Where do I begin....
As many of you know, or don't, there is no such thing as freedom of information in China. So sites such as Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Blogspot etc are all blocked. So we have not really had any contact with the outside world (read as: Facebook), since we got here. We have finally managed to get a VPN, which now means we can circumvent the Chinese firewall and can access all sites again. Thank God!!
Due to our lack of social media connection, I have a lot of things to say in this post - so it's gonna be a long one!!
We got to Wuhan, Hubei, China, on the 22nd of June 2012. We took a 6 hour train ride from Shanghai, and we were met at the train station by our new boss , Michael, and one of the teaching assistants, Xiao Xien (pronounced Chow Chen).
Pics of Wuhan, East Lake High Tech Development Zone (where we live)
Everything up to this point seemed ok - apart from the fact that they didn't book us seats next to each other on the train so we had to sit in silence next to strange Chinese people all the way to Wuhan...
Anyway, as I said, it all seemed fine... Until we got to the "hotel", and it all seemed to go downhill from there.
I'm not sure what the correct word for the building would be. It's called “Beautel” and it's a hotel / apartment / office block / ghetto / place where things go to die.
Our room consisted of a lounge and "kitchen", a bedroom and a "bathroom". It was disgusting. I don't think it had ever been cleaned. There was damp damage all over the walls, there were no cooking / refrigeration facilities in the "kitchen" and the bathroom consisted of a basin and a toilet (at least it was a western toilet). The so-called-shower consisted of an extendable shower-head and a drain next to the toilet. Ew! So every time we showered, we flooded the entire bathroom.. We could pee, shower and brush our teeth all at the same time. It was gross. The bed was as hard as a rock. Literally, it's as if someone threw a duvet cover over a pile of bricks and called it a "bed". This would be our home for the next week, until we got our own place. Oh dear God. I prayed for death.
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| Our awesome toilet-shower. |
Anyhoo, we were now in the town we would call home for the next year. All I have to say about that is "I really hope we didn't make a big mistake... Because quite frankly it takes all our strength not to pick up and flee every day..."
China is quite possibly the strangest place in the world. Talk about a culture shock. I was expecting it to be different, but not THIS different. It feels like we are on some alien planet. No-one speaks English, ANYWHERE. The way of life here is so different to anywhere else in the world. The people are friendly, but strange.
The School:
We were hired by Shane English School (based in Shanghai), to be the first two teachers at a new franchise school in Wuhan. The basic condition of our employment was that we would be placed at the same school and share accommodation. Sounds good right? Yes, except we got totally screwed.
Strike one: Upon arrival in Wuhan, we were told that there are in fact TWO schools. Liesl will be at one, and I will be at the other. This is not a problem. However, when the said two schools are about an hour and a half away from each other... This DOES become a problem because they wanted us to get separate apartments. Naturally, we said no way (read as: fuck off). So (lucky for me), we ended up living near my school in Wuchang (at the request of the owner because it's the head office). Liesl (unlucky) has to commute every day from Wuchang to Hankou (where her school is). This takes about two hours by bus (in the heat with no aircon) or an hour by taxi, which costs RMB70 (about R85) one way...
Both schools are in a shopping mall - yes, that's right, a MALL! Which is weird. Mine is literally across the street from where we live, so I walk to work in about 5min. It's quite handy.
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| The Mall where my school is: Guanggu Square |
Strike 2: The school is not a Shane Language School (as originally thought). It is actually a Chinese Kindergarten called Ideal Angels! This was not the deal we signed up for. Due to the fact that it is a kindergarten, open from 09h00-21h00 every day, it also means that our work hours have to co-incide with the other teachers. So instead of only having to come in for our English classes, we basically have to sit at the school all day - even if we don't have a class to teach. So it's as boring as all shit - trying to look like we are busy all day when in fact we have nothing to do.... The owners think we are good "advertising" for the school - if we are there and parents see us etc. So lucky us! We just feel like useless turds.
Strike 3: As mentioned, no-one speaks English in Wuhan. We have about 4 teachers at the school whom can speak a bit of English, so at least we have someone to "chat to". BUT neither of our bosses (Michael and his wife Leslie) speak English. So we have to rely on the broken English translation of the few said teachers who can "speak" English. It's extremely frustrating....
On the up side, they have promised us that they will be hiring new teachers in the next couple of months. Once the new teachers start, they will work at Hankou (Liesl's school) and Liesl will come to work with me in Wuchang - across the street from our building. I can't wait for this day. It's really annoying sitting around all day with no-one to talk to.... (or at least, no-one who understands you).
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| Pics of our students |
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| Liesl next to the student picture wall |
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| Liesl at the staff entrance to the school |
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| The play area |
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| The English Classroom (on a good day) |
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| Another play area |
All that being said, the teachers at the school are really very friendly, and try to be as helpful as possible. For the most part, they are very sweet, kind and caring. So that's some comfort.
