This weekend I made a little trip to a city nearby called Guangzhou (广州). Last week I met someone who lives there and he invited me over to show me around and some of the more historic bits of China. So after class on Sunday morning I took the train from Luo Hu to Guangzhou. It’s a pretty comfortable train ride actually and much better than I had expected. It went through some smaller cities, some nature, some farmland, some areas where you don’t want to be at night and finally arrived in Guangzhou.

Then, the searching began. Some 12,000 people all trying to take a train, and in the middle of that you need to find one of them. Needless to say I really didn’t even try. No offense, but even though it’s getting better, Chinese people still look very similar to me and it takes a lot of effort to identify one. So I kind of just stood there waiting (‘At the entrance to the KFC, you’ll see me’).

Turns out I was on the wrong train station. Oops. I needed Guangzhou East but my kind host had forgotten to mention that. He was at a KFC at that station saying (‘I’m at the KFC but I don’t see you anywhere!’). And yeah, KFC is everywhere here. As is Starbucks, McDonalds and all that kind of jazz. But with a quick metro-ride it was all fixed quite quickly.

First we walked around the city center a bit which was a tad like any other major city. You know; H&M, Gucci, Prada, Zara, McDonalds. Went to see a movie after that where I had the most disgusting drink ever. Carbonated iced tea with milk which had lumps of jelly in it that resembled chewy baby jellyfish. Yuch. Without the jelly it could have been alright but when you take the first sip the shock of those things was just horrid.

The highlights were definitely the old medicinal market and the surrounding area. They sold everything there from dried scorpions to snake skins to mushrooms the size of a good skippy ball. But let’s not forget the dried beetles, dried flies, dried frog-on-a-stick and such things. Anything you could possibly imagine: if you can dry it, it was there. They don’t like people taking pictures though so you’ll just have to trust my description of it. But I can just imagine that shopping list now:  ‘Darling, can you pop round to the shops for some dried bull’s droppings? I feel a bit of a cold coming up and that usually clears it right up.’

Do you know that scene from the movie ‘Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain’ in the haunted house? Well, in the old part of Guangzhou there was a big old house which they converted into a haunted house. My host took me there saying I had to see it. I thought ‘haha, a haunted house, ooooh, scary!’. But I had spoken too soon. This is with real trained people that scare you at all the right times and come running at you with fake axes. The people walking by outside probably thought: ‘Wow, listen to that girl screaming!’. But well, that was me. I never knew you could literally jump into someone’s arms from fright.

Rain. I thought I knew what it was. Generally described as water falling from the sky, right? Well, I changed my definition of rain to taking a shower outside. Saturday and some of Sunday it rained like this. After class on Sunday we were treading through water up to our ankles to get back home. When I was on the train I could actually hardly make out what was happening outside because the rain was just running down the windows as a curtain.

But the worst is getting out of a bus. The street here is generally the lowest level and they just turn into rivers with heavy persistant rain like that. And because there are so many buses they usually don’t get close to the bus stop. At one stop where I thankfully didn’t need to get off the bus stopped quite far from the curb. The doors opened and there is just this almost knee deep stream of water. All the people that needed to get off looked at it and you could see them thinking ‘Oh, fuck’. But bus drivers here are almost like robots. If you don’t get off the doors close and the bus drives off. So you see all the people that need to get off gather their courage and just put their fancy shoes and pants right into the water. I was afraid the same thing would happen to me but thankfully I managed to jump the chasm between the bus and the curb.

But I’m not complaining. Rather have the rain than the heat.

Yes! You see correctly, that’s Chinese. I’ve configured my computer to be able to type Chinese. I thought I would just try it for fun but it turns out it’s actually quite easy. You simply type in the Pinyin and according to the sentence you create it will automatically use the correct character. What’s the use in this, you say? Well, it’s fun and good for showing off, even though it just says hello most of the time. And it’s actually a good learning tool. I try to use it on the few Chinese people on my MSN list. Which they probably find terrible annoying, but bless their patience.

My lonely planet phrasebook is proving to definitely be worth the paper it was printed on!

But one thing that can still baffle me here is the amount of weird fruit in the supermarkets. The thing on the picture was quite tasty, but once you open it up it kind of takes your appetite away. It looks like snot with seeds in it. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Also, lychees are quite tasteful but they don’t particularly look very attractive. Then there’s that kind of melon that looks like it should be classified as a dangerous weapon. It’s got these big spikes sticking out of it. And not to mention the dragon fruit, which is basically a kiwi on steroids.

