Montag, 24. Dezember 2018

Chinese Medical Methods: Proceed With Caution

This is a weird entry, especially considering the fact that I'm posting this on Christmas. I was originally going to write about something completely different, but this was remarkable enough in my eyes to make me change my plans.

*~*~*

First of all, and I don't know whether this makes it better or worse, really, but I don't want to dissuade anyone from trying Traditional Chinese Medicine at all - I have been pleasantly surprised by Chinese medicine more than once, and I don't intend on giving up on it at all.

*~*~*

But from the beginning:


This weekend, I finally had the chance to see Skye and her family again. Even though we live in the same city, between my lecture-filled weekends, Skye’s short stay in Thailand, and 30 kilometres between my campus and her flat, I hadn’t gone to see them since the beginning of October.

(Even though I’m used to it, the proportions of everything here can still be quite overwhelming. I found out at dinner the other night that the residential estate where Skye lives with her husband is home to approximately ten thousand people!)

In her usual manner, Skye was absolutely lovely and invited me to a sauna close to her home. It was in a hairdresser’s backroom, but the decorations were decidedly fancy (or maybe it just seemed like that to me because I'm rather used to the wooden optic...)

In the sauna
That isn't the shocking part of the story, though. 

*~*~*

"You look as though you've been abused!" Flo told me, quite shocked, when I showed him my neck during our weekly videochatting session. 

He isn't wrong. My neck looks bruised and a little bit terrifying.

You see, after the sauna, Skye took me upstairs for a medical massage. One thing upfront, I love getting massages in China, and I used to get them quite often back in 2012. But I have never experienced anything like this.

Anyway, when Skye told me it was a medical massage, I should probably already have felt alarmed. Back when I was still staying with her family this summer, Skye went for a medical massage due to problems with her shoulder and came back with terribly bruised arms. 

But I had totally forgotten about that.

It was the most brutal facial and neck massage I have ever received in my life, but at the time, while it did hurt, it wasn't actually that painful, and I would never have guessed that it would leave any kind of mark. I had my eyes closed, so I don't know for sure what the masseuse did, but here's part of the result (as Skye took pictures during the massage process, for some unfathomable reason):

The dangers of massages
And now picture this, but covering basically my entire neck...

However, to end this story on a positive note: My neck has not felt this free of tension in a long time, so it was worth it in the end...

*~*~*

I wish everyone Happy Holidays and a wonderful last week of 2018!

Sonntag, 16. Dezember 2018

Time For Friends


This is going to be just a short update, but  still something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.

Ever since my last exam mid-November, I’ve had more time to have a social life, so I’ve spent the past month spending time with old and new friends.

A couple of impressions here...

At Heidi's place
Pearl's niece Heidi, who is living in Shanghai, visited me on campus around a month ago, and then invited me to have a sleepover at her place the week afterwards, which was really lovely. She cooked for me (it was, unsurprisingly, delicious - everyone in that family can cook!) and took me out for breakfast in the morning.

Dinner with May
One of the absolutely most lovely things that happened in the past few weeks was seeing my friend May from high school again. She is the only one of my former Chinese classmates who I kept in touch with throughout the past six years, and she is studying and working in Beijing now. She came to Shanghai two weeks ago, though, and we had dinner together. It was so amazing to see her again; I can't wait to see her again in Zhengzhou in February!
Unfortunately, she is very camera-shy, so I only have a picture of the meal we shared...

Dinner with Rose and her friends
Last Sunday, I finally met up with Rose again. Rose was my Chinese teacher for five weeks when I lived in Shanghai for a short while in the summer of 2012, and she was in charge of preparing me for an all-Chinese day-to-day life. 
Since she lives and works in Shanghai, it's incredible that it took us so long to find a day that suited us both, but I had dinner with her and some of her friends last weekend, and we're planning to meet up again in the week after Christmas, when Flo is here as well.

Christkindlmarkt in Shanghai
On Friday, I went to the only Christkindlmarkt in Shanghai with some of my German friends. It looks very traditional on this picture, but it's tiny and while they sell some traditional things (such as Christmas tree ornaments, roasted almonds, or Advent wreaths), most of the things don't feel authentic. And don't get me started on the music - only one in three songs had anything to do with Christmas or winter, the rest was a weird mix.
Nevertheless, we had a great time, maybe even more so because of how surreal the entire thing was!

