Settling In
September 28, 2008
21st September 2008
Thursday
Thursday morning I woke up at 7:45am assuming that it’d give me enough time to get to school. Auntie (the landlady; from here on I call her Auntie in Chinese) was up and already doing stuff. I’d actually woke up a few times before that at 6:30am and then 7:15am since there is so much noise in this complex. Cars honking their horns, people yelling across the street, old people chanting heavily. It ain’t the Spring Festival yet people!
Auntie explained to me some of the procedures of using the shower, like how the hot and cold dials are reversed and that I should close the window while I am using the toilet and shower. The bathroom is as I mentioned previously, very comfortable. The shower too was lovely, water doesn’t small like feces. I didn’t have much time to enjoy it though as time was on a treadmill.
Auntie was also keen to remind me to get Mrs Hua to call her about the police registration since they were all clueless from last night’s banter. She talked some more and I began to feel time running away from me.
It didn’t take long for me to find the bus stop and the right bus. The bus I catch was jammed pack, I entered from the front and realized that this bus line accepts cards from the back. It didn’t take long for me to catch on that passangers were passing each others cards and money along to the middle of the bus where it can be processed. I got off at the right stop and caught the line 1. Much to my bitter disapointment the line 1 during peak hour is even worse than I’d previously imagined. It really is butt check to butt check tight and the temperature climbs to a pressure cooker very quickly. Thankfully it cools down a little once we hit Xuhuijia.
Returning home was much more comfortable as the density of people had decreased. Once I got off at the railway station I lost my way and wandered around the complex for at least 25 minutes. This reminded me of all the other times I had gotten lost and how uncomfortable it felt. Eventually I found my way, I got off at the opposite end and had to walk through an underpass. Returning home from there was fine.
When I got home I called Auntie as I needed a key for the house. Her son answered and it didn’t take me long to realize that he was downstairs playing games so I got the key off him, this was only temporary though.
Once I got inside, I wasn’t too sure what to do. Like the day before, I had finished classes and had about 5hrs to myself. Hanxue was going to come over later and help me with the contract and the rest of it. I decided that It would be best that I work on my homework now since I might not have anytime to later. Even though my bags were still lying there mostly packed up I didn’t want to sort everything into drawers just yet.
In the down time I did some homework and slept a little, I also wrote up another to do list, noting everything I needed to know about the new place. Auntie rocked up later and told me to start sorting my stuff into drawers. She also helped me move the front loader washing machine left on my desk. From there I spent the next few hours unpacking my things. It felt great putting everything away, like things had finally turned my way.
Later on, Hanxue rocked up, the three of us did the routine talk-fest. We were going to arrange the contract and all that jazz but I later realized what it was me who had to set up the contract and not the landlord. Despite my lack of context Hanxue was already getting Ou Yan to get a template for me and would have it by tommorow.
Auntie also said a few things about me getting a webcam and doing a tour of the house for the people back in Australia. She also wanted to talk to my family, despite the different languages.
From there we went out to eat, we went to the same place as the night before, this time just the two of us. This time I let Hanxue order all of the dishes, they were all pretty good. Later on Ou Yan and Sam rocked up and joined in. From there we returned home, I showered (they encourage that I shower twice a day) and then went to sleep. I also called Xi at some stage.
Friday
Friday morning I went with Auntie down to the Police Station to complete the registration. Somehow they’d managed to work out something were I didn’t need all of the stuff on Mrs Hua’s list or something like that. I’m not too sure.
So I woke up, got ready and Auntie and waited a little for Auntie. She told me that we would travel to the police station via scooter. Scooters are extremely popular over here in China. Roads are littered with cars, busses bicycles, scooters and pedestrians. None of them really care about anyone else, they just go. Nobody wears helmets either.
We walked down to a small shed near the end of the compound and Auntie opened up the door and dragged out her scooter. She got on the front and I got on the back. I wasn’t sure where to put my hands, she said on her shoulders. From there we were off.
Ignoring the dangers of crashing and all that, being in the back, bending in and out of the early morning chaos was energising. It was only a short trip to the station. Inside I handed over my passport and signed some forms detailing my personal information. They then gave back my passport and a sheet of paper to say that I was registered along with the details that I’d just supplied.
On the way back Auntie dropped me off at the bus stop and I made my regular commute to school. After class I decided to check out an imported goods store that was recommended to me by one of my classmates. It was situated in the underground floor of a fancy department store.