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| Me and Rainbow |
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| Nannan, me and Sunny |
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| Sunny, Stephen Peter and Nannan |
The kids at the school are very cute. Most of them don't speak English (yet) so it's a bit difficult to communicate. Mostly they want to play, so as long as you can kick / throw a ball, blow up a balloon or play with building blocks you're good to go!
We do also have the other type of kid: one that's never seen a Westener. You can usually spot these kids quite easily. They are the ones crying and screaming their lungs out because they are petrified of you. It's fun to try and teach those kids *sarcasm*... They don't co-operate in class at all, and mostly just sit there staring at you and / or crying.
One of the cool things is that we get to name the kids if they don't have English names. It's a bit strange, but in a cool way. I've had kids called Star, Blue, Apple, Cherry, and Three! I think I'm going to get creative and name them Batman, Thor, Hulk and She-Ra. Any name suggestions are welcome ;-)
Our apartment:
Thank god we managed to find an apartment right across the street from the school - and the mall. So it makes shopping (grocery) easy.
Our building is called "California Sunshine". Which is apt, seen as that is where we would both rather be. We have a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment on the 23rd floor. It's very nice - despite the decor being a bit "Chinesey".
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| Our complex |
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| Our building |
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| View at night from our balcony |
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| View from our balcony |
We have internet TV - which the owner was proud to point out... But seen as all the programmes are in Chinese, it means absolutely sweet fuck all to us... We also have internet and wifi at home - which we don't pay for. So that's awesome!
We had a lovely time trying to get the money to pay for said apartment *sarcasm*. The conditions of rent in China are: two months rent as a deposit, and three months rent upfront. YIKES! They don't accept credit card, only cash!! So we had to try and make a not so small withdrawal (which made Switzerland go third world) in order to pay the owner and move in. Lucky us, the banks in SA are so diligent when it comes to fraud, they blocked our cards due to the large amounts of cash being withdrawn all on one day!!! Anyhoo... The owner is from Singapore, so he speaks English. He was quite understanding, and we paid him the remainder owing a couple of days later. So we had to sign a one year lease, and pay the rent quarterly (3 months at a time)! Weird.
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| View from our balcony of the complex. We have a little river which surrounds the building - am I sure breeds all the mosquitoes |
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| Room no 4: not sure what this can be used for. So it's empty at the moment - our storage room |
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| Spare room no 1. We haven't decorated yet! |
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| View from the door. The cabinets on the right are for shoes - cos Chinese people don't wear shoes in their houses. You have to leave them at the door. |
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| Our passage way |
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| Our kitchen |
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| Spare bathroom |
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| Spare room no 1 |
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| Our room - check out the lovely gold Chinese curtains. Yay! |
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| Our bathroom |
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| Our lounge from the passage way. Don't you love the Chinese furniture. Check out our flatscreen TV though! It's awesome. |
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| Our dining room complete with "Last Supper" print - classy! |
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| The lounge from the dining room. Our couches are like lazyboys - they have little foot rests which we can pop out and relax while watching TV. |
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| Check out these pieces of awesome decor - not! WTF is up with that clock?? And the Elephant thing is a water feature. |
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| My best: a peacock lamp. What the hell is that??? Hideous! |
The weather:
I have never experienced weather like this in my life. In Wuhan, everyone is proud to tell you (in broken English) that Wuhan is one of the four Furnaces of China. Every time someone tells me this, I want to punch them in the face until they bleed! No shit Sherlock! It's as hot as hell here. The minute I step outside, I'm covered in sweat from head to toe - in areas where I didn't even know you had sweat glands. It's disgusting!
Most days, the temperature is between 33 -38 degrees during the day. It never gets below 28 degrees (even at night) and the humidity is usually 70-80%! It's the worst fucking weather in the world. It's hell. I will never get used to this heat. I’m one huge sweat ball all day. It’s a very attractive look.
And the cherry on the cake - hardly anyone here believes in air-conditioning! It blows my mind. There is no air-conditioning in the mall, and only a couple of individual shops have it. No aircon on the buses or public transport. There is no escaping the heat. It is relentless.
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| This is what 80% humidity looks like. You can literally "touch" the air, it's so thick |
The heat really makes things unpleasant, because we also don't feel like doing anything or going anywhere on our days off. It's too hot to walk around outside... So for the most part, we go to the Supermarket and back.
Luckily we have an aircon in every room of our apartment, so we lock ourselves up in there when we aren't working.
I can't wait for winter. Apparently it's as cold as it is hot here!!
Food:
Besides the disgusting heat, the other thing I can't stand is the food! Mainly because I don't know what any of it is! NOTHING is in English, so if there are no pictures, we can't identify it. This goes for restaurants and grocery shopping. Like Liesl's brother Adam said, "the Chinese will eat anything with legs… as long as it's not a table or a chair".