Anyway, enough typing for now. Not all posts need to be huge and I need to prepare my lesson for later. Oh, one more thing, but I’m going to make it a bit more challenging for you. Alternatively; use this link.

我星期天去广州. 我去Shamian Island和Wet market. Should be fun, looking forward to it!

So yesterday to get all the affairs in order properly me and my friend Berry had to go to Hong Kong. We had to get up at six in the morning and head for the Hong Kong border – 30 minutes from here. After filling out the proper forms there we had to leave China while our visa was arranged, because it cannot be done while you are in the country at the moment due to weird political situations going on. So that was an excellent excuse for a quick trip through Hong Kong’s highlights. We only had until about two in the afternoon to rush through it so of all of Hong Kong’s sights we didn’t even see a handful.

First it was off to the Star Avenue (Hong Kong’s own walk of fame) to see some funny Asian names. Yi Yi Ping, Zhi Yu Cheng, Fuk Yu Man, Ching Chong Chinaman and similar. The only two I recognized were Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Apparently Hong Kong has the second biggest movie industry in the world, second only to Bollywood. Never knew that, and actually never cared.

Then on the Star Ferry to the economic heart of Hong Kong. The Star Ferry is already 120 years old (but still quite seaworthy thankfully).

And then onto the bus through the crazy winding Hong Kong streets to the Peak Tram. It’s a tram that takes you up to Victoria Peak from where you have a gorgeous view of Hong Kong. It is one of those trams that is pulled by a cable, seeing as it’s a 50 degree slope. It actually costs quite a bit of effort just to keep your head up when going up at such an angle. So after a bit of posing for pictures we browsed the English language bookstore (finally found an English-Chinese phrasebook with Pinyin and Chinese characters, hallelujah).

Then back down the slope in a rather thrilling ride which resembled a slow moving rollercoaster. You keep thinking: “Hmmm, what if this cable snapped?” Especially since we picked a seat right at the front. But it was a wonderful experience regardless.

But then the rushing began. Into the metro and back to the border. We had to transfer halfway but we were chatting to each other and missed our transfer. So we get out at the next stop and traveled back. But with the ticket we had we couldn’t transfer there. So we had to go back to other way (where we just went by accident) and transfer there (which I already said we could do, but noooo). Then the visa-man was late with our passports by more than half an hour. It was already coming up to quarter past three and I had to teach all the way back in Shenzhen at half past five. So run through customs and the border (avoiding coughing or sneezing at all costs, they’re kind of worried about their pig flu). Jump the taxi queue a little bit and go home, grab the teaching materials and onto class.

The kids are in the picture below by the way. Aren’t they adorable? One of them had already left though. From left to right: Cici, Christina, James, Sally, Tom and Tina.

And me in Hong Kong of course. And a very funny Chinese contrast.

Imagine going to school at 7.30 in the morning each day, and then not being released from this veritable prison until 21.00 in the evening. Also, this is when you’re 5 to 6 years old. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It is the plight of the single Chinese child and the dark side of the one-child policy.

Officially, kindergarten and primary school only go on until 17.00. But every parent here wants to give their child the best possible education and so they enroll them in evening classes whenever they can. There is one class I am going to be doing which is on a Sunday evening from 19:30 until 21.00. Oh, the horror. Although I am likely to move that one to another time as I would like to keep my Sunday free, but those kids will definitely find something else to fill that time slot!

You are probably familiar with China’s one-child policy. Couples having a second child whether by accident or on purpose pay a hefty fine which will bankrupt the poorer Chinese. The richer people of China are now starting to generate enough wealth to pay these fines and bigger families are starting to emerge. Although I knew what the answer would be I was still curious as to what happens when someone gives birth to a twin. I could almost imagine some cold, strict, Chinese official coming up with a gun and saying: “this one, or that one?”. But a woman giving birth to a twin, and especially two boys can be the target of jealousy and harrassment. However, also a mixed twin – called a dragon (male) and phoenix (female) twin, how cool is that) can cause enimosity.