Inside was packed with goods from around the world, mainly skewed towards American though. All of the sugary breakfast cereals were there, fresh meat, South Australian wines and a few Japanese goods. After searching the whole store I couldn’t find Vegemite and had to ask a staff member to direct me to where it was. I also picked up a can of ginger ale for AUD50c. I figured that I’d deserved it. No beer outside of Japan, China and the US. Tsk.
Once I got home I relaxed and played a short burst of games on my laptop. Auntie then rocked up and wanted to show me the canteens at the local university that I could buy my meals from. So we jumped on the scooter and she did a quick tour of the school. We looked at three canteens in total. A few things worried me about the university, firstly the quality of food was not very high at all, very sloppy, highly unappealing, it was much much lower than what I had been getting over in Yangpu. Secondly the method of transportation. Auntie had said that I could loan her bicycle and ride down to the university for lunch and tea. I didn’t exactly find comfort in the idea of gambling my life on the roads.
We returned home and I probably did some homework. Once again, Hanxue arrived after work to help me out. By this stage I am really unsure of how to handle her politeness, I mean ever since we met she had been helping me everything single day, as much as possible. I am so fortunate.
The three of us organised the contact, got it signed and I handed over the money. I then stored my copy away, nice and safe. We talked a little more about the plans ahead. My to do list had already shrunk as I’d figured out most of my questions (clean water, garbage bin etc.) by myself. I needed to ask a few more and got those out of the way.
Auntie knew of a quality restaurant and recommended that we go there for tea. She led the way and it didn’t take long before the two of us had found it. I was suprirsed at the calibur of this place, it was pretty classy, not quite what I am use to. Reminded me of the hotel from Home Alone 2 with the waiters hand gesturing and saying nice things to us.
Once we were inside we looked around for a spare table. I guess about 20% of the people inside began looking at me, like the foreign beast I am. I couldn’t help but ponder the kinds of thoughts running through there heads about me.
It didn’t take long for us to find a table, it needed a bit of a spruce up and the waiters did that with haste. We then looked at the menu concealed behind the class on the table. The menu was segmented into Chinese and Western dishes. I asked Hanxue if there was anything like the beef and black bean we had before, she found a ’similar’ dish and we ordered that.
I guess I should have been weary about this since it was in the westerners part of the menu but I didn’t think twice about it. We talked for a short while about why everyone looks at me and what they’re probably thinking. It was then that a waiter walked past and made some cluey remark to Hanxue. Ironi that. She said that he suggested that we drink lots of alcohol. Hmmm…
Our meals were finally served up on sizzling plates. The waiter removed the top pan and revealed what I’d describe as the ‘typical American breakfast’. It’s not really breakfast though. There was a slab of beef, pasta and egg all done up in a fatty, American style of cooking. Man, I had never had a meal like this before and it certainly wasn’t the ‘beef and black bean’-esque style of food I had thought it was.
In anycase, we both didn’t mind the meal. I really didn’t think that I’d like it but it was fine. No complaints. From the restaurant Hanxue delivered me home and said that she’d be around 9:30am tommorow to help me register for the internet. Like I said, hospitable.
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Moving House
20th September 2008
With the room booked, friends made and business sorted it was time to bust-a-move.
Tuesday
Even though I had the 4hr marathon of morning classes ahead of me, all I could think about was getting away from Lao Bao and the Old Guest House. It’s like two sides of the tunnel. On one side is the first few weeks in Shanghai; a grappling match to find my place and in that place become comfortable, it’s not where I wanted to be. The otherside; where I would have liked to have been from the start; comfortable.
In the afternoon, after I’d made lunch, I went to see Mrs Hua and seek assistant in my escapade out of USST. After telling her my plans she gave me some more forms about registering at the police station with a list of materials I needed to get. This seemed like a pain in the neck! Particularly another small photo of me, I had already given her 4 of the ones I took off in Australia and she couldn’t find one of them. She took a photocopy of my passport which I left in her scanner – argh! That night I began packing all of my things into my rucksack and got through a good chunk of it.
I also gave Hanxue a call to let her know my plans. She was going to give the landlady a call notifying her of my arrival and then meet me after work at about 6:40pm once my cab had arrived. Everything was set.
The Cambodian dude - I forgot his name and he forgot mine, he calls me Guy – rocked up as well, I told him my plans and he was sure to ask the right questions to me about transport and everything. You know the kinda stuff that you think the University would help you with.