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| I have no idea what any of that is.... and dear God does it smell! |
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| Menu from the first restaurant we attempted to eat at |
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| Chicken feet - I think |
Wuhan also has its traditional food. Mainly, duck neck (which I have not tasted) and Re Gan Mien - Hot, Dry Noodles (which I have). The noodles are ok. Basically, noodles in peanut sauce.
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| Duck neck |
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| Re Gan Mien |
I've also learned not to try and make small talk with the other teachers by asking "what's that?" when they are eating, because they always make me taste it! So I've tried some pretty dodgy things like, lotus flower root (ew), these black, fungus things that grow on the root of trees, lotus flower seeds (they really like lotus flower over here), and I once had this disgusting fish-mushroom-sauerkraut- tasting dish, which was squiggy and felt like I was eating a mouthful of earthworms covered in slime. Yum!
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| The lotus flower seeds |
Eating-in really is the only option. We usually have pasta and vegetables (when we can get them), which means we have to brave the supermarket. Which is disgusting and smells of rotting flesh (on a good day).
We do our grocery shopping at Carrefour - so luckily it has some international food brands - which are recognisable. This is very limited. Most food is all Chinese, written in Chinese, for Chinese people, with Chinese tastes. You can't buy rice in bags smaller than 10kgs (seriously). There are miles of noodle isles, and all kinds of other shit.
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| How to buy fish in the supermarket... |
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| I don't know what any of this is... it's in the fish section. I think that's seaweed to the right, and some kind of sea cucumber on the left. The stuff in the middle is the fish-worm-slime I tried earlier. |
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| Spoilt for choice when it comes to Soy Sauce... |
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| The smallest bottle of cooking oil I can find... |
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| You can also buy fish like this... vacuum-packed straight of the shelf |
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| These are eggs. They look exactly like the picture. They are basically rotten, smelly eggs. The yolk is all shades of gruesome green, and the "white" is this brown jelly-like substance. Disgusting. |
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| This is in the sweet / snack isle. I think it's chicken feet. Liesl says it's duck penis. Unfortunately we never settle this, because neither of us will EVER put that near our mouths... |
Even the vegetables are weird. Nothing looks normal. They all look deformed. The only recognisable veggies we can find are broccoli, carrots, potatoes (they have PURPLE sweet potatoes here, which taste like starch bags - we discovered this by accident, thinking we had bought real sweet potatoes), garlic and tomatoes. We can't find lettuce, cauliflower, mushrooms, gemsquash (or any squash). We can get cucumber, but it's lumpy and bumpy, so it looks cancerous... We can get asparagus on occasion, and we did once buy corn. But the corn is disgusting. It's like cow fodder. You need to have 5 stomachs to digest it...
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| This is dragon fruit. It looks like a white kiwi fruit inside. It's sweet and tastes ok. |
So in a nutshell - not enjoying the food. My only consolation is that I might be able to finally lose weight.
Shopping:
The one good thing about China (Wuhan) is the shopping. They do have very nice shops, and malls (except the one I work in) where you can buy a variety of things at a very cheap price.
Every 4 out of 5 shops is a clothing shop. They LOVE clothes here. So if you're looking to buy clothes that will never fit you, China is the place! They only stock one size, small, because the people here are like midgets. I haven't seen a fat person yet!! It's unbelievable. I tried on an XL, and it was as if I put on a size 10. Most of the stores are Chinese brands, which means your chances of finding normal-sized-people clothing is slim to zero (pun intended). You'd have more chance finding an English speaking person in Wuhan....
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| Spanish Style Street |
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| View of the Spanish Street, and high street of restaurants. |
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| View of Spanish Style shopping centre from our balcony |
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| Inside Optical Valley Mall |
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| View of my shopping centre to the left - Guanggu Square |
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| Spanish Street |
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| More Spanish Street |
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| Entrance to Spanish Style Street (that is actually the name of the shopping centre!) |
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| Guanggu Square at night |
They do have some international clothing shops, like H&M in Wuhan (no Marks and Spencer's though - like Shanghai). They also have Nike, Adidas, etc. So if I ever wanted to kit myself out for a long run back to South Africa (trust me it's tempting), then I'd have somewhere to shop.
There are a lot of quirky shops too, that sells little trinkets. I like to call these shops "A House of Crap". You really will never need anything they sell here, but it's fun to look and buy something for the hell of it.
Electronics here are also extremely cheap. We bought a surround sound system for our tv - which cost RMB200 - about R280!! A nice steal! However, all the instructions are in Chinese, so we don't know how to install or get it to work with the TV. So we now have a very nice iPod player.