Montag, 10. Dezember 2018

What the FC Bayern, Chinese love songs, and the German-speaking Christian community in Shanghai have in common


So as not to get anyone’s curiosity up too much: The answer to the title question is “Not much”, but see for yourself.

*~*~*

It’s Sunday and here I am (let’s ignore the fact that I was going to post this last Sunday instead of this one). And ever since I last wrote, I’ve been extremely busy having fun. In the past two and a half weeks, I’ve attended three completely different concerts (or, at the very least, concert-like events), and they were all tremendous fun (although for different reasons)!

*~*~*

The School Recital

I probably should have predicted how crazy the Tongji university recital would turn out to be, but I didn’t.

There’s an auditorium on campus that looks like an oversized movie theatre, and the recital took place there. It was an impossibly weird event, but I enjoyed every second (and there were many seconds, more on that in a moment).

The entire thing started when every audience member was handed a bag full of various gifts upon entering the room instead of a programme (there were even different gift bags for guys and girls).

The second thing that I found interesting (and unusual) was that, much like in a cinema, advertisements and student-produced short films were shown on the screen behind the stage until the event actually started. I’d expect that at a cinema, but I wasn’t expecting it for a university recital.

The last thing that’s really notable is that whoever planned the event has obviously never sat through a concert, no matter how entertaining – it ended after three hours, and there was no break! Then again, audience members weren’t really expected to stay in their seats or be quiet; people were talking to their friends both during and between performances, some had brought food and drinks, and others kept leaving the hall and returning again.



All of that’s not to say that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy myself. Most performances were a blend of Chinese traditional dancing and hip-hop, but there was also a university rock band (with a lead singer who could actually sing), several sketches, a group that performed a traditional Chinese dancing routine, two choirs, and a slew of solo singers with varying levels of skill, (almost) all of whom sang saccharine Chinese love songs. The audience loved it; everyone turned on the “lamp function” (or whatever it’s called) on their smartphones and emotionally waved them in the air.

In between all of that there was a sort of raffle where a spotlight would randomly land on a member of the audience, who then had to go onstage, banter with the hosts, and finally got a small prize. This happened four times and was fun in the beginning, but when the concert has already been going on for close to three hours, it sort of loses its charm.

All in all, it definitely was an Experience.

*~*~*

The Church Service

Yes, I went to church. I mean, it wasn’t an actual church, it was a meeting room in the German consulate, but the ecumenical service took place there.

To be honest, I went there first and foremost because I was told that there was going to be a lot of singing and Christmas music, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Anyone who knows how much I love both Christmas and singing be able to imagine just how much I enjoyed an entire hour of being in a room full of people, enthusiastically singing Christmas carol after Christmas carol at the top our voices.



There was also a small Christmas bazaar afterwards, where some members of the community sold punch, mulled wine, waffles, and a selection of home-made Christmas biscuits, which was accompanied by more Christmas songs, performed by a couple of brass players. It was probably the height of this Christmas season for me.



*~*~*

The International Institute Recital

On the first glance, this is similar to the school recital. It took place just this Thursday, and was an absolute blast for the first two hours. Honestly, I don’t know why whoever organises these things doesn’t consider the fact that three hours without a break might be difficult to sit through.

Once again, there were gift bags at the entrance, and the performances consisted mainly a lot of hip-hop groups (Chinese style), several male solo singers, all of whom, without exception, went for unbearable Chinese love songs (on their own, there wasn’t anything wrong with any of the songs, but when there are five love songs that sound essentially the same back to back, it’s a bit much.

Nevertheless, the event was fundamentally different from the first university recital, because it was specifically for (and by) the students of the Sino-German institute on campus, so three of the six hosts were German students (well, two of them, one was Swiss).



Some international students were even part of some of the performances. Easily the most fun part of the evening was a tongue-twister contests, in which several Chinese students and professors competed against each other, trying their hand at a multitude of German tongue-twisters.

Even though it was exhausting, due to its length, it ended on a high note: Towards the end, a local American-style bakery gave a piece of cake to every member of the audience, which was a sweet little surprise and very much appreciated by everyone.