Wednesday
Classes hadn’t been so good on Tuesday and Wednesday. We had a new guy in the class, a fill-in for Marcus. From France, Asian in appearance, infact his parents are Chinese and he is like 27 although he could fool me for 17. He is okay but I don’t like him, as his presence magnifies my role as the class incompetent, especially for the listening classes which now border on extremely difficult. I can’t even understand the transcripts and yet the articles for the other classes (reading and speaking) are much easier. Makes no sense.
Anyways, I was lucky in this sense as I gave Mrs Hua a call in the morning to find that she’d be knocking off at 1pm that day and indeed had my passport. So, assuming that the passport was going to be important for me moving house, I left my classes early to reclaim the passport. It was a small blessing as I didn’t have to play my demoralizing role as class idiot in the listening classes.
I guess the sour taste of my listening classes were matched by the lack of assistance that Mrs Hua could provide for me moving out. That is helping me organise a taxi and getting the materials for the registration - I ought to mention that they want you to register everytime you move. I don’t blame her for it, but it doesn’t make my situation any better and they don’t even seem to recongise that! I got my passport so I guess that was worthwhile.
Having 6hrs of free time to kill until I had to leave, I slept, did a few hours of revision (I’m not sure how much this helps) and played some more Thrilby as well as the mezmorizing Fractal Fighter.
I called home at some stage and then went to get my final meal at the school cafeteria. I’m not sure how their staring-at-the-only-foreigner-on-campus competition is going but they seemed to have upped the antte.
From there I went back home and told the receptionist - the less friendly one - that I was leaving, they already knew this as I talked to Lao Bao -he’s the landlord BTW - about it before hand. I said some stuff and then they basically refused to listen and called Lao Bao. Ten minutes later he arrived – getting kinda anxy as I need to call a cab - receptionist ignored my request for the cab. Lao Bao rocks up and repeats the previous process, I answered his questions, he doesn’t care for my responses and gets me to call ‘my teacher’ – that’s Mrs Hua – so I call her and then pass the phone over to Lao Bao. They talk for a bit, he passes it back to me, she explains what he just said, that they can’t refund me the tens days as I was leaving early, which I already knew before when he said it to me in person. I told her it is all fine, Lao Bao rips the phone from my ear, says some more, gives it back. She asks me if I want to keep the room for another 10 days, I say no and tell her that I think Lao Bao is a prick and just want to move to some place where I might get better treatment. Ordeal over.
Lao Bao scoots off - I gotta call that taxi – so I get the receptionist (that word is too dignified for the work they do) to call through, nope all busy, tells me to go out on the street and hail one.
I expected that this would be the case, now I am really frustrated and looking forward to getting out of Yangpu. I go to the front gate and call a driver, I tell him that I am moving to Xuhui and need his help. He said that he wasn’t too familiar with the district but would do his best to get me there. I navigate him to the Old Guest House.
I jump out and tell him to wait. I grab my first load of items and haul them into the boot. I then went upstairs for the toilet paper and other things. As I head out I throw the key on the table and the two of us head off to the South Shanghai Railyway station near where I live.
The taxi drove up to one of the upper level express ways, sweeping around Yangpu, direct to where we want to go. He follows this road for almost the whole time. For most of the trip I was quiet, observing the scenery and how dark the sky was getting (part pollution, part night time, part rain coming on) and how much it felt like a dooms day scenario. I eventually started talking to the driver who was a friendly dude. Also the driver told me that I didn’t near to wear a seat belt while in the front with him, I told him things are different in Australia. It was interesting going without.
I got a txt from Hanxue letting me know she’d be there. She also called while we were about 10 minutes away, to say she had arrived. Once we found the place, the taxi did a u-y (?!) and we headed in, Hanxue and a friend of hers were out the front and noticed the taxi. They hopped in and together we entered the compound. Hanxue and the other friend (Tiffany) have been friends for 20 years, since they were children. Much like Hanxue she is a cute, short Chinese girl, she has some freckles too which is not-so common and quite interesting.
We got to the building and the taxi pulled up out the front. We’d travelled 40km and it took us about 50-55 minutes with a fare of 132 yuan. I thanked the driver, the landlady was out the front and grabbed my rucksack off me and headed out. None of them let me carry anything and the landlady had already shot off with my heavy rucksack so I grabbed what I could off them. We arrived at the house, took our shoes off and put our stuff down. We congregated in my room and the lady grabbed a few stools to sit on. I figured that we’d get down to business….