Things that they don't sell here include: cheese; real milk; plates; knives are scarce; olives; face wipes and razors. I’m sure the list will keep growing…
We haven't really bought a lot of "stuff" since we've been here. Mainly things for our apartment - bedding, towels, kitchenware etc.
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| Check out our little Chinese / Japanese dolls |
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| We bought some photo frames to make it feel a little more homey |
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| My little desk fan - a gift from Liesl |
General:
As I mentioned earlier... It's like living on an alien planet over here. One of the things that really disturbs me is the use of the floor as a toilet. It's disgusting. Parents let their kids squat and pee on the floor wherever they are.
You can be walking through the mall, and there is a kid just peeing on the floor. Or the mother will be holding the kid over the trash-can so the kid can pee into it. There are public bathrooms, I've seen the Chinese signs! But no-one uses them. At the train station, this woman just held her kid over the side of the chair and let him pee on the floor. He peed all down her leg and into her shoe.. She let him, and then didn't even wipe it up or off of her leg afterwards. It's disgusting. Naturally, we now avoid walking through or near any and all puddles we may come across.
Which brings me to the toilets. There are hardly any western-style toilets here. Almost 90% of all places has a squat toilet (it was extremely difficult to find an apartment with an actual shower and a proper toilet!) Squat toilets are disgusting and very hard to use. They smell putrid, even though they flush. You can't flush toilet paper down it (although I do). It's basically a long-drop disguised as a "toilet". The school only has one toilet. And it's a squat toilet. Everyone uses it. It's disgusting. I've managed to train myself to only pee once a day (twice if I've had coffee). Now the success of every day is measured by whether I peed on myself or not. So far I've only had successful days... But I fear my time is coming. One false step and it's all over.
Another thing which is a bit weird about here, is the fact that people stare at us wherever we go. As I mentioned earlier, the kids cry when they see us, well adults just stare and gawk like they've never seen a foreigner before (probably because they haven't. 99% of people here have never left China). This also has a flip side. Most shop owners are extremely friendly and try to please us. It's a bit like being a celebrity.
We discovered a little coffee bar right next to our building, called Coffee Time. They love us, and give us free coffee every time we go. It's also next to an Adult English Learning centre. So a lot of the patrons are learning to speak English. We have made friends with the manager and the waitress. They have introduced us to their friends, and everyone wants to be our friend and talk to us so that they can practice their English. It's quite fun.
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| Inside Coffee Time - that's Alice behind the counter |
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| Some English students - Cantina, Shirley, Silence and Matthew |
Yesterday, we attempted to go out to a restaurant for lunch (it was still disappointing).Anyway, there was a little boy sitting with his father. He couldn't stop coming over to our table and taking photos of us. He eventually had his photo taken on Liesl's lap. I think he was very happy about this because he kept staring at the photo. It was quite sweet. The waitress at the same restaurant also handed us a note. Saying that she is trying to learn English, so would we be her friend and can she have our numbers so that she can call us and chat to us in English. Naturally we said yes.
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| So excited to have his photo taken |
We have also discovered an actual bar, across the street from our apartment. It's called Marg Bar. Not many people speak English here, but one of the waitresses does try. The first time we went, we ordered two beers and shot of tequila. We received two Bacardi Breezers and a tequila cocktail. This is going to take some work!
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| My shot of tequila |
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| Liesl outside the bar |
We have an arrangement with the school to learn Chinese. So the teachers will teach us Chinese in exchange for us teaching them English. Hopefully this will help things along a little. We already know some basic phrases, which is a little helpful (but not enough to successfully order food). I recently learned how to say "without chili", so I can't wait to test that one out soon!
As mentioned before, China has a ban on Facebook. Therefore, they have their local version of Facebook called QQ. Its sort of a mix between Facebook and Twitter. We just signed up, and I already have 7 QQ friends (including the waitress from the restaurant). I’m such a social butterfly!
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We'’ve been in China for just over a month now. We have had quite a rough start. In the first few days, I was ready to jump on the next plane home. I still feel like that, but at least it's not the ONLY thing I think about anymore.
I know it's still early days, and each day does get easier. I'm just not sure if it's "settling" or merely just my survival instincts kicking in - fit in or die (literally) kind of thing...
Our apartment is really nice, we have our daily little routine, we have a few friends at school, standard of living is really cheap, we have time to catch up on movies and Tv shows we haven't been able to watch (ok this is mainly because we can't go out anywhere) and we have jobs. Those are about the only things on the "Pro China List" at the moment. I don't have enough memory on my computer to list the "Con China List"...
Yesterday, I bought a new cellphone cover, which I think best describes my mood:
We will see if things improve in the next few months, hopefully with the arrival of a new English teacher. Then Liesl can work closer to home. Watch this space.
xxx
PS: I’d kill for a dirty martini right now, if only we knew how to order one.