*~*~*

And, just because this little snippet is so strange, an extra one here - this one goes back to the beginning of November:

The FC Bayern

In the beginning of November, I attended a classical concert on my university’s main campus. The performers were both German and Chinese teenagers who had won youth music competitions. It was a lovely evening with a surprisingly diverse programme, and the performances were mind-blowingly good.

However, it started off unexpectedly different.

Apparently – and I hadn’t known this beforehand – the FC Bayern, for some reason, grants a full scholarship for one year at Tongji University to three promising students, and the concert was held in honour of this year’s scholarship recipients.

Which meant that a representative of the FC Bayern was present at the concert, and that a group of Chinese students enthusiastically chanted “Stern des Südens” (the club’s official hymn) to get the concert started, even before the representative and headmaster and everyone else held their speeches.
Since I was not aware of the scholarship thing at the time, I rather felt like I was in the wrong film at the beginning.



*~*~*

As if they had guessed that I was just about to post this blog entry, a friend of mine just invited me to a concert tomorrow, where a couple of German students studying music here are performing their original compositions. The “concert season” continues…

Donnerstag, 22. November 2018

Quick update, and why I’ve been absent


Nothing is as indicative of how long I haven’t updated this blog as the fact that I wrote my last blog entry on a sunny day with an outside temperature of around 25°C, whereas right now, it’s foggy and rainy outside, and it’s so cold that the canteen is now being heated. Which is a small miracle – the classrooms are not, and aren’t going to be, either. But at least there is now more that keeps us all all warm during dinner than just the soup.

Anyway, I haven’t updated in over a month, and in fact, this isn’t going to be a long entry, either, but rather a short update on how I’ve been and why nobody has heard from me since mid-October. So here goes:

In case anyone was wondering (or worried): I’m fine. I’ve been busy, but I’m happy and healthy.

My absence isn’t due to bad health, or any serious problem. Rather the opposite is the case; I haven’t been writing simply because absolutely nothing exciting has happened in my life since my trip to Xi’an in the beginning of October.

Ever since I’ve returned to Shanghai, I’ve had at least one weekend lecture per week (and long lectures on both Saturday and Sunday on two separate occasions). I have also written all of my exams, spent all of my evenings in the lab for an entire week and given 7 presentations.

In between all of that, there might have been enough time to write a blog entry, but given how busy university kept me, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to write about.

The good news is that that’s about to change. Whereas many of my classmates are now getting ready for all of their exams in December and early January, I wrote my last exam of the semester on Friday, and as of this week, there won’t be any more weekend lectures for me either. Of course there are still some presentations (and the like) to go, but with my reduced workload, I might actually have the opportunity to experience things that are worth writing about.

Here’s to more frequent updates in the future – I hope to see all of you this Sunday. Lots of love to you all; and may you all be as happy and healthy as I am.

Sonntag, 14. Oktober 2018

The 20-Hour Standing Ticket (a.k.a. Adventures in Traveling Pt. 2)


Have you ever been in a tram or metro during rush hour? You know, the kind of tram/metro that’s so full that you don’t even have to hold yourself upright because there is literally no room to fall over? Imagine that, just for 20 hours.

~~~

I spent most of the first week of October in Xi’an. I went there on Tuesday in order to meet my former host Mum, Pearl, and to attend a wedding. I’ll be doing a separate post about Chinese weddings soon, but this isn’t about that.

It’s about my journey back from Xi’an to Shanghai. I know, I already did an entry on travelling, but I probably ought to have waited, just to fit in this story.

The first week of October was what is called “Golden Week” here. The Chinese celebrated their National Holiday from Monday to Wednesday, and many people (including all students) got Thursday and Friday off, too, which resulted in many people travelling to their families in other provinces at the beginning of the week. And, of course, equally as many people travelled back to wherever they are working or studying at the end of the week.

~~~

When I bought the tickets online, weeks ago, getting a ticket to Xi’an was no problem. But getting a return ticket – that was the hard part.