…but we didn’t, infact it took two days before we signed the contract and exchanged the money. We spent the next hour and a half discussing things, the landlady showed off more of the house and when I showed the registration form that Mrs Hua gave me - it had both languages – they then spent another good hour talking over the implications. The lady next door also came over in her pyjamas and joined in on the conversation. I participated when possible but being the only second language speaker, my precedence in the turn taking is low. Although a lot of what they said was directed at me (the landlady likes to prove to Hanxue that I understand what she says, and I do, it’s just sometimes hard to crunch it all down logically).
From there, myself and the two young ladies went out to get some tea, I’d had dinner at the canteen a few hours ago but I didn’t mind going again. The girls had to ask some people at a clothes store about where the local restaurants were but after that it didn’t take too long before we found one.
The restaurant we’d found was small but comfortable. We sat down to order and Hanxue showed me to the english part of the menu and asked what I’d like. They were keen to ensure that I was comfortable with whatever we would eat. I chose one of my favourite dishes; beef and black bean and the girls chose some of their own including the infamous Smelly Bean Curd – wasn’t smelly or even curdy, I thought.
The dishes didn’t take long to arrive and were beyond my expectations, I was quite pleased. As we ate the girls asked me questions about Australia and Xi Wei, and I explained some cultural quirks. All very friendly jib jab, mostly Chinese but I spoke english when I lost my way. The girls told me that the neighbour who had called in on the conversation at the apartment wasn’t very nice and they didn’t like her since she was trying to persuade the landlady to not accept me. I was surprised at their frankness. I also started and have still been doing this up to now, thanking Hanxue and her friends for all of their help. Their assistance (mostly Hanxue though) in making me feel comfortable here is just incredible, I feel very blessed to have such courteous, lovely friends and I explained that I didn’t know how to make it up to her.
From there Hanxue made or had received calls from the other guys and together we walked to their apartment to talk for a while. On the way Tiffany exlained to me how restauranting together is a get-to-know people exercise in China.
The apartment wasn’t so nice, lots of pencil sketches on the wall from children. We all sat together in one of the rooms and we shared phone numbers. Sam made a few jokes regarding his billingualism and we then talked some more, maybe 45 minutes.
From there they all accompanied me home. I didn’t have a key yet so the son had to let me in. I began talking to him but he shrugged it off saying that if I had any problems to call him.
Not sure what the time was when I got home, would have been about 10:30pm. From there I just sat in my room for a few minutes thinking about what I had to do for tommorow and what time I shoud set my alarm for, then I went to bed.
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All at Once
19th September 2008
Been a lot of exciting changes in the past week, I’ve made some new friends and moved house. Let’s go.
Saturday
As I was saying last time, I was planning on calling around for accomodation on Saturday. I had to return to the internet cafe first to check the dates-of-posting for the 5 apartments. Unfortunately this reduced my list of five down to two as three of the postings were made at least half a year ago, some dating back to Christmas last year, with the remaining two being filed in the last month.
With all of this out the way I made my calls. The first place, a 10 minutes walk to Shanghai Stadium, was already taken, would have been sweet but no problem. I tried the second one, a two storey house, the top storey being my own, located two minutes from the Gong Kang road subway station and sharing with a quiet Chinese guy. This one was a success, the man at the other end of the phone was very helpful and spoke solid english. I quizzed him a little and then arranged to meet him the following day at the subway station two minutes from the house.
This was all reassuring and put me in a suitably upbeat mood. I can’t remember what I did for the rest of the afternoon, but I do remember something that I previously forgot to mention.
A few days earlier, I met an exchange student – Male, 28, Cambodia – who was also going to be living in the Old Guest House. I met him in Mrs Hua’s office and told him to pay me a visit sometime. So Thursday night, on returning home, the receptionist at the Old Guest House (that’s one of the two older laddies who live in their pyjamas, watching TV all day) told me that this guy couldn’t find me and would say hello later.
Just like the lady had said, he came knocking at about 8:00pm that night, so I invited him in and we traded stories for an hour or so. He is over here on a Shanghai Government scholarship - a higher class than the one the University threw at me – studying for his doctorate or Phd…or something like that. He does not know Chinese and English is his second language. It’s pretty difficult to understand what he has to say in either language.
On one of the nights we went out and had pizza together. He explained more about the resort like accomodation of his friend’s over at TongJi University and how their life is very comfortable. The pizzas we ordered had heaps of cheese, some meat and a beef like base, t’was actually quite nice although we should have ordered the size up. We also drank some sort of honey tea - it’s packaged and sold like soft drinks over here and is a cold drink.
