm making this recording on my cell phone, just like I did at the Idea Exchange event, so as not to break up the whole crappy quality of the video.

Basically, all I wanted to say was thank you to everybody who came to the event. The organizers decided to shift my speech all the way to the end of the event, which was unfortunate because a lot of people were under the impression that I was going to be the first speaker.

So there were a lot more people in the beginning who came to see my videos—sorry, what am I saying?—came to see my speech, and unfortunately, they couldn't because they had previous engagements and so on, so they had to leave before the event ended and before my speech came on.

So for all of those guys who missed the speech, well, here's your opportunity to see it once again. Thank you to everybody who came up and spoke to me. It was overwhelming; I had a fantastic time. Thank you to Sean, who organizes this event. I think it's a great event, and I think you should keep doing it. It's a wonderful thing, especially for the young Chinese people who go there to learn English and to listen to people speaking. It's a great event all around.

If you are in Shenzhen, check out the Idea Exchange. There's a link to their website down there. And guys, thank you for all of your support, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all in my next video. And until next time, stay awesome!