Moving to London as a broke girl

王紫荆 Wang Zi Jing
2 min readJan 3, 2021

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“London is too much.” I’ve heard it from the first day I came to the UK.

I lived in Cardiff, a city that is “small” enough to feel the chilling vibe around every individual, but also “big” enough to go out for a decent date night. That’s what every international student told me when I asked them “why Cardiff?”, “why not London?”

And later, this is what I told everyone else as a “new girl from the East”.

“London is too much.”

This is a fancy problem all big cities will face. To be more accurate, it’s not a problem that a city has to face, but for people who live there: Arts and frauds, crazinesses and thieves, everyboy minding their own business. I got all that tastes the first time I came here as a visitor, a traveller. It was in January, almost a year ago. No COVID, no lockdown, no all the restrictions and uncertainty that drive people’s nuts.

Even under that situation, I feel cold.

A boy I was talking to on a social app- quite decent and polite- suggested to watch a movie together. I said yes we could find a cinema around soho.

“There’s no cinema around that area, maybe you can come over and we watch something on Netflix. I can order pizza.”

Call me a drama queen, but this heartless answer took away my only passion and belongingness to this never-ending city.

I remember the moment I received this message, right after the unharming pickpocketing experience on St Martin’s Ln: I was sitting in a theatre themed Cafe, frightened like a soaking wet rabbit holding my backpack tight on the left hand, and a hot Americano on my right hand.

“Why are Londoners trying to get things from people?”

I know it’s a ridiculous way to draw conclusions for the whole city, but I haven’t felt any warmth since my feet were on that ground.

It is expensive to live in London. My friend gives half of her salary to the landlord every month.

I will have to work hard so that I could be a landlord in London someday.

The high consumption level and fancy lifestyle in London always made me feel that cold rich people live in London.

But the truth is always a reasonable surprise, and I didn’t know about the truth until I moved here days ago, with 200 pound in hand.

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