Sunday
Sunday morning, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, I took the subway for about an hour to meet this guy and inspect the house. To my surprise the subway doesn’t always remain underground, in some areas it accends up onto it’s own level above the rest of the other highways supported by pillars - think Wipeout-styled roads that twist, dip and turn.
I reached the train station, got off and gave this guy a call. After some quibbling he said that the room had already been taken and then followed up with a flurry of ’sorry’s. Pissed off that he hadn’t told me earlier and also a the typicall-ness of Chinese people (they’re all a bit like this, I think) I caught the subway home. That’s two hrs gone, not so cool.
I wasn’t really sure where to turn next, I had already tried some ‘good’ agents and checked out all of the websites recommended to me by Marcus and my other classmates, I’d tried the local student paper as well. It’d been raining outside and rained on me during my trip to nowhere so I think I played quite a bit of Thrilby: The Art of Theft for the rest of the afternoon. This title is by Yahtzee Crosshaw who narrates the often excellent Zero Punctuation. The game is equally fantastic and fully fleshed out, could definetly hold it’s own against some of the classic Commodore adventure titles.
That night, with all my options exhausted, I opted to give my friend Xi over in Anhui a call and see if he could help me. We talked for a while, he shared some details about his upcoming purposal to his girlfriend and asked for some advice. As for the accomodation, he said that he’d get in touch with his friends in Shanghai and see if they could help me. He said that he’d call them right after we’d finished talking, very gracious of him.
I got a call back about 20 minutes later from Xi explaining that one of his friends was out of Shanghai at the moment but another one – Hanxue, young girl who had added me to QQ ( the Chinese online chat program) about a month ago – would be glad to help, he told me to call her at about 1pm tommorow. Oh yeah, because of the Mid-Autumn festival it was a long weekend with the Monday off. Yay!
Monday
Not much else happened up until then, the weather hadn’t been too good outside, so I primarily stuck to my homework and at 1pm on the dot I received a text message from Hanxue. She wanted to know if we could meet up at 3:00pm that day. I gave her a call to organise everything, she wanted to meet me at the university but I said it was too far and explained what she’d have to do to get there. After some txting and calling back we eventually rested on meeting at the People’s Square.
I arrived a little early at the People’s Square and was simply amazed at the place. It is so upper-class, so sophisticated, so not like back home. The buildings in the area were all so interesting, elaborate and unconventionally design. Big screen TVs plaque some of the buildings too and display advertisements of up-market products.
I walked around a garden area (totally spotless of litter), the lawns were so incredibly lush and trimmed down to the blade. In the centre and infront of the Shanghai museum was a fountain, the centre-piece of the area. This was really magical. Parents were playing with their children, coming out drenched in water and with smiles on their faces. People were taking photos of each other with the water shooting up around them while others were flying kites. It was like a small, public resort in the middle of the city. Lovely.
I looped back around and after a few more minutes of waiting, Hanxue and a male friend came up to me and asked if I was Daniel - Hanxue is a short, cute Chinese girl, her personality is very natural, she is very kind and has a lovely character. I said yes and together they looked around for a place to go and talk. On the way they introduced themselves and the relationship that they have with Xi Wei. The male friend is also another one of Xi’s friends - Ou Yan, he looks a little dopey but is an interesting character and is kind and considerate like the others - and a friend to the rest of the party. They all studied english together in Anhui.
We went across the road and to a KFC which was packed, so out the front they whipped out a map and I explained where I was and where I was looking to move to. I’m not sure why they wanted to go to KFC, especially at 3:30pm in in the afternoon, clues indicate that they really like junkfood.
I get the impression that they wanted me to live near them since we then caught the subway down to where they live to find accomodation down there. They live near a stop on the line one, I guess about 25 minutes from my Uni. On the way I spoke some english to them and they seemed to have a hard time understanding what I was saying. Kinda surprised since Xi said that their english was better than his (and he seemed to understand me very well).
At the subway station we waited out the front for a while since it was raining heavily and there was thunder and lightning. There were people selling umbrellas out the front as well, very clever.
After 10 minutes of standing, I suggested that we just move since the weather didn’t look like it was going to get any better. So we did, I got a little wet along the way but it was fine. We travelled through an underpass and onto another street which was lined with a few real estate companies among small fashion stores. We went into about three of them and gave up after we couldn’t find a house that offered anything less than a half year package.