At the beginning, I didn’t think I’d be able to get a ticket back to Shanghai that would allow me to be in time for my Monday morning class at all. When I found one and immediately tried to buy it (emphasis is on “try”), I was informed by someone from customer service by email a couple of minutes later that the ticket was no longer available and that I would get my money back.
However, one day later, the same women from customer service wrote me another email and told me that for a slightly higher price, I could get a standing ticket on a different train on Saturday from Xi’an to Shanghai. 

Yes, a standing ticket.

Of course, like any sane person being offered a standing ticket for a train trip that they know will take at least 6 hours, I hesitated and didn’t reply for almost a day. Ultimately, though, I agreed in my desperation, and – partially out of carelessness and partially because I was afraid of what I would find – didn’t bother to check the train details.

~~~

It was a 20 hour train trip. Actually, it was a 20 and a half hour train trip, but I don’t want to be nit-picky.

Just a word upfront: It actually wasn’t that terrible. But it was still an experience.

I was actually exaggerating in the beginning with the rush hour tram example, because it wasn’t like that for the entire 20 hours. Just around 15. And I wasn’t actually standing the entire time (or, for honesty’s sake, any of the time). I had brought a plastic bag, which I stuffed with a pullover, and I sat on that for the entire train ride.

The train left Xi’an around 5 in the afternoon, and in the beginning, it was alright, because there weren’t too many people. When I say that, I mean that there weren’t any empty seats and around 30 to 40 people were sitting on the floor in each train compartment, but everyone was still able to move.
After that, though, every train station the train stopped in was a bit like a Hydra. Some people would get off the train, and for everyone getting off, at least two people would board the train. Five hours into the trip I thought that the train couldn’t possible get any more cramped. There were people sitting on every possible spot on the floor, and a fair few standing.

I was wrong.

We reached a big city around midnight, and after that (and with 14 more hours to go!) it was just crazy.

I was lucky to have a sitting spot on the floor in a corner where I wasn’t in the way of anyone, but most people who didn’t have seats were now standing, because there were so many people that there was simply no space to sit on the floor. The people in seats didn’t have it much better, either: People were standing between the rows, sometimes nearly sitting in their laps, pressed against the armrests and so on. You couldn’t go to the toilet anymore because there were – no kidding – around 10 people with their entire luggage in there.

And when I say I was lucky to have a spot on the floor – well, yes, I was, but even a spot on the floor is only so comfortable when you are stuck in one position because there simply isn’t enough space to move any part of your body. Keep in mind that at that point there were 14 more hours to go until Shanghai.

To make things worse, the train companies make additional money by sending people with carts through the train, selling you tissues, hot food, snacks, drinks, fruit, and, weirdly, toothbrushes. For that purpose, they send three carts through the train, each with different products, and instead of having all of these carts one right after the other, two carts were going one way, and one cart was going the other way.

Go back to that mental picture of a completely full tram during rush hour. And then imagine three carts being pushed in opposing directions through the throngs of people huddled together every thirty minutes.

Obviously, once every two hours, the three carts would reach the wagon I was in simultaneously, and if you haven’t experienced it, it’s impossible to imagine the insistence of the people pushing the carts of their divine right now pass, without a care that people simply had nowhere to go.

It was as chaotic, intense, dirty, and overwhelming an experience as I’ve ever had, and I don’t think anyone reading this will be surprised when I say that I hardly got any sleep.

Looking back on it, though, it was, while exhausting, a really great 20 hours (even though I’m in no hurry to get on another 20 hour train with a standing ticket). People left and right were sharing their food with each other (and me), people on seats shifted so that the eight year old child next to me could have a place to sit while he was eating, or let him put his head in their lap when he went to sleep. People were involving me in conversations, imploring me to teach them new English words, and passing the time by teaching me Chinese card games.

There was so much friendliness and helpfulness going around that it made something that could have been a very, very long journey (and I’m not going to lie, at some points it was) into an experience that I actually think back to with some fondness.

Freitag, 28. September 2018

Birthdays


It’s quite incredible how many people there are in my acquaintance whose birthdays all take place within the span of one week.

My partner’s father and sister celebrated their birthdays on the 18th and 19th respectively, no fewer than 4 previous classmates of mine were born between September 20th and 24th (one on each day, except for the 22nd, funnily enough), and a German student here had a birthday party on Sunday, the eve of her birthday.

And, for all those who didn’t know, I turned 22 on the 22nd.

Let me use this opportunity to thank everyone for the kind, lovely messages and texts I received. They meant and mean a lot to me and are part of the reason why this entry is titled “Birthdays” and not “Birthday Blues” (as I had vaguely envisioned prior to my birthday).

I actually had quite a lot of people asking me how I was spending/had spent my birthday, so I’ll try to answer this to the best of my ability.

