Recently I moved from Beijing to San Francisco. I know, I wonder why, too.

I last lived in San Francisco in 2017-2018. Five years later, I was curious to see if the reports about San Francisco’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Cold, foggy, windy, expensive, hilly, bad, dirty, cloudy, and dead: What a great list of adjectives to describe the city

My conclusion? It’s not all bad or all good. It’s just so full of contradictions and weirdness that it’s almost surreal. The best word I can think of is just “crazy”.

San Francisco is the only place in the world where tech millionaires brush shoulders with penniless homeless people on the street. You get used to seeing cars driving themselves, just as you get used to seeing the mentally ill shouting into no one in particular, all on the same street. One block you’re in a bougie neighborhood with tranquil houses. Five minutes and several streets down you’re in an open air drug market.

It’s now fashionable to complain about San Francisco, and its issues are well-known. From my experience living here, it’s been not all bad:

It’s dangerous, but not that dangerous.
One common perception about San Francisco is “dangerous”. This is true for petty crimes.

I don’t know a single person in San Francisco who hasn’t had their car broken into. “By the way, my car window was smashed this morning”, people would say casually at brunch, as if it’s just a daily nuisance that one puts up with.

I suspect the people smashing car windows and the people repairing them are in cahoots with each other. It’s such an organized and efficient operation, like an assembly line. A great business idea, come to think of it. Very San Francisco.

In other cities, they warn potential thieves not to commit crimes. In San Francisco, they warn normal people not to tempt thieves. If you’re stupid enough to leave a tissue box on your car seat and it gets broken into, of course it’s your own fault.

But these are petty crimes. For violent crimes like homicides, San Francisco actually ranks close to the bottom of the list of major cities. Homeless people look scary but are usually harmless.

San Francisco gives me hope on humanity. With virtually no rule of law, it’s a miracle that people are not killing each other on the streets.

It’s cold, but not that cold.

In San Francisco, you learn not to make sweeping assumptions like “All of California is warm”.

What’s the temperature in San Francisco? 10 degrees below whatever you think it is. (I’m still a Celsius person)

I come from the coldest part of China where the temperature drops to -30 degrees in the winter. I somehow feel San Francisco is colder. Because in my hometown at least you expect it to be cold, so you brace yourself for it. In San Francisco, every morning I check the weather app and sigh to myself: “Ugh, 15 degrees again.” And this is in July.

Fifteen degrees is an awkward temperature to dress for. It’s not warm enough for dresses or shorts, but also not cold enough for winter clothes. When I first came here for my junior year summer internship, I naively packed mostly summer clothes and dresses. My most frequently worn piece of clothing that summer ended up being a Uniqlo down jacket.

Then I realized I could experience an actual summer if I just moved half an hour down south. Because of the unique geography of the Bay Area, there is a stark temperature difference between San Francisco and South Bay. It’s not uncommon to have 15 degree in San Francisco and 30 degree in San Jose at the same time. As someone who frequently commutes between the two, it’s like experiencing two seasons in the same day.

Vests are perfect for such situations. I used to think only pretentious people wore vests. Now I understand why.

On the flip side, when global warming makes the rest of the world too hot to live in, San Francisco will be the last cool place on earth.

It’s great for losing weight.

Eating out feels like robbery. Taxes, strange fees and tips will make sure your food costs a third more than what is already an exorbitant price. So you have to cook for yourself, which is healthier.

You have to pay for food in other ways. For example, I hear there’s a lot of great food in the Tenderloin. When people are willing to set foot in the Tenderloin to get food, you know the food is really good. It’s literally worth dying for.

Whenever walking on the street, you’re guaranteed to encounter steep slopes. Why pay for that gym membership when you can have free incline treadmills all over the city?

Because you don’t feel safe going out at night, you can drink less and spend your evenings reading or working out instead. Plus, because there’s generally not much to do, you go on hikes almost every weekend. What a healthy lifestyle.

To me, all of this speaks to the strength and endurance of the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. Despite the fact that it’s a literal shithole, thousands of courageous people still come here every year to pursue their startup dreams. San Francisco gives me hope.

Published by Zara Zhang

Zara Zhang works at ByteDance in its Beijing office. Previously, she was an investment analyst at GGV Capital (first in the Menlo Park office, then in the Beijing office), a venture capital firm that invests in companies in the US, China, and other emerging markets. She has interned as a reporter covering China’s tech industry for The Information. Her writings have been published on The Harvard Crimson, Harvard Magazine, Foreign Policy, Huffington Post, and China Personified. She has also worked as a marketing intern at ZhenFund. Zara graduated from Harvard University Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology. At Harvard, she wrote and edited for The Harvard Crimson, led the organization of Harvard China Forum (a 1,000-people conference featuring leaders from China and the US), and ran a weekly newsletter about food around the university. Zara grew up in Changchun, a city in northeast China, and received her secondary education in Singapore. A language enthusiast, she is trained in Chinese-English interpretation and translation, speaks French and Japanese, and can sing in Cantonese. Zara co-hosted “996”, a podcast where she and GGV managing partner Hans Tung interviewed leaders in US-China cross-border tech and entrepreneurship. Listen on iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, SoundCloud, or search “996” in any podcast app.

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