Jillo Kadida watching the stray cats eat in the garden right across the street from Hotel Ningbo in ChinaFrom a forgotten passport to three stray cats and a hotel steeped in Chinese culture, the journey from Beijing to Ningbo became an unexpected lesson in kindness, beauty and the art of welcoming a stranger.
Some journeys take you from one destination to another, and then some journeys begin telling you a story before you have even arrived.
My journey from Beijing to Ningbo was the latter. It began with a forgotten passport.
We had just landed in Ningbo and were making our way to the waiting bus when one of our colleagues suddenly realised that his passport was still on the plane.
For a few seconds, the mood changed. A passport is not something you can simply forget and continue travelling without.
But before the worry could grow, Von Wu, one of our Chinese hosts, stepped forward.
Without hesitation, he offered to get off the bus, return into the airport building and work with the airport staff to trace the missing passport.
It was a simple act, but to me it spoke loudly.
Kindness does not always announce itself. Sometimes it simply steps forward when someone needs help.
Once again, I found myself surprised by the warmth and hospitality of the Chinese people.
With that little crisis being handled, I settled into the bus and did what I had increasingly found myself doing in China—I pressed myself against the window, taking in everything outside.
I did not want to miss a thing. A different face of China
The journey from the airport began revealing a different side of China from the one I had experienced in Beijing.
Beijing had impressed me with its scale, grand buildings and unmistakable sense of history. Ningbo felt different.
Softer.
The buildings appeared smaller and, to my eyes, somehow cuter. There seemed to be a different rhythm to the city. The air felt different too.
And then there were the rivers.
They appeared again and again as we travelled, weaving through the city and landscape. Behind the apartment buildings, hills rose gently into view, breaking the urban landscape and giving Ningbo a beautiful natural backdrop.
I kept looking. Every bend in the road seemed to offer another picture.
Along the roads were pots of colourful flowers, carefully placed and maintained, bringing little bursts of life to the journey.
They reminded me of the flowers that were once planted along the expressway in Nairobi. I remember how beautiful they looked when they were first put there. Sadly, ours are long gone.
Here, however, the flowers remained—bright, neat and alive.
Perhaps even roadside flowers can tell you something about a place.
Then came the cats
By the time we reached the Ningbo University Hotel, I was already carrying a collection of impressions from the journey.
But I was not prepared for what happened when I stepped off the bus.
Three stray cats caught my eye.
For me, that was it.
Everything else could wait.
I walked towards them and found a woman feeding the cats. I reached down to pet them, and suddenly I felt an inexplicable rush of happiness.
I was so elated simply to have found cats there.
Being a cat mum, that little encounter meant more to me than it might have meant to someone else. Those three cats were not part of our itinerary. Nobody had arranged them as a welcome gesture. They were simply there, living their lives, being cared for by a kind woman.
Yet somehow, they felt like the warmest welcome Ningbo could have given me.
And then came the bittersweet part.
I immediately thought of my own cat back home.
For a moment, those three little strangers had made a huge country feel strangely familiar.
Perhaps Ningbo was saying hello in its own special way.
Not through a formal ceremony.
Not through a speech.
Just through three cats.
A surprise behind brown walls
Eventually, I pulled myself away from the cats and went inside to check in.
From the outside, the Ningbo University Hotel does not immediately reveal what awaits within. Its brown exterior is understated. You could easily pass it without imagining the character hidden behind its doors.
But the moment I walked through the entrance, I stopped.
Wow.
The interior was a completely different world.
Rich brown wooden furniture. Antique pieces. Beautifully dressed staff. And, floating through the space, the delicate fragrance of jasmine.
The hotel did not simply feel luxurious.
It felt like it had a personality.
Everywhere I looked, there was something that demanded a second glance.
A frozen sea turtle displayed in glass.
A giant statue of Buddha.
Beautiful pots filled with water and floating flowers.
The details seemed carefully chosen to create an experience where culture and luxury could exist side by side.
It was modern elegance without abandoning history.
It was comfort without losing character.
And perhaps most importantly, it did not feel like a hotel trying to imitate China.
It felt like China had been allowed to speak for itself.
A room that told a story
My room continued the welcome.
On the wall was artwork representing the irregular dragon ink style of the late Qing Dynasty.
Beside it was an elevated space dedicated to tea drinking.
There was a small table, Chinese cushions, a Chinese teapot and two cups waiting quietly in their place.
I looked at the arrangement and smiled.
Here was my introduction to China distilled into one small corner of a hotel room.
Art. Tea. History. Craftsmanship. Tradition. Hospitality.
It was difficult not to feel that the room was telling me: You are in China. Slow down. Look around. Take it in.
And I did.
More than a destination
Looking back at that first journey into Ningbo, what stays with me is not one grand monument or one spectacular attraction.
It is the collection of small things.
A stranger going back into an airport to help retrieve a colleague's passport.
Rivers appearing beside the road.
Hills rising behind apartment blocks.
Flowers carefully lining the streets.
A woman feeding three stray cats.
The scent of jasmine in a hotel lobby.
A Buddha watching quietly from inside.
A teapot and two cups waiting in a room.
These moments may seem ordinary when viewed separately. Together, they created my first impression of Ningbo.
And perhaps that is how a city truly introduces itself.
Not always through its famous landmarks, but through the little things that make you pause.
Ningbo did not shout for my attention.
It quietly won it.
It welcomed me through kindness, colour, culture and, unexpectedly, three cats.
By the time I finally settled into my room, I realised I had not simply arrived in another Chinese city.
I had already begun to feel something for it.
And that, perhaps, is the greatest gift a place can give a traveller: the feeling that, even thousands of kilometres from home, you have somehow been welcomed.