~~~

There are two things about birthdays in China that are probably not general knowledge. Neither of them is common everywhere in the country, but they are common enough to definitely warrant mentioning.

The first is a rather weird, sweet little detail. When I first came here, I was informed that it is customary to thank your Mum on your birthday for having endured the pain of giving birth to you.

I have done this every year since. Now that I’m writing this, though, it occurs to me that I totally forgot about it this year. So, Mum, a bit belatedly, thanks for going through tremendous pain in order to give birth to me 22 years ago!

The second is much more common, but also took a lot more getting used to for me.

In some regions of China, age is calculated differently than it is in the western world. You start as a one-year-old and then add another year at every Chinese New Year’s Festival.

In 2019, the New Year’s Festival is on February the 5th, so if a child is born at the end of January, it already turns two a couple of days later by this calculation.

I have also heard that in some parts of Tibet, apparently you start at nine months, so your first birthday is three months after you’re born.

This practice is still predominant in some provinces, but especially the younger generation turns to the western system of age calculation more and more, and I’ve had people tell me that they think in a few decades, nobody will use the traditional system anymore.

Now, as anyone who knows me well will surely confirm, I can be a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to certain things, so this development actually makes me quite sad. This is one of those distinct little cultural quirks that make immersing yourself in a different culture worthwhile and fascinating, and it’s a pity that some of that distinctness seems to die out.

~~~

Saturday started on a very good note. I woke up to two emails in my inbox, the first one (sent mere minutes after midnight in China) from Flo, the other one from my Mum. When you have to get up at 7 o’clock in the morning (and hate getting up before 9 as much as I do), it kind of doesn’t get better than that.

Still, the better part of my birthday was actually not at all exciting. I had a class from 8AM to 3PM (there was a lunch break, though), and after that, I spent all in all three hours getting from university to Skye’s place. The commute was significantly sweetened by the fact that I spent most of it videochatting with Flo, but still, I felt somewhat exhausted by the time I arrived at Skye’s family’s home.

In no news to anyone, they were absolutely wonderful to me. They had cooked several of my favourite dishes, including, of course, the obligatory birthday noodle soup, had bought a cake, and even opened a bottle of red wine (even though, judging by the time it took them to locate the corkscrew, that’s a rather rare occurrence for them), and we had a lovely dinner.

~~~

Noodle soup with long noodles is as much a necessity at a Chinese birthday party as a cake is in the west. The noodles are extremely long, which symbolises a long life. They are also extremely slippery (since it’s a noodle soup), so being able to eat them without any discernible problems definitely gives me some sense of achievement.

Everyone who ever had the misfortune to be present for one of my hour-long “I miss Chinese food so much” rants has probably also heard me say that the only thing I actively dislike when it comes to Chinese food are the desserts, and that birthday cakes here all taste artificial and terrible. That’s mostly due to the fact that there is no “birthday cake tradition” in China. Having a birthday cake for your birthday is only slowly becoming more popular now because of the influence of western films and television series.

A picture of Xinxin, the birthday, me, and the birthday cake
I won’t get into it too much here, since I’m sure I’ll do another post dedicated solely to Chinese cuisine, but somehow, Skye managed to find a cake that, while artificial, was actually edible, and I enjoyed eating it.

