Wang Haolan

Holly_cn@163.com

IT has been widely acknowledged that every woman has once wondered how to stay young, beautiful and active regardless of age; yet for Paulina Bracher from Poland, staying young is a mindset and lifestyle.

It is easy to learn what kind of person Bracher is through her WeChat Moment posts: she has a tall build and a boyish haircut, often gearing herself up with professional hiking gears and giving bright smiles from different locations, like the peak of the city’s Da’nanshan or Qiniang mountains, a desert in Gansu Province or the Chaka Salt Lake in Qinghai Province.

“I majored in tourism and hotel management in a sports academy in Poland and worked for a travel company in Germany after graduation,” said Bracher. “I had traveled a lot since then and ended up meeting my future husband in Maldives.”

“I moved to Liechtenstein, a small country where my Swiss husband grew up, after getting married. Then, I wanted to find a better-paid job there and started to study economics at the University of Liechtenstein,” Bracher noted.

This marked the first time that Bracher made up her mind to go back to school and be a student again. After finishing her studies, she worked at the university as a faculty member in charge of organizing continuing education and different types of conferences.

Her husband then found a job in Guangdong and Bracher relocated to Shenzhen with him in August 2016. She started to learn Chinese with her friends – first, at regular events organized by her community in Shekou and then, from a private teacher visiting her at home.

“When I was in Spain and Italy, I always tried to learn some local languages. For me, staying in a foreign country and not being able to have some deep conversations with local people is like being handicapped,” she said.

“So, after learning pinyin phonics for a year, I decided to participate in a summer course at Shenzhen University in 2017.” This marked the second time for Bracher to go back to school to further her studies.

“Some of my classmates are very young exchange students, but many of them are of my age,” she said, adding that learning in the classroom is a good way to keep herself young.

Bracher confessed that Chinese language is very difficult to learn. “If I have lived in Italy for five years, I would be very fluent at Italian,” she said. “I was told at the beginning there is no grammar in Chinese, but as I learnt more, I understood that even a single character might influence the meaning of a whole sentence. And it is also difficult for me to speak in the right tone.”

“I hope my Chinese can reach a level that I will not be afraid of losing or forgetting it even if I leave China one day,” she said.

Bracher loves the outdoors and leads an active and healthy lifestyle as she is keen on traveling, hiking, jogging and taking photos.

“If I am not having classes in the university, I would be traveling or hiking; if I am, I would be jogging at Shenzhen Bay early in the morning before going to school,” she said.

Bracher recognized Shenzhen as a safe, clean, inclusive and fast-developed city, yet she still encountered some troubles when she first came to Shenzhen in 2016. To address her troubles, she joined the Shenzhen International Women’s Club (SWIC) and has felt deeply towards this organization where women can help each other out.

“It is a life-saving organization for people like me, who came to China for the first time, knew nobody and started feeling bad while being alone,” she said. “They have activities every day including hiking, cooking classes, cycling and more to let you always have something to do.”