Chengdu

Two weeks ago I flew down to Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province in central china, for a work trip. (Some of you might know Sichuan as the home of some of your favourite chinese dishes such as Sichuan beef, or Kung Pao Chicken). As a work trip it was somewhat intimidating. My boss and the other person I work with in the office in Beijing had left China for three weeks to attend a conference in South Africa. They had left me in charge of ensuring the end-of-project evaluation of one of the post-earthquake disaster relief projects in Sichuan provence was done "properly". It was my job, apparently, to "be bossy" and make sure it gets done to my standards. (As if I knew what that meant!) Thankfully, designing and implementing these types of surveys is something I'd studied at uni, however never having actually done one, I felt totally under-qualified to be managing such a project. My supervisor had told me before she left that I would probably have to go down to Chengdu and sit in the office with the regional project manager to design the survey tools and create an implementation plan. So after she left for South Africa, I spoke with my colleagues in Chengdu and organised to fly down there. By myself. For the three days I was there I felt very out of place running meetings with the two health staff in the Chengdu office making all the executive decisions and telling them what to do. Most of my "decisions" were actually just guesses! Informed guesses i keep trying to assure myself, but I'm not exactly sure...

When I wasn't in the office, I managed to see a little bit of Chengdu. On my first evening I took myself for a walk to see some of the historic streets that had been recommended and ended up sitting and watching chinese people congregate in one of the town squares for dancing. Or what it exercise class? I'm never sure. They seemed to have someone leading the group, and a big boom box for the music. The funniest thing about these groups is the outfits they wear. Some people show up in pj's. Some people in cocktail dresses. And everything in between. Actually some people seem not to be able to decide what to wear so end up in strange combinations of outfits such as sparkly high heels with a pink satin pj top and shorts. It is lovely seeing communities coming together in such a way though, it's definitely not something you'd see in Australia. And they all seem to enjoy it so much.

On my second night I went out for dinner with all the staff from the office. We went out for hotpot - a specialty of the region. After selecting a variety of meat and veggies on sticks to be cooked for us, we all sat around a miniature table, on miniature stools on the footpath outside the restaurant. The food was delivered to us after being cooked in big bowls and we just pulled out one stick at a time and dipped the meat/veg in our individual plates of spices and ate. My colleagues were all very impressed that I could handle the spices, they had wanted me to get a plate of oil to dip in rather than spices, but i insisted that i give it a try. It was delicious.

After dinner I was talked into going out to KTV (karaoke) with some of my colleagues. In China karaoke is generally done in private rooms/booths so a room was hired and the karaoke began. Unfortunately for me, being the only foreigner, everyone wanted me to sing some english songs. Reluctantly i chose a couple and waited for them to come on. When they did come up, it was a bit of a disaster. Not a pleasant memory, but I will go on! (Remember, please, that there was no alcohol to be had yet at this stage). The song came on, I was passed the microphone, and to my horror, I found that the background music cuts out as the words start scrolling across the screen! My voice alone filled the room. It was shocking and awful. They were polite and told me I was very good, but of course I wasn't! They, on the other hand, all had wonderful voices.

I flew back to Beijing the next evening and as I climbed the 5 flights of stairs to my apartment I realised that I was thinking how good it was to be home. Home. How quickly our little apartment in this foreign city has been transformed in my mind to being my home. It feels good.

A Swim to Remember

This morning I received an email from my friend and fellow volunteer, Sam, describing a recent experience she had at the local swimming pool in Lanzhou (a city in central china) where she is living and working. It was just too good not to share, so with her permission, I have posted an extract from her email below.

Thought I would share this with you from my weekend adventure to the swimming pool in Lanzhou:

1. The lifeguards all smoke
2. Those cute little handholds on the edge of the pool are not cute little handholds, they are spittoons. I watch in horror at the person next to me swim a lap, stop, cough up a huge lurgy, then continue swimming.
3. Most adults cannot swim. Therefore the pool is full of adults waist deep in water wearing floaties.
4. Everyone wears a swimming cap. Most also use those nose plug thingies
5. I have to pass a special 'test' to swim in the deep section of the pool. This consists of a 25m paddle. The deep section is a separate pool and I receive a special token which I have to wear on my bathers. I presume it says something like 'Champion swimmer - can swim 25 meters'.
6. The water is soupy and grey. Even after I shower my skin feels like it is coated in an oily film.
7. There are no lanes marked. Anarchy rules

Ah... I love China!