Speaking of the cake: Of course we ate it directly before the rest of the dinner. I still don’t understand why people in China do it in that way, they don’t even have any sort of cake (birthday or otherwise) tradition, but that’s their preferred order, and I’m already used to it…

~~~

After dinner, Skye told me that she had a present for me:

She took me to get a facial mask. At 9PM in the evening, just like that.

In case anyone is surprised, so was I. But although I’m not sure that I want to repeat the experience, I actually enjoyed it a lot.

After the facial mask... I look like a frog.
Now, since this was my first facial mask I have no idea how it compares to facial masks in Austria or anywhere else in Europe. Here’s what stood out for me though:
  • The place she took me to is in a shopping mall. And it doesn’t have walls or a door. Everyone who passes that place in the shopping mall can stop and watch as you’re getting your treatment. I had my eyes closed (and my glasses off), so I have no idea if anyone did that. It didn’t bother me, either. The lack of privacy just seems notable.
  • The woman giving me the facial was lovely. She also was impossibly excited about the entire thing. She kept talking about the fact that I’m just the second foreigner she has “worked on” in her entire life, and how exciting that was, and what a good practice for her since the faces are different, and how lovely I am. Literally, in the almost forty minutes I was lying there she was talking almost non-stop, and about nothing else, to Skye, to me, and to whoever else wanted to hear about it.
  • She still was very nice and gave me a free facial massage because apparently I’m a “lovely and beautiful foreigner”.
~~~

The day ended on a high note when I skyped with my family in Austria around midnight.

My birthday didn’t end there, though. This weekend, I am going to have a belated birthday dinner with a couple of students I have met here, which I’m already quite excited about.


A wonderful rest of the week to everyone! And, whenever it is, happy birthday!

Donnerstag, 20. September 2018

Adventures in Traveling: Bus trips, train stations, and taxi drivers

Last Friday saw me leaving Shanghai for the first time since I arrived here at the end of August to attend a wedding in Ji’nan (more on that in a few weeks).

It’s not very far from Shanghai to Ji’nan, merely three and a half hours by bullet train, which is quite okay for a distance of around 730 km.

But let me start from the beginning. And, because I am who I am, and have been heavily influenced by Victor Hugo’s writing style, let me start by giving you an incomplete overview about Shanghai’s transportation system in general. In fact, let me take this opportunity to warn you: This is a very long post. There is an (extremely brief) summary at the end though, so feel free to skip everything and read the summary. 

~~~

The metro system in Shanghai is great. And I encourage anyone who doesn’t read Chinese incredibly well (people like me, for instance) to stick to it. At the moment, there are 17 metro lines, which can take you to almost any area in Shanghai, and all the signs in and around the metro station and the metro itself are both in Chinese and English. They even announce the stops in English!

With a combination of taxis and the metro, you can go pretty much anywhere in Shanghai without having to be able to read even a single character, and if your destination isn’t super remote, it won’t cost a lot of money either.

~~~

Of course, there are busses in Shanghai too. Many of them, in fact. There are more than 1000 (read: one thousand) regular bus lines and some special lines in addition to that. But for non-Chinese-readers, they are very difficult to navigate, because absolutely everything (from the stop signs to the bus schedule) is written in Chinese characters only, and I wouldn’t hold out hope that the bus driver speaks English.

Riding a bus in China is actually quite the experience. Once you’re on the bus, and miraculously on the right one, it’s a combination of good timing, thorough preparation, and pure luck to get off at the correct stop. The busses are usually crowded, you can’t rely on the driver to always stop at red lights or stay on the bus lane when they could drive on the motorcycle lane equally as well, and I’ve been on busses whose doors wouldn’t close on more than one occasion.

What’s most difficult, though, is finding out if you can even take the bus. There is no English trip planning tool available online for Shanghai, or at least not one that’s complete and doesn’t require you to know the actual Chinese names of the bus stops nearest to your location. More than anything else, this is what makes incorporating a short trip by bus, no matter how convenient it might be, almost impossible for foreigners – you can’t take the bus if you don’t know that there’s supposed to be one, or if you have no idea where the bus is going and stopping.

So, when at the beginning of the semester, Ms Zhang from the international office of my university sent an email to all of us and attached a bus schedule in English for all the busses that stop at our campus, I was delighted.

And I was even more delighted to find that there is a bus that stops both at the campus and at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station (which is the railway station you’ll likely need to go to in Shanghai if you’re going somewhere by high speed train).

Because, you see, my campus is on the outskirts of Shanghai, and so is Hongqiao Railway Station. They are actually not that far apart (well, for Shanghai’s standard, anyway), but going there by metro requires taking Line 11 for around an hour into the city centre to change to Line 2 and go to the railway station, whereas a bus can follow a more direct route.



