Week 1 - We Arrive, or, China is Weird and They Don't Care Who Knows

Hello faithful readers (if there are any of you!) and welcome to my first post about living in China!

Eventually I hope to post semi-frequently, such as every other day, but for now I am very busy and am also still getting acclimated to this weird-ass country; as such I think that once a week is a good goal for making blog posts.

With this little blog I hope to share some of my experiences and to explain, as best as I can, what China is like to some of you who have never been there.

I will also be telling some fun anecdotes about confusing messes I have gotten myself into, and post lots and lots of Engrish. Seriously, there are tons of signs written in English here and they are all written terribly. It's awesome. This goes double for clothes. It is very trendy to wear clothes with English on it, and it really does not matter to the Chinese what the words actually say.

The other purpose of this blog is to augment the writing I am already doing for the book I am working on (and eventually hope to get published) about my year in China. I figure if I do twice as much writing I am twice as likely to actually write something interesting and funny. 

So, where to begin... how about our flight??

Day 1

I pulled an all-nighter before getting on the plane. I thought that this would be a great idea because I wanted to suck every last second out of living in THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH while I still could. I also thought that if I shifted my internal clock before boarding the plane, I would sleep more easily and also adjust to the time difference in China (which is exactly 12 hours from Michigan).

This ended up not being a good idea, as I was just really loopy and kind of a zombie all day.

We said a teary goodbye to our families, enjoyed being molested by the TSA, and went to wait at our terminal!

DTW now has these cool phone charging stations at all the gates, and so we bonded with a few people while fighting/hair pulling our way to the nearest charger. Specifically we befriended an elderly Chinese man. He was an expatriate who moved to America when he was quite young to work for the auto industry. He had a US passport and everything. He told us a little about what to expect in China, and also how to navigate the Beijing airport.

On the plane we got our first taste of Chinese culture, as most of our flight was Chinese citizens. The flight was completely booked, and there were fewer overhead compartments than there were people who needed to put things into overhead compartments. This led to what can only be described as insanity. Picture 12:01am on Black Friday at a Walmart in Alabama, except everyone has 35 pound carry on suitcases and no one speaks English. Well, in a lot of ways they probably spoke better English than the theoretical people in this imaginary scenario, but you get the idea. The flight itself was smooth and uneventful. It was 12 hours long, and a baby cried for about 13 hours. I slept as much as I could, but I also ate every meal that was provided, had a few glasses of FREE wine, and watched the Lego movie. The Lego movie is adorable and fun and funny. I recommend it. Laura and I both agree that the main character, played by Chris Pratt, is our friend Dan Wrobbel if he were a lego.

We landed in Beijing and had 2 hours before our next flight. Due to customs, having to get our bags from baggage claim and then re-check them, and having to go like 2.3 miles to our next gate, we BARELY made the plane. This plane was much smaller, and part of South China Airlines. It was very nice and the flight was uneventful. The plane ride was 3 hours, and a baby cried for 4.

Now we were in REAL China. There wasn't any English on anything. We had to get off our plane by going down a ladder and going outside. It was 900000 degrees Fahrenheit. REAL China.

We went and picked up our bags again and then headed over to the bank to exchange our money. This was by far the scariest part of the entire journey for me. I pulled out a wad of cash, all of the money we had access to in the entire world at this point, and handed it to a stranger behind a glass window. Luckily, everything went off without a hitch. Well, almost everything. She took one of the $20 bills I gave her and noticed it had a tiny tear in the corner. She handed it back to me, refused to exchange it for Chinese money, and said "THIS MONEY IS BROKEN". Oh well. 

We bought our bus tickets from a friendly bus-ticket-counter-man who spoke a tiny bit of English. He and a coworker of his asked to take a picture with us because "we were so beautiful". I 100% guarantee that that's not why he actually wanted to take the photo, but since he was being helpful and I was really tired at that point, we said okay.

We got on our bus and rode for two more hours to a city called Zhaoqing, where we got off the bus and were told that we'd have a ride waiting to take us to the hotel. We got off the bus, the bus drove away, and there was NOBODY there to get us. We were in the middle of a dark parking lot in the middle of a dark area of the city after midnight. I pooped my pants a little bit. Okay, so THIS was the scariest part of the whole journey.

We waited a few minutes more, and decided we had to do something. We started walking, Laura and I each carrying like 90 lbs of luggage. I stopped some strangers and asked them in very poor Chinese where the hotel was. They pointed us down the road, so we walked to the end of the road. There was no hotel, so we asked someone else and they pointed us back in the direction we came. Either my Chinese was really bad or everyone was playing a practical joke on us. Just when we were about to hire a taxi to take us back to the airport and go back to Detroit, a lady in a red car pulled up out of nowhere and said "ARE YOU LAURA AND JON". She was our ride! She said that she had been waiting at the bus stop for 3 hours, and that our plane was later than she thought it would be. The bus arrived just when she decided to go get some food. We all had a little laugh and we went to the hotel.