Datong

As interesting as the train ride was (see previous post), our weekend in Datong was actually really amazing too. Although the city itself is fairly nondescript, the world heritage listed Yungang grottoes and the hanging monastery made our trip well worth the journey.

The grottoes are caves filled with 1500 year old buddhist carvings. There's a total of 51,000 carved buddhas ranging in height from a few centimetres to about 15 metres. The guide book said to 'be prepared to be blown away'. And we were.

The hanging monastery was equally awe-inspiring. A monastery of about the same vintage as the grottoes was built literally onto a cliff face. The picture says it all. Walking through was also quite an experience. Terrifying at some points, even though i'm not afraid of heights! (Walking along narrow wooden walkways with knee height railings being the only thing standing between me and a long drop down to the bottom of the cliff no a pleasant thought. Definitely not up to aussie safety standards, but that said, it felt authentic. I'm sure if it had been tourist-proofed to proper western standards it would lose a lot of it's charm).

And finally, Datong. We did spend some time here in the evenings and managed to find a nice night market to get some dinner and walked around the town square where the locals congregate in the evenings. We didn't see another westerner all weekend, so we became quite a spectacle. From blatant stares, to posing in pictures with random chinese people - I feel like i now know what it's like to be a celebrity on the streets!

I've put up an album of photos from the weekend up on facebook for those who want to see more!

A Chinese Train Experience

Last weekend Z and I went to Datong, an obscure city of 3 million in Shanxi province, west of Beijing. We took the train, which takes 6 hours each way. Unfortunately by the time we bought our tickets the only seats left on the train we wanted were hard seats. (In china train tickets come in 5 varieties – soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, or standing room). Which would be ok except that our train home was going to leave Datong at 10.30pm on Sunday night and get us back into Beijing at 4.45am, just in time for a quick nap before work. They cost us 54kuai each way ($7.50). Also, I should mention that ‘hard seats’ are at a very rigid and uncomfortable 90 degrees. The hard seat carriage is also where the people who have purchased standing tickets get to stand. (Or more accurately - squat, lean, lie etc). When Z and I boarded the train in Beijing at 6.30pm on Friday night we were barely able to get ourselves onto the train, it was so packed full of people. We both had a weekend bag with us, and maneuvering ourselves plus our bags down the jam-packed aisle to our seats was quite an ordeal. As we approached our seats, the standing ticket people sitting in them realized they were out of luck this time, and graciously got up and joined their friends in the aisles. It was quite a relief to finally make it to our seats – even if they were ridiculously uncomfortable and we were packed into them like sardines.

As the journey progressed, the crowds did start to thin out a little. When there was room to breathe in the aisles, people started pulling out their miniature fold-up stools, their thermoses full of tea and assorted (and often unrecognizable) Chinese snack foods. Many of the aisle people looked like they were having a great time, which made me feel all the worse for feeling so sorry for myself and my sore bum. But we did arrive safely and on time in Datong at 12.45am, tired, but otherwise in one piece.

The journey home was much the same. Except that this time we would have to try and sleep. We came prepared though. Neck pillow, eye mask, earplugs and scarf/blanket. The seat arrangement on the trains means there are groups of 4 or 6 people were 2 or 3 people face the other 2 or 3 over a small bench/table. Given the angle of the seats, the table is quite an appealing place to rest a head if you’re trying to sleep, so I alternated between 90 degree sleep and slumped-over-the-table sleep. I think I managed a good 4 hours on and off. As you can see in the photo, others got a little more creative in their sleeping positions. And I don’t know how the aisle people managed much of anything. Not that we had much sympathy when someone sitting on the ground near our seats decided 4am was a good time to blast his techno music from his phone.

I would also give a quick rundown of the squat toilet situation on the train – but fortunately we adhered to a strict rule of no fluids within 3 hours of boarding the train, which worked wonders.

All in all, I think we had a very Chinese train experience. I’m very glad we had it, but am also hoping that next time we manage to buy tickets in time to get a more comfortable seat!

One Month On...

Yesterday was officially one month since I arrived in Beijing. My how the time has flown! And yet, I feel so settled here already. I put that down to the fact that I already have an amazing group of friends, great housemates and have been so busy and having too much fun since I arrived. I started work last week so am starting to develop some semblance of a routine. I start chinese classes tomorrow too! Two nights a week I'll be having a two hour class with my housemate, H, two-on-one with a teacher at a school not too far from here. Riding distance in fact! And now that I own an awesome bike (complete with basket and bell) it's perfect. I must say I'm not particularly looking forward to getting back into study mode, especially given it will be on top of work 9-5, but am looking forward to learning a little bit more chinese. It will definitely make getting around a lot easier.