From there we did a little more walking down to Hanxue’s apartment. The estate was full of buildings smothered in grim and disgust, the sort of environment that is starting to become very familiar to me. We walked up a flight stairs to her room and she whipped out her laptop to look online for me. My problem was that I couldn’t find a 4 month deal, rental was only a year, six months or three months.
We spent maybe half an hour looking online and eventually found a suitable place, Hanxue called and we could inspect right away. In this time, the friend out of Shanghai had arrived, his name is Sam, he can also speak English and insists on speaking it to me as much as possible. He is also the joker out of the group. The other friend Ou Yan and Sam lit up a smoke and puffed away until we left. The Chinese seem to do this a bit, smoke with no regards to the people around them, Hanxue and myself don’t smoke.
Oh yeah, also while we where there Hanxue set up a QQ conversation with Xi using the webcam on her laptop (video of me and them, to him, one way). Very cool.
We headed off together and then caught a bus, 5 minutes to the destination. By this time it was already quite dark. We walked into another estate of about 60 buildings, all covered in the usual. There were also vendors selling fruit and other things. At the main gate there are people selling copied DVDs, although the inlet has the casing of a Blu-ray movie. Not sure which one they are.
We had to make a few turns to get to the building in which the unit was situated and eventually found ourselves in the right direction. So we knocked and were greeted in, the other two guys remained at the door and eventually headed off – I later discovered that they’d booked their own apatment in the same estate.
Basically the deal works like this. I pay 1000 yuan a month in rent (divide all of these by about 5.5 or 6 to get an approximate AUD or even USD) each month and then another 100 yuan ($20) in utilities, there is also a small charge dependent on how much I use the aircon due to the way it is set up -seperate from the other units…or something like that. This price is roughly half of what I was paying to stay in the Old Guest House over in Yangpu, yet there are no roaches here, I spotted 3 in the Old Guest House.
I am on the second floor of the building and live with the landlord’s son. The landlord lives below me. She is very outgoing and a little in-your-face at times. She speaks very loud, very local sounding Chinese and is constantly talking, sharing stories or cracking jokes. Despite her out-going nature she is very courteous towards guests and always ensures that they are comfortable. Her son is perhaps the opposite, he is quiet and introvert, he doesn’t say much and I find what he does say tends to be a little tough to understand. He has a PS2 in his room and spends a lot of his time playing games or on the internet. In fact that is all he ever seems to do.
The apartment is very comfortable and clean. My room and the son’s room are at opposite ends, divided by the kitchen and bathroom. All of the appliances are new and in good condition, the kitchen is quite clean as well. The tiles in the bathroom don’t feel like tiles and in fact look just like the floor boards, gives the bathroom a very cosy feel. Clothes are hung outside on the window by the son’s room.
My room has plenty of cupboards to store stuff in and my bed is a size up from what I have in Australia and is very comfortable. My cupboards right angle the bed. There is a TV (LCD, 20.1”, says it’s 1080p), aircon, fan and desk light in my room.
The landlord was keen to point out that everything in the house is well kept and she used plenty of visual examples such as rubbing her shirt against the furniture to get the point across. She also mentioned that she can help me wash my clothes, cook meals and sign me up for the internet.
This deal seemed pretty sweet, both from my point of view and Huaxue’s, so I gave her 300 yuan in rent so that she’d hold the room for me for 5 days. We spent a lot of time talking before that, especially Huaxue and the landlord. I think that the landlord was pleased that I could understand Chinese. We had to go out and get some money as well, since I orignally didn’t have the 300 yuan on me.
From there, after much conversation had pursued, Hanxue and I left. At the main gate, I asked her what was happening next, she asked if I wanted to have tea with her and the others, by that time it was already about 8:00pm and the trip home was at leats an hour so I declined. We then caught a bus to the closest subway station and she accompanied me in, from there we split. I’d said to her many times that I didn’t know how to thank her for all her help. She said it was nothing and told me to tell her when I arrived home safely.
I caught the subway and on the way tried to phone home. On the subway this big Chinese guy got on and began making a speech to the people on the train. Something about fighting corruption for an harmonious society. Once he finished, he turned to me and repeated the speech in english. Crazy I know. Much as I’d figured, he was talking about fighting corruption in government and society. He also mentioned that if I put his name in google - that’s fat teacher in Chinese, in english try the key words; fat teacher, line one subway, china - that I could find out more information on how to join his crusade. Once I get wireless I am going to give it a go.