One girl I am tutoring spends her days from 6.30 in the morning – when her school goes out for the obligatory morning exercise – until 22.00 in the evening. Which is when they fall asleep exhausted after doing their homework. Apparently, a lot of pupils tend to fall asleep in class. And at the end the result of all this studying is that they are ill-prepared to face the real world out there. Without things like an internship and social relations many face a big challenge when attempting to find their jobs. Employers tend to prefer those students which have studied abroad at some point, which is something only wealthy parents can afford to do.

But enough about that for now. Let’s look into my effort of learning Chinese!

Grammatically it must be one of the simplest languages I’ve seen. However, it is also one that until now – especially in daily use – seems unromantic and impolite. They label the days of the week as ‘day one, day two, day three’, and their months as ‘month one, month two, etc.’ Thursday just always sounds more interesting to me. However, it makes it very easy to remember, of course. I still always forget what Thursday is in pretty much every language from German to Spanish. Possibly because it is just my least favourite.

Speaking of favourites, I had a hell of a time trying to ask my language exchange student what her favourite movie was. Just trying to explain the concept of favourite anything was difficult enough, but I also had to explain what a movie was to get her to understand the question. They would not say ‘what is you favourite movie’ in Chinese. They say: ‘your favorite movie what?.

But also in other things like pronouns and possessive pronouns it’s quite simple. Something such as ‘yours’ is written and said as ‘you thing’, ‘we thing’, ‘I thing’. And of course there is the biggest advantage of all; no verb conjugation. For example for ‘I swim, I swum, I am swimming, I have swum’ etc. they have just one word.

Something funny is that they don’t know something like ‘he/she/it’. They have just one word for it and it’s sexless. So when Chinese speak English they will often refer to someone as a she when it’s actually a man or vice versa. It’s an alien concept to them and I can see some funny situations arise from that like ‘I’d like you to meet my friend, he is very handsome.’ And it then turning out to be a woman…

For the last three hours I’ve been sending applications (sifting through the thousands of vacancies here for that one gem of a job), getting my TEFL certificate, passport and BA scanned and translating where needed. Needless to say that gets a little bit boring, so for a bit of variation here are some images! What they are? Well, first there’s Sean taking 30 minutes to pick his Chinese Sunflower at the flower market. Then the typical Chinese image of a woman with an umbrella against tanned skin. The worst sounding but very picturesque Chinese musicians in the park. Artsy shot. Then the contrast of Shenzhen; a little flower shop in the flower market with a huge tower in the background.

And anklefetish, you wonder? Well, that’s to describe the mosquitos here. They particularly like the tender area around my ankles, apparently. One thing I learned quickly: wear socks in the evening.

What an odd word actually, kindergarten. It sounds like someone had a vegetable patch in their backyard where instead of vegetables suddenly children started popping out of the ground. Though if you look at the amount of children frolicking about in China I wouldn’t be surprised if this was in fact happening.

But being a kid here doesn’t seem particularly fun. School is six days a week and from around nine in the morning until nine in the evening! I remember I was always complaining about that one year in high school where I had a Thursday from 8:30 till 17:00. And these are 5 year olds I’m talking about here. For teenagers and adults I can’t even imagine what the pressure must be like.

Anyway, that whole intro served to bring up the following. That I taught my first two lessons in a kindergarten yesterday evening. Though in fact I did two half-lessons just to try it out and see how I did and how or even if I would enjoy it.

In one class I had to teach the kids some colours, such as light blue, dark yellow, silver, gold, pink and gray. They already know the English for red, blue and such colours of course. With some fun games such as ‘run to the card’ (you place the flashcards on the ground, the kids stand ready and you yell ‘gray!’ and the last one to get there has to sit down until you have a winner) and ‘caterpillar’ you help them remember the words. In a lesson I observed a few days ago you could see how funny teaching these kids can be though. The kids had to say ‘mommy, daddy I kiss you’. They managed to turn it into ‘mommy, daddy I kill you’. Needless to say that has you struggling to hold your laughter. Because if you laugh they’ll keep saying it, they learn the word wrong, and not to mention you’ll be rolling on the floor crying of laughter.

The other class was pretty much the same. It was much more fun and also actually easier than I had imagined. Definately going to do that. In fact, tomorrow I’m doing a full lesson!

And this morning I had an interview at a training centre called ‘English365′. I spoke to them last night around 7 and they asked me to come this morning. I told them I would gladly do so and asked if they could mail me the address. Well, the mail got lost in the ether somewhere unfortunately (I didn’t get home until 22:00 so it was too late to call). So this morning I call, expecting them to say ‘oh sorry, we forgot, come in this afternoon and we’ll do it then’. But nope, they asked if I could be there at 10. It was about 8:50 at that time. I didn’t know where it was. I had to take a shower. I had nothing picked to wear.

