Imagine to land in a place where nobody use Instagram, Facebook, nor Google. Where you can’t chat with your friends and family at home on WhatsApp. Where nobody speaks your language.

You are not landed in Mars: you have just arrived in China.

This was me on the end of the past July in Guangzhou, during my first time in China, not as a tourist, but for a business trip.
In fact, I was invited to give some interior trend talks in different companies and cities, traveling together with ShengLin– a company of paper surfaces – and Mody, a talented designer who is also now a new member of IB team.

Our tour included some days in Guangzhou, a day in the beautiful Xiamen, a couple of days in Tainjin and a final stop in Beijing.

Through our interior trend talks we met different companies of furniture design and some design studios, as well as some young designers. I have to say that the Chinese professionals I met have high preparation and they are keen about keep themselves updated on what’s happening in Italy and Europe, but at the same time very proud of their own identity. This can be seen in their style and design too.

My talk included a recap of the latest trends happening in Europe, with a report from what we discovered in the Milan Design Week (and shared in our ebook and webinar too) and the Interzum fair in Cologne. In addition to this, I also presented our new Trend Membership (which has a special section translated in Chinese ) and our upcoming e-courses about interior and design, to be published in the next few months in the IB Learning Community.

If there is one thing I really love is meeting new and different cultures.

So you can easily imagine how happy I was to travel to China. They have such a fascinating and historical culture, while at the same time technological and already projected into the future. Just think that some things , like paying with smartphones or vocal control at home, are already widespread there. I was also surprised to see that, especially young generations, are developing a sensibility towards topics such as sustainability and green design which is very similar to ours.

I will tell you soon more about Guangzhou and the other cities I visited from an architectural and design point of view because they are amazing, that was quite a surprise too.

While some things about China were like I was expecting them to be, some others were totally different.

I believe this travel in China was also one of the most challenging experiences I did, from some point of views harder than expected.

I totally forgot how it was to introduce myself to new people, who cannot check your social medias profile as a proof of what you do, and this is really a weird feeling believe me. If you work in the web like I do, and you are in a place where the entire web is totally different (like a different “google”, different social media, etc), the feeling is absolutely strange, somehow alienating. Even if it was also really good to do some digital detox: staying 10 days without access to Instagram or Facebook, without checking every time for notifications, was such a good feeling. Maybe we are all too much connected and, for sure, without my eyes always on my iPhone screen, I was able to appreciate much more that new world I was seeing around me.

Hope to travel back to China again soon!

Looking for updates about interiors and design trends from Europe and to organize interior trend talks in your company, studio, event? Contact me at: info@italianbark.com