Naturally, due to some very poor phrasing, some of the information on the schedule is rather difficult to interpret at times (such as where on campus each of the bus stops is to be found), but I wasn’t too worried. I figured that I could easily enough ask about the stops’ location when I actually needed them.

~~~

I probably should have predicted what was going to happen. But it seems even though this is my fourth time in this country, I’m still quite naïve in some regards.

When I planned my trip to the train station on Friday I was uncharacteristically careful to plan for enough time. My train was set to leave at 6pm, so I decided I would take the bus at 2pm. 

It was the perfect plan: I had an appointment with Ms Zhang at the International Office at 1:15pm anyway, and when I was there I would simply seize the opportunity to ask her where I had to go to get on the bus.

I was told by Ms Zhang (who, remember, had compiled all the information on the busses and sent it to us) that she actually had no idea where the bus stop was, but not to worry, she would make a phone call. On the phone, she was told that nobody was quite sure if the bus in question still existed, or otherwise, if it still stopped next to our campus.

Ms Zhang assured me that it would all be cleared up if I just went to the entrance gate, where I was sure to find the bus stop. I wasn’t quite so sure, but I wasn’t really worried either. In case I didn’t find the bus stop, I told myself, I would simply take a taxi to the next metro station. Not ideal, as I knew it was going to take significantly longer by metro, but okay. It was 1:45pm, and I still had plenty of time.

In no surprise to anyone, I found two bus stops, neither of which has any bus going to the railway station stopping at them. So I turned towards the street to get a taxi.

~~~

Some of the most baffling things I learnt when I was in China for the first time were somehow related to taxis.

For one thing, there aren’t any seat belts on the back seats. For another, the driving varies between chaotic and downright terrifying. It’s also no good expecting the taxi driver to understand any English. Print out the address of wherever you want to go in Chinese. Ideally in a big font size – I’ve had taxi drivers turn me down because their eyesight wasn’t good enough to read the address (which doesn’t really inspire my particular trust in a driver).

But, for the sake of my story, none of those things are relevant.

Here’s what is relevant: You can’t simply call a taxi in China. I had never questioned the Austrian way of doing this, but here, you don’t make a phone call ordering a taxi to your location. Instead, you go find a big, ideally busy, street and hope that a free taxi passes you by.

Don’t rejoice once you’ve seen one, though. There is absolutely no guarantee that the driver will react to your beckoning it over, and even if he does, in my experience you need to stop at least two taxis before someone will agree to take you. This, especially, still feels weird to me. We’re apparently spoilt like queens and kings in Europe, because we simply get into the taxi and tell the driver where to go.

Stop. Not so fast. In China, you tell the driver through an open window where you want to go, and if they’re agreeable and the distance you want to go is neither too short nor too far, and your chosen destination isn’t, heaven forbid, in an area that’s in any way inconvenient to the driver, they might agree to take you in.

In all honesty, you have to realise that I am exaggerating, but not by very much, promise.

~~~

Anyway, that’s exactly what happened to me on Friday. I couldn’t say anymore how many taxis I tried to wave over; most of them ignored them, but quite a few stopped. Not a single one wanted to take me to the metro station. It’s quite a short trip (5 minutes by car, because there is a sort of highway between the university and the metro station), but too far to walk if time is at least somewhat of the essence. At that point, it was 3pm.

So I turned to one of the men guarding the entrance, asking him to help me. He was incredibly friendly, but even when he tried to recruit people to take me to the metro station, he failed.

There’s a shuttle going to the closest metro station from university. It’s even free of charge, and I wanted to take it, but they leave only once an hour, on the other end of the campus (which we’ve already established is very big) and I didn’t know when. I approached the guard about it, and immediately realised that I wouldn’t make it there in time to catch the next one.

I was ready to stop a random car and offering the driver an exorbitant sum for taking me to the bus station. The fact that, instead, ended up catching the free shuttle bus after all is only thanks to the guard, who stopped the bus when it drove through the entrance gate and convinced the driver to let me in. I haven’t seen him since, otherwise I’d have already given him a packet of cigarettes (the gift of choice for men in China). Because of him, I finally, at 3:45pm, reached the metro station.

It was pretty smooth sailing from there, and I arrived at the railway station at half past 5. It’s a miracle that I ended up catching my train.

