A hundred kilometres an hour through the city, and the taxi driver brakes like we’re in a game of GTA.
Nobody honks in anger. Nobody looks nervous. He just keeps going, because in China, time is money.
A trip to China changed how I think about what’s possible. It also made me look differently at growing up in Bosnia, where trying something new is often met with “that won’t work here.”
A different dimension
I spent a week in Hangzhou at a bootcamp on the frontiers of e-commerce and digital marketing, with visits to Alibaba, Amazon and Hikvision, then a week exploring Shanghai.
Landing in China, I was tired, curious, and trying to take everything in. It felt like stepping into a different human dimension. Reality was there like everywhere else, but the air was different.
Until then, Europe had been my reference point. I was used to a slower pace - no rushing, taking things slowly and carefully. I thought I knew what a busy city looked like.
In China? Don’t make me laugh.
The pace, the scale, the feeling that something was always happening. Even during a short visit, it got into my head.
Wasted time is a crime.
You can smell it
You can smell the ambition. The work, the speed, the urgency to make things happen.
Everything seemed to move fast. And the places we visited were cleaner than anything I had seen.
At Hikvision, we saw technology I had never encountered before. It was the kind of visit that stays in your head for weeks.
At first, it all looked almost perfect. Even looking back, I’m still impressed. But I was a foreigner on a two-week visit, and there was a lot I wasn’t seeing.
Less spice, please
People made an effort to make me comfortable, especially knowing it was my first time in China.
And then there was the food.
Every other meal, I was begging for less spice. My friend Pich, from Cambodia, was in his natural habitat, laughing at me while I sat there with my mouth open, trying to recover.
And if you’re visiting in August, a warning: the heat isn’t coming from the sun. The air itself is hot. Pack a spare shirt. Or three.
The shared meals, the conversations, the things we did together - those are some of my strongest memories of the trip. The hospitality was beyond anything I was used to back in Europe.
“This is Walter”
Then Simon, the CEO of the tour company, told me something I didn’t expect. For his father’s and grandfather’s generation, the dream was to visit two cities: Beijing and Sarajevo.
The reason was a film. Walter Defends Sarajevo (Valter brani Sarajevo), made in 1972 by Bosna Film in Sarajevo, reached China around 1973, near the end of the Cultural Revolution, as one of only a few foreign films allowed at the time. It became one of the most loved foreign films in Chinese history. It inspired a generation of Chinese filmmakers who went on to make China’s first modern action movies, and it even got its own beer. Its famous line, “Do you see this city? This is Walter,” is still remembered there today.
A film from my city shaped how a whole generation on the other side of the world imagined it. That stayed with me on the flight home.
Back home
The talent and intelligence we have in Bosnia is incredible. But there is no incentive, no vjetar u leđa, no wind at the backs of the young.
Too many young people struggle to find opportunities here. So people leave, because of that and because of the negativity, the constant criticism, the old beating down the new.
Somewhere along the way, pessimism became normal. Many of us grew up hearing what can’t be done instead of what could. That cycle has to break. We will break it.
And it’s on us, the younger ones, to do it - to speak, to write, to build, and to keep moving forward, despite the odds.
What China really showed me
I could write essays about my experience. But what stayed with me most was what becomes possible when ambition has support behind it. When you invest in people - with capital, belief, and opportunity - you see results.
They say that no matter how talented you are, you cannot change the world alone. That’s true. But someone has to go first. Someone has to show it and represent it. Not a hero, not a saint. A person.
Sounds crazy? Do it.
Looks impossible? Do it.
Who cares. Push through the fear, and go.
China gave me a drive I'd never felt before. The way a smoker craves the next cigarette, I now crave building. The difference is that this one doesn't take from you. It gives.
I've made it my mission to create something of value to this world.
Sources on Walter Defends Sarajevo: Sixth Tone, Quartz.