Our hotel is called the WELOVEHOTEL, and it's pretty okay. It's in the middle of renovations. Or it's still being built. Or maybe they never finished it. I'm not sure. This is China. The air conditioning works and that's the most important thing. The only really annoying thing is that there are no drawers or dressers, so we are still living out of our suitcases. Oh, also there is no bathroom. There's just sort of a small wall between the bed and the toilet. There's also no fan. Laura and I have learned a lot about each other this week and it's not all pleasant.

DAY 2-5

So the next day we went to work for the first time. Yes, they asked us to work the next day. We had about 7 hours to sleep and get ready between our 24 hour travel day and our 8 hour work day. Oh well, this is China.

We work in a shopping mall, which is kind of weird, but almost makes sense in a strange China way. The school itself (Summit Cambridge Elementary) has a regular location a little farther away, but for the summer camp, they rented out a space on the third floor of a shopping mall called GRANDBUYTIMESQUARE that's right at the center of the down town area. The little school/camp/mall space is very cute. They have a little play town called "Bosstown" (The camp is named Bosskids) and there are little shops that the designers imagined would conjure up the image of small town America. There is a little fire station, a little supermarket, a little doctor's office, and also a recording studio (Laura's classroom) and something called "SUPERMAN EXHIBITION" which is my classroom. The kids are all very cute... well they were on the first day. There are 5 little "classes" of about 3-6 kids. Each one is a different grade. There are two kindergartens and a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade class. They have a rotating schedule and all the teachers stay put. So I see every class every day for about 40 minutes each.

I was given a "textbook" to work with, which is just a children's story written in English. It's called "The Big Turnip" and tells the unforgettable tale of a farmer who grows a large turnip and has a hard time pulling it up. The story is about 6 pages long and every page is the same (each page, he enlists the help of another person to also pull up the turnip). It's almost cute. It ends with this weirdly communist propaganda kind of moral where they finally get the turnip out and the farmer is like SEE COMRADES MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK. Somehow I am expected to "teach" this book to all 5 classes, all different grade levels, and I am expected to do it for 40 minutes a day for every single day of the 10 day camp. I ran out of ideas on Wednesday...

Bosskids summer camp also employs a few other foreign teachers. There is a married couple from Greece named Hercules (really) and Maria. They are completely fluent in English and are really great. Hercules is sort of "the boss", but he has told me that he is really the go-between between the other foreign teachers and the Chinese bosses. Maria and Hercules have lived in China for 2 years, and only speak about as much Chinese as I already do. This makes me feel good, but also a little nervous. I would have imagined they would pick more up by now... There's also James. James is a Canadian originally from Nova Scotia. He has lived in China for about 5 years now and has no plans of ever returning. He loves it here. He's actually engaged to a Chinese woman named Claire. She's very nice. They have 4 cats, but I have not had the pleasure of meeting them yet.

Also at the school are a number of Chinese teachers and a number of Chinese teaching assistants. These ladies range from super nice to kind of mean. They all come with the children into my classroom every day to sort of corral the kids and also translate things I say that are too tough for their little ears to figure out. One of the teacher assistant girls is named Cynthia. She has become our best friend so far out here. She is majoring in English in college, so we help each other out with our speaking.

Most nights after work we go out to dinner with James and Claire and/or Herc and Maria. In Chinese custom, everyone is supposed to fight over who pays the bill. Whoever pays the bill "has more face" and whoever does not pay "loses face". Laura and I are very bad at this game so far, and they have bought pretty much everything. This is very nice of them but I'm starting to feel like a schmuck.

The food here is quite good. There is plenty of "American" type things to eat, as there is a McDonalds on literally every street corner, and there are a ton of KFCs too. There's also a Pizza Hut in the Grandbuy mall. The Chinese food is also very good. It's true what they say, that Chinese food in America sort of pales in comparison. The food is also insanely cheap. For example, last night Laura and I each had an enormous bowl of Chinese stew stuff that was so big we couldn't even finish. We also had an appetizer of these spicy cold cucumber things. Our entire bill came to 24 Yuan, which $3.88. The American food is a lot more expensive, but it's still cheaper than actual America. At McDonalds two value meals comes to about 30 Yuan, or $4.84. So far our most expensive meal was at Pizza Hut, which is a very fancy sit down place in China. The wait staff all wears ties and there is silky smooth jazz music playing. Our bill there was about 224 yuan, or $36.17. But that was split 4 ways, and we had 3 pizzas, two pitchers of soda and a cheesy potato side dish.

Clothes are also really cheap here, although we haven't purchased any yet. All of the clothes I have seen in the mall, including shirts and shoes and pants and hats, are all less than 20 Yuan each ($3.23).