They texted me the address and some description of the route. There was nobody at home to ask so in good faith I took bus nr. 70 to the metro station (remember, you can’t read anything here, no bus stops, no bus routes, nada, and you can’t ask). I had been there before but I didn’t recognize anything on the way. I guess we all know that feeling all too well. Suddenly I see the Eiffel tower (no, I’m not losing my mind, it’s here) and could relax a little. But I still had the metro to get through. Thankfully some clever planner had thought ‘let’s add English and Pinyin, someone might appreciate it’. I got there 5 minutes early in the end. Sigh.

So to summarize: all is well.

So, as promised: a proper post. I’ve been in China since Friday now and I’ve seen and done a couple of different things and have started to see a bit of the city where I’m going to be for a while; Shenzhen, in case you didn’t know.

Quite near the apartment is a 350 meter high mountain which we went and climbed. The view was good that day, because a combination of moisture in the air and, well, pollution usually obscures the view. Also, it was fairly hot, about 27/28 degrees with fairly high humidity so by the end we got to the top we were all sweating like pigs. Because it was a holiday it was like a traffic jam going up though. Once we got to the top the view really opened up and you could see all the way to Hong Kong and the other side of the city, which I was told is a rather rare thing. At the top of that mountain it really strikes you how huge the whole city is and the sheer amount of people that must be living there.

That is something I noticed on another instance that evening. There is this promenade along the beach here (which was unfortunately closed for renovation) which I quite wanted to see. Well, turns out that was not a good idea. Because the whole traffic jam that had been climbing the mountain earlier decided it might be nice to head to the sea-side. It was packed from left to right, top to bottom with people. That was the China I had imagined. The smell of decay mixing with the smell of barbecue and cheap perfume. But on the plus side in a city where most of it is facade and luxury the reality of it was quite surprising. However, once is enough, hehe.

But the biggest surprise so far was the food. I was expecting the very worst. Like a bad cheap Chinese restaurant in a Sevillan side-street (though good company can make up for a lot). But it was actually far, far better than I thought! My pessimism paid off once again! Very nice dumplings, rice recipes, fruit, vegetables and all sorts of things. On Sunday we went to this big buffet restaurant (eat-all-you-can as the Chinese called it) where I tried a ton of different things. Snow frog soup, deep fried riverfish, strange fruit, deep sea crab, lots and lots of sushi and salmon, and some random things that didn’t have the English translation underneath, so no idea. Today I was kind of wondering what ‘new hot dog’ would exactly be made of, but figured it would not be a good idea to try. You can even drink the tap-water! Doesn’t really go with your preconceptions of China, does it?

Beyond that I observed one of Berry’s lessons at the kindergarten. There’s always a Chinese teacher assisting in the classes so it’s not as scary as it sounds. Teaching kids that age will be a bit different than what I had imagined so far but fun and rewarding also. But fulltime? No, it’s too intense for that. A part time job there and another somewhere (higher level and older) is probably a better idea. I’ve even been ‘offered’ a small tutoring thing to help two high-school level kids practise their pronunciation! And it’s only been my 3rd full day here. So that bodes rather well, wouldn’t you say?

Turns out my phone doesn’t have Chinese characters on it. Well, no problem so far at least. Every text message I get from China Mobil looks like: â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡10.00.â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡,5.00! All is still well here by the way and the plan is to really do a proper update but up till now I haven’t found the time. I had something going yesterday but WordPress failed to save the draft and now that’s gone.

So anyway, here’s my Chinese phone number: +8613421309490

Only 4,5 euro cents a minute to call to it using Skype so what’s your excuse? Keep in mind it’s 6 hours later here than in GMT +1 though.

So after a couple of transfers and too many hours in a plane I’ve finally arrived in China. All is well and I actually had a pretty good night’s sleep. Although 6:30 is a little bit earlier than I’m used to. Although maybe closing the curtains against the sun wouldn’t have been a bad thing to do. Apartment is nice too, some pictures of the view from here coming when I’ve got some time.

First impressions? Clean, big, neon-ish, dynamic and lots of illegible things.

Today the plan is to do some sightseeing so stay posted.