So I got home safely, both Hanxue and Xi had txt’d me to ask if I had got home okay. I had made some calls to the family in this time so I hadn’t noticed the messages. I replied to both of them. I had two cups and a pack of Pringles for tea, man I am killing my body over here. Phew what a day, finally I had made some progress and some friends too, very pleasing.
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Walk on Soles that are Made in China
September 13, 2008
School’s started so here’s the run down of the past week.
On Monday morning I woke up at 6:30am and got out of bed when my phone alarm chimmed in at 7am. Have been doing this everyday since. It gives me enough time to shower, eat breakfast and get ready for the day. I then get the bus. On Monday the bus was awfully crowded much the same as the stereotypes about over-populated Asian countries; bodies pressed against bodies and people pushing each other onto and out of the bus. The same, applies for the subway as well. In fact the subway is worse and kinda gets scary when you see people getting jammed in the doors. I’ve also seen officers that tell people where to stand - the centre of each doorway needs to be clear, passengers board from the left and right. These guys occasionally help with pushing and also stop people when they can’t fit.
The Line 1 is the “main” line in ShangHai and it is always crowded, although by midday things have cooled down a little. I have to interchange between two lines (totaling one bus, two trips on the subway and some walking) and this process of interchanging is equally frustrating. At each stop there are usually stairs and esculators. Almost everyone shoves their way onto the esculators so in this case I get the stairs as I get up faster. Sometimes though thre are only stairs in which case, you take things one step at a time and try to not fall over from the people pushing from behind.
As you can imagine, all of this is very stressful and I actually find that the shoving and tight spaces make it difficult to breathe, it strains my heart a little sometimes too which is not too good.
At least the transport is convenient in that it arrives every 5-8 minutes without fail. They also hand out free newspapers at the station. The PA system on the subway is bilinguial in both Chinese and English - not sure why though since I still don’t see many foreigners. The seats are all made of hard plastic and in general the conditions of the vehicles are clean and sanitary. Probably better than Australia. Furthermore there are TVs on the public transport which play advertisements.
So I got to school early and was put in my class. Our classroom had a table and 5 chairs and was no bigger than one of the University study rooms which you can loan out (Australia). I guess this meant that my class really would be small, just like Mrs Hua said. I was the only one around and spent a few minutes looking at a map to see how far I’d just travelled. I should also note that the class I am in is the highest that the school offers.
Eventually another guy arrived; Marcus, a Phillipino-American who had lived in LA for most of his life and spent 10 years in a Chinese school. In America he works as a retail consultant telling rich people which areas to invest their money. He is 37.
The other two students arrived and I forget their names. Both female. One of them looks about 32 (wouldn’t say age) and is from Korea, she speaks little english and I find her accent hard to grasp. She is very friendly but I find her intimidating. She is studying for the HSK test so she is quite good at Chinese.
The other is from Egypt, she wears Islamic clothes (the head-scarf and all) and is also quite apt at Chinese. She has been studying at the school for 3 years and is 23 herself. Her father works in China as well doing tourism.
The teacher arrived and began with some formalities, she said that she wasn’t really prepared and it seemed that way. I can’t remember much about her actually since she only taught us for one lesson and then got replaced with a much better teacher.
Lemme give the rundown of our classes. I have 4hrs of Chinese classes a day (9am-1pm), two of those hours are for general classes and the other two are for either listening or speaking, they alternate every second day. I have one teacher for the general classes and one for the other two. Meaning that I get two teachers for two hours each, everyday.
The teacher who teaches our main class, is a spunky, super enthusiastic young lady - I think about 28yrs old. She is just plain awesome and always makes our classes very enjoyable, never discouraging us but she still manages to straddle a lot of hard work out of us. I mean seriously, while classes are enjoyable, she is always pushing us a little harder so it’s very intensive.
The other teacher is less exciting but still interesting nonetheless. She is also young (maybe 25), a little more quiet and typical. Her teaching style is similar to the other teacher’s.
In the general class we usually begin by running through vocab. The teacher gives a short introduction to each word and then we are asked to make a sentence on the spot. We discuss and implement X amount of vocab and then conclude with reading a few paragraphs from the main text which utilize the previously learnt words. In and out of this routine we do exercises, either from the text book or just ones that the teacher makes up. For example, answering questions from the text, paraphrasing the text etc with the book closed and using the new words and grammar. So on the whole we get a thorough understaing of what it is we’re doing. Even though we do all of this routine stuff, we also spend a good deal of time going off track. For example if I don’t understand the meaning of a word, the teacher will then dicuss the meaning and usages of the word or they’ll get my classmates to explain it to me. So we are always jumping onto new words and grammar seperate from the classwork. With this we also spend a good deal of time discussing the topics of the text. We probably do more taling in this class than the spoken language class.
