Benjamin Speyer delivers a speech on cross-border investment at the 2019 Global Trade in Services Summit. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The next day I was on a high-speed train from Shanghai to begin my new life in Hangzhou.

The first two weeks were idyllic. I toured the beautiful West Lake and Longjing tea fields, visited temples, talked (or tried to talk) with locals, and gorged on delicious Chinese food. But after that initial honeymoon period, I began to feel a sense of loneliness and isolation.

Coming to the city without a network of friends or colleagues, I spent my days exploring the streets and my evenings reading or watching television. I had no real friends, no business opportunities, and started to worry that I'd upended my life to move to the other side of the world only to fail.

That all changed when I discovered a local bar called Maya – owned by an American expat who also co-owned the fantastic English magazine MORE Hangzhou. Within a few hours of being there, I'd grouped up with welcoming locals and expats, many of whom I'm friends with to this day.

Here was the companionship I'd been missing and an entry point to Hangzhou's community. I even met my future wife, a Hangzhou local, there a few months later. With a social group and access to information on the international expat and business community, I began to search for economic opportunities.

Benjamin's daughter Chloe. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Within a few months, I'd established a small but profitable trading company, which I sold to an Australian businessman from Beijing in 2015. That experience taught me a lot about how language barriers, cultural differences, and contrasting professional practices make doing business in China a major challenge. This led me to start a new business focused on solving this issue and enabling cross-border investment and trade between China and the West.

Using the capital from the sale of my trading company, I founded a consultancy, Serica, in March 2016, and within a few months, had an outstanding co-founder and small team.

A common phrase I heard from expats that stuck with me was, "In China, anything is possible, but nothing is easy". Our first couple of years of mediocre revenue and growth embodied this as we struggled to refine our business model, solutions, and processes. But we stayed patient and determined, and eventually, things began to click.

We forged great partnerships, got excellent support from the local government (including economic incentives), and began to work with world-leading innovators from inside and outside of China.

Today Serica operates in over five countries (China, the US, the UK, Brazil, and Singapore) which includes an ambitious joint venture between our subsidiary Serica China (赛瑞凯-中国) and Chinese conglomerate Hakim Unique Group (汉鼎宇佑集团). The Serica Group also expanded to include Serica Labs (a software company focused on international trade solutions) and Serica Ventures (a venture capital fund for early-stage startups in Brazil).

A lot of people ask if this is my "Chinese dream". While I love that I've been able to pursue my entrepreneurial ambitions with some degree of success, this isn't the real dream I found in Hangzhou. My wife Carly, my daughter Chloe, my wonderful friends, and the life we've built together here is what has brought me true happiness.

An old saying I like is "Heaven above, so Suzhou and Hangzhou below" (上有天堂，下有苏杭) – I can't speak for Suzhou but I can for my adopted home Hangzhou which I feel blessed has given me so much.