In other news... well, I've honestly left writing on here too long, too much has happened in that time i don't know where to start! Some interesting moments I'll quickly summarise - because it's late and I have to go to work tomorrow morning!

1. We got locked into our apartment. Three times. Each time we had to call our real estate agent to help us get out. One time we actually had to throw the key out of our fifth floor window at 7am (after having been locked in all night) so that someone could go and unlock the door from the outside. Talk about a fire hazard! Typical china though. Not one of us had any difficulty getting our chinese colleagues to believe it. I just got a smile and a knowing nod. Like it happens all the time.

2. I went to the Great Wall Marathon. Just to watch, fortunately. But literally, it was a marathon along the great wall of china. A friend of H's came up from Hong Kong to run the half-marathon so we went out for the day to watch them run. Probably the toughest marathon you can imagine, those hills were intense!

3. Food. Oh the places we've been in two weeks! Peking Duck, Hot Pot, the list goes on, and my goodness have they all been amazing!

4. Bought train tickets for the long weekend. Next weekend, in fact. In China they have a weird system where train tickets go on sale 10 days prior to the date you want to travel. So to buy our tickets to Qingdao I went to the main train station with Z after work on the day. The place was ginormous. And all in chinese of course. We eventually found the ticket hall where you buy tickets and it was filled with people. A room the size of a gymnasium, all in lines to different counters with screens displaying who knows what in different chinese characters above them. After standing in a few different lines, we eventually discovered that there was a line that 'foreigners' could stand in where the attendant would speak english. We battled attempted queue jumpers (they love to target the dumb foreigners, apparently they think we think they all look the same so won't notice and extra person in front of us?), the ticket lady trying to rip us off, but we came away with our tickets. Well, our outward bound tickets anyway. The return leg tickets didn't go on sale for another two days. When we did return two days later, we found that all the monday afternoon tickets had sold out already. Our only option was the slow train, overnight, in a hard seat. (That's cattle class to the max...) So think of me next monday night while I spend 10 hours sitting in a hard seat trying to get some sleep before arriving back in Beijing at 6am just in time to head to work at 9!

5. Bought a bike! I already mentioned that, but it's also worth noting that Z, H and I went to buy a bike together and came home with matching bikes, all in different colours. Very tacky, but they are fun to get around the neighbourhood on :)

6. Nearly got locked inside the forbidden city overnight. We got lost trying to find a nearby bar where we were meeting some people. After walking for what seemed like forever, our feet were sore so we hopped in a cab hoping the driver would know where the elusive 'What? Bar' was. After some confusing and utterly hopeless conversation (where he talked in chinese to us, and we talked back in English, neither of us understanding a word each other said), he dropped us off just inside some big official gate where we jumped out, walked through ever hopeful he knew more than he was letting on, but found that we were actually inside the forbidden city, and that it had actually closed. When we reached the front gate, we were lucky to find one door slightly ajar and made our way out - much to the surprise of the guards on the other side who quickly started yelling something in Chinese and chasing us away!

There are plenty more stories to tell, however I'm too tired! Will try not to leave it too long before my next post. Have definitely come to realise that makes writing anything infinitely harder!

We Found an Apartment!

The search is over, H, Z, and I have found an apartment, and we love it!!

After many a strained phone call to various real estate agents in our best chinglish, and seeing many apartment's that weren't quite right, we managed to be shown a place we instantly felt would be our new home. It's in the Hutong neighbourhood we love, it's an 8 minute walk to the subway and has (most of the) western features we felt we needed (like an actual toilet you can sit on), but still lacking some, like an oven, which unfortunately seems unavoidable. We went to see it for the second time today, and put a deposit down (equivalent to bond). We looked over the lease contract, which is written in chinese and english, and negotiated all the details in english/chinese - who knew the lonely planet phrasebook would come in handy negotiating a lease? It took us quite a while, as each question had to be asked about 5 times, in 5 different ways before it was understood, but we got there in the end. We think.

After handing over a month's worth of rent as a bond, we were given a piece of paper on which one sentence was hand-written in chinese. A receipt - we were told. I guess that works.... but who know's what it actually says!

Another interesting thing we discovered about a chinese lease (after pouring over the details) is that in the case of a dispute, the chinese version of the text (which none of us can obviously read) will take legal precedence over the english. Riight. Glad we bothered then! Who know's what that part says!!

Anyway, we can move in on Sunday night. Yippee!! Above are a couple of pictures we took a few days ago in the general neighbourhood where our new apartment is located. Not very good quality as i took them on my phone, but better than nothing. Pretty eh? Will take and post some pictures of the apartment and the surrounds soon.