The oral language classes are basically the same but will have less new words and grammar, and a script for us to play out. Listening is just as you’d expect, we listen to a text and answer questions, reiterate the story, link back to new vocab and grammar etc. We also have smaller listening exercises.
The textbooks appear to be on par, perhaps a step up from what I’d been doing in Australia. The classes though feel like a slogging. Mainly because we ONLY speak Chinese. Even when we are defining meanings we only talk Chinese. I find it strange then when my teacher speaks english as I’m not use to it. So all of what I just said, is all conducted in Chinese and it’s hard and fast. The other students are all accustomed to this and do fine. I’m not quite as apt though and putting up with this for 4hrs really empties my energy tank.
The homework is also significant, maybe another 2+ hrs a night. At least for me, since I need to refine some of the stuff that was a little hazy when used in oral conversation.
Basically that’s my classes.
So anyways, Marcus, having spent the last week trying to find a room (and also working in real estate) wanted to help me out with finding a place closer to the school. So afterwards we went out to lunch to talk about it. Also another guy, who reponded to a room mate request from Marcus tagged along, although Marcus had already found a sweet deal and had to refuse the guy.
The other guy is Andrew, he looks young but is probably older than me. He’s from Indonesia and does 3D modelling, wants to get into games actually. Seems like a lost soul in China – a lot of people seem to be like that.
Together we walked down to a small cafteria like restaurant. On the way Marcus was descriving how time in Shanghai had been a string of coincidences which eventually got him a cheap, posh apartment with his landlord and how he’d met this lady which he’d been going out with. Marcus had basically already dug out the idea that he was getting on (in life) and wanted a women badly. Poor guy.
At the restaurant I had a huge bowl of hot noodles, beef and black bean. It was fantastic and only about $AUD2. We all talked for a good 30 minutes at least. Marcus said that he’d get me the contact details for some good agents. Andrew introduced himself and what he’d been doing the past year in Shanghai. He seemed into games and noticed that I recognised the software he uses for modelling so we eventually got talking about games criticsm. No surprise, he had know idea what I was talking about (despite enthusiest status).
From there the three of us headed back up to the station and departed ways. On the way back I got lost, again and this time caught the bus at the wrong side of the road. After getting off the bus and crossing the road (to get the corresponding bus back to where I’d started) I couldn’t find it and had to ask a bunch of barmy old people who just ended up yelling some indecipheable Chinese at me. Eventually a young dude helped me out and we caught a bus back to the subway. This guy lives in Yangpu but works in a 60 storey hotel in the PuDong, can speak a little english.
We got off at some hospital and from there I got on the subway again, back to where I’d started. I finally caught the right bus home (after 3 failed attempts). Once I got home, I was too late to see Mrs Hua to ask her about some canteen stuff. Went to the internet cafe and then squeezed in a little homework. I think that I also received some calls as well from my family and Xi.
I had more free time on Tuesday afternoon since I didn’t go out to lunch or get lost again. So I got my student card figured out and could now use the canteen with little fuss. I also called ShanShan in Beijing who was super-estatic to hear from me, that was nice. After that I did some washing and then a few hours of homework to stay afloat.
On Wednesday, our trio went out again for lunch. Marcus had also dropped down to a lower class leaving the 3 of us. This time we ate at a chicken place which I wasn’t very fond of. The chicken was cold (must have been intentional as it wasn’t even warm) but my noodles were fine. From there, I had to sort out some phone troubles then homework and internet.
On Thursday Marcus had got me the details of agents so I called both of them. None of them could find me a suitable place, near the University (within 20 minutes). Not so good.
On Friday, I was the only one in class for the first 1hr and then was joined by the Korean student. So only two of us that day. Oh yeah an old lady and her hsband offered me their seats on the bus, I told them that they ought to sit instead. Like the day before I headed home early, got stuck into some work for the weekend. Went to the internet cafe to download a bunch of trailers, blog posts and news as well as check online for some more places to rent. I have found 5 good apartments and will hopefully make some calls today.
Otherwise I have just been doing homework and writing this on Saturday morning. I have also been playing a few short bursts of indie games over the past few days. Not too much though.
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