We have already sort of fallen into a routine which is nice. Every day we wake up at about 8:30. Well, we set our alarms for 8:30. We still haven't completely adjusted to the new time zone, so we usually wake up at around 7:30. Anyway we wake up and have some tea and watch some American TV on our computer. I really want to watch Chinese TV, but the TV in our hotel room is so ridiculously complicated that I literally can not figure it out. Anyway, we get ready for the day and leave the hotel by about 9:45. We stop at a bakery on the way to school for breakfast. There aren't really any "breakfast restaurants", at least now in Zhaoqing, and we can get two really big sweet buns at the bakery for about 8 Yuan (as opposed to McDonalds breakfast for 30 yuan). Then we go to work from 10 until 12, which is when we take the kids to their lunch.

We are required to eat lunch with the kids. There is a restaurant on the top floor of the mall that has some sort of deal worked out with the summer camp, so we eat there. The food is just okay, but it's free and we are getting paid to be there with the kids so I don't complain!

After lunch the kids take a nap, and we get a 2 hour break until 3pm. Laura and I like to come home during this time because it's TOO GODDAMN HOT IN CHINA. Laura usually reads or naps or writes emails during this time, and I like to practice my Mandarin for the two hours.

At 3 we go back to work until 5:30. After work we go home and change because our clothes are completely soaked through with sweat at this point. I usually spend an hour or so writing in my book (or working on this blog from now on...!), and then we go out and explore.

So far we've scoped out a mile or two radius in all directions from our hotel room. The coolest thing we've found so far is the ancient city wall. This wall was built in the Song dynasty. The bricks are from the year 1113, but before that there was a mud wall that was probably there when the city was built in 200 BC. Now only a portion of the wall remains, but it's a cool landmark, and the oldest wall in all of Guangdong province. Neat stuff!

There's a Walmart near our hotel, which is pretty funny to me. I don't have anything else to say on the matter.

Oh yeah! So far the weirdest thing I've eaten is pig feet. They were really good! I've been on the lookout for other weird things, but so far I haven't found anything that was crazier than that. I think the restaurant we went to last night has chicken feet for an appetizer, so I may get those later. I've heard there are places not too far from here that sell snake, and I've also heard that a southern Chinese delicacy is fried scorpion, so those are pretty high on my list, but I haven't seen any sign of them yet. Unfortunately we've been told that Zhaoqing is one of the places that still sells a lot of dog and cat meat. This is sad, for sure, but we have been reassured that it's only at very specific specialty shops, and that there's no way you could accidentally buy any, so I am not worried about that!

Day 6

Yesterday we went with our new friend Cynthia to Dinghu mountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinghu_Mountain)

It's like a big state park or nature preserve. We did a lot of hiking! We walked basically all day, and discovered new meanings of "sweat" and "exhaustion". We saw some cool animals, like humongous butterflies and some wild lizards. I saw this incredibly big spider but it darted away before I snapped a picture. Laura had a leach fall on her for about 3 seconds, so that was pretty freaky. It didn't pierce her skin though, so everything was fine.

At the top of Dinghu mountain is a giant Ding, which is like an ancient Chinese pot. It was made in 1999 to commemorate the year 2000. It was apparently a pretty big deal although I think some of that was lost in translation. There was also a Buddhist temple hidden up in the mountains there, which we visited. That was very cool. We lit some incense for Cynthia's recently departed grandmother, and bowed to some monks.

As is typical of China, and especially of tourist attractions, there were people EVERYWHERE. It wasn't quite as crowded as some of those pictures you see on the Internet, but there was definitely something to be said about the juxtaposition of this serene, quiet mountain wilderness and like 44,000 naked children running around in the river water and screaming their fool heads off.

Cynthia's dad offered to drive us to the mountain, which was incredibly nice. The Chinese seem very hospitable towards people, even strangers, as long as there is some sort of social clause that tells them to be. For example, just passing people on the street, most people pay no attention to each other, and are even quite rude toward one another. However, if someone is family, or a close friend, or a guest, then there is nothing they would not do for you. Cynthia's father is the perfect example of this. We had never met him before. He did not speak any English, or even any Mandarin! He only knew Cantonese, which is the local dialect here. So we literally could not say two words to him in any common language. However, because we were friends with his daughter, he insisted on driving us the 40 minutes to the mountain, and he also used his work badge to get us in for free. The employees at the mountain did not want to honor his badge for 3 guests, especially not two foreigners, but he got out of the car and yelled at them until they let us in! What a cool dude!

I've heard that it is very traditional to give gifts in China to anyone who does you a favor, so when we went to the grocery store in the morning to get snacks for the hike, I bought him some chocolate. He did not want to accept my gift, since he did not feel like he did anything out of the ordinary or any favors, but I insisted and he eventually relented. For the ride home we took a bus, and this was another quintessential Chinese experience. It's true what you hear. Everyone pushes and shoves and crams their way in. There's no such thing as a line or proper line etiquette. It's a mad dash and either you get trampled or you do the trampling. 

So that was our first week in China. Today we are recovering from all that hiking and doing some laundry. We are doing it at Herc and Maria's because the school didn't think to put us in a hotel with laundry service. Oh well. I'm learning to just say "This is China" whenever something like that happens.

This is China, and I am loving it.

 (I will make a separate post for pictures and video clips. Expect that soon!)