A x

Tourist for (Half) a Day

On Tuesday, we had a break from our language and orientation schedule to take an afternoon to go and see some of the sights around Beijing. Stephen (his English name), a student at nearby Peking University, offered to take some of us to the Forbidden City, and Mel and I took him up on the offer. Fortunately for us, the pollution seemed to lift for the afternoon, as you can see in the pictures below where blue sky is actually visible! (This has been the one and only time it's happened since I arrived).

First Impressions

I made it to China, I hope you are all pleased to hear :)

I had a window seat on the last leg of the trip and was looking out the window as we made our descent into Beijing. I thought at one stage that we were descending through the clouds, but as we got lower and lower i started to doubt it was clouds at all... it seemed to have a weird orange tinge to it, and none of the changing densities you notice moving through cloud banks. FInally it dawned on me that it was in fact pollution that we were flying through. Yuck. (I later learned that the sand storm may also have contributed). It was like a really thick mist. To give you an idea of how bad it was: I couldn't see the ground until about 10 seconds before we landed when i first spied a tree through the smog. As we taxied I could barely see the terminal, let alone any buildings beyond the airport. It was just a dirty white spreading off into the distance.

Fortunately none of us had any trouble getting through immigration when we arrived, despite the trouble we'd had getting our visas. Once we'd picked up our bags we made our way to our temporary accommodation in the north west of Beijing at the Chinese Language and Culture University.

After a quick nap (on my bed, which I swear is actually a plank of wood with a bed sheet over the top), and a brief moment of "Oh my god what was I thinking moving to China??" (which fortunately passed relatively quickly), we headed to lunch where we were treated to the most amazing chinese feast! The food was all from the Xinjiang province over near Afghanistan - amazing! I know i came to china for a reason - the food!! haha.

After lunch, while walking back to our hotel, I noticed how sore my eyes and throat had become - they're killing me! Half a day in Beijing and the pollution is already starting to piss me off. Not to mention the fact that despite it being a 'sunny day' in beijing, I can't see the sky! The sun shines down, i put on my sunglasses because of the glare, look up and all I see is grey. Very bizarre.

More later.

x

The Good Stuff

I've now got two weeks left in Australia before heading off. My days are becoming awfully busy trying to finish up at work, pack and organise my move down to Melbourne, organise myself for the big move to China and of course fitting in many a catch up and goodbye. But I've also been thinking about how to make the most of the things in my life in Australia that I'll be deprived of while in China for a year. An extra dose of the aussie lifestyle, if you will. Family and friends excepted, (a given), these are the things I'll miss, and have been filling up on in preparation for my move to China:

1. Cheese
The chinese are not big on cheese, and although i've been told i'll be able to find it at some foreign shops in Beijing, it will be expensive, so will definitely be an "occasional" food - a treat.

2. Coffee
I don't feel like i can really get my fill of good coffee while still in Canberra... but will be going all out during my week in Melbourne immediately prior to my departure, rest assured! Although there's not much (good) coffee in china, I'm sure I'll be enjoying all sorts of chinese teas.

3. Brunches
I doubt I'll be finding any good eggs benny in China... Fortunately with my numerous goodbye catchups there's plenty of opportunity to go all out :)

4. Puppies
More specifically - Matilda and Lola... will definitely miss them while I'm gone!

5. Fresh air, blue sky and sunshine
There's not much of either of these in Beijing I'm told. In preparation for being engulfed in a dense cloud of pollution for a year, I've been apreciating every sunny day, every blue sky and even considering bottling some of the crisp canberra morning air.

Is there anything I'm forgetting? Or any suggestions for what else I should be doing/appreciating in my remaining 2 weeks?

The China Group

A few weeks ago I attended pre-departure training, a week long training program for the 106 volunteers from around the country that will be departing for destinations around asia-pacific and Africa in a months time. The most important people I met at PDT were the other volunteers that will be going to China with me. The below photo is of "the China group" and was taken at the farewell cocktail party held at old parliament house here in Canberra during PDT.

We are pictured with Minister Councellor Ke Yasha from the Chinese Embassy. From left to right, we are Mel, Zeina, Me, Olivia, Ke Yasha, Huw, Sam, Emily, Shaku, and Halinka.

The next day we also visited the Chinese Embassy and had tea with Ke Yasha. A short post about or visit was posted on the Chinese Embassy website, you can see it here.

The below photo is of all the volunteers in intake 30 on the steps of old parliament house.