~~~

Why, you ask? Couldn’t I simply buy a ticket and go to the platform?

The short answer is: No.

There’s a long answer, too.

First of all, Hongqiao Railway Station is huge. It took me 10 minutes of jogging to get from the metro station to the actual train station. I also still had to pick up my ticket. I had bought it online weeks ago, but you can’t travel without an officially issued ticket – simply printing the payment confirmation isn’t enough. And there was a long queue, as it was a busy day.

More importantly, (and time-consumingly) though, Chinese railway stations are a bit like mini-airports. You have to queue for the security check (and, as previously mentioned, there were a lot of people), your bags are checked, and you need to present your passport (or, if you’re a Chinese citizen, your ID card) in order for them to even let you into the station, never mind the train.

Once you’re through security and got ticket, you can’t simply waltz straight onto the platform, either.
You have to find your gate, and there is a window of five to ten minutes where the gate is open and you can get onto the platform. Once the gate is closed (five minutes before the train leaves, in my experience), you won’t get onto the platform anymore, even if the train hasn’t left and you’ve got a valid ticket.

~~~

I managed to get onto the train, and I had a great time in Ji’nan. And in the grand scheme of things, this little adventure was no real adventure at all. It was, however, a great opportunity to provide everyone with a comprehensive introduction to different means of public transport in China.

One more thing: I hope nobody thinks I’m complaining about poor Ms Zhang. Releasing a bus guide for international students without really understanding what they have written (or having any further information on the busses) is very typical for many Chinese people in my experience, which is why I mentioned it.
She is a lovely person, though, and has helped me a lot since I’ve arrived here.

~~~

In summary: Research thoroughly before planning on taking the bus, plan for enough time if you are at a remote location (or want to go somewhere far from the city centre) to find a willing taxi driver, and don’t mistake Chinese railway stations for the ones your familiar with – you’ll need a lot more time here.

~~~

I’ll try to be back on Sunday or Monday, but no promises. Until then I wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Sonntag, 9. September 2018

Moving In


Quite a lot has happened since I’ve updated my blog last week.

Most importantly, I’ve moved to the dormitory. It’s a single room in the international dormitory (which is unfair in and of itself – Chinese students aren’t even offered the option of living in a single room. As far as I’m aware, they can choose between a 6-bed or an 8-bed dorm.)

I’m not going to lie, the first few days have been quite difficult – the room was quite impersonal at first, it was hot, I didn’t know anyone here, there is no internet connection in my room and the internet everywhere else works unreliably at best, so at times I felt like I was cut off from the entire world. It was certainly a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

~~~

But now to the positive side of things, because although there were moments where it didn’t feel like that at all, it was actually a really good week in hindsight.

Let’s start with the least interesting thing: I’ve finished (almost) all of my administrative duties. Like finally registering for my courses, getting my Chinese student ID, and getting my residence officially recognised.

More excitingly, I had some Austrian/Chinese company on Tuesday – Hong Ling, my former Chinese teacher was in Shanghai with her husband (Michael) and her daughter (Lilia), and I was generously invited to join them for cocktails in their hotel bar (in the Waldorf Astoria, of all places. It’s going to be a while until I even enter a hotel of that calibre again!) It was very fancy – and I was terribly under-dressed…

Lilia and me in the entrance hall

Another thing that’s really great is the campus. It’s so huge that basically the first thing I did was to buy a bicycle to get everywhere quickly (which, given my tendency to be late to everything, was definitely a good idea). I’ve had a look at it on Google Maps, and it’s around 560.000 m², which, to put it in “Graz” terms, is like a rectangle (one side is the distance between Griesplatz and the opera house; the other side is the distance from the opera to the Dom/Burg/theatre). Just to give all of you an idea of just how huge this area really is…

It’s also quite obvious that someone put a lot of effort into making it a really beautiful place.
There’s a lot of green (especially a lot of trees), and there’s a river that meanders through the entire campus, and it really looks lovely. The air quality is better than in most places in Shanghai, and from my (tiny) balcony, I can see the stars and moon at night.

The campus at night
Finally, and particularly delightfully, there was a student event for all the new German-speaking students on Friday, where I finally met some people, and since then, my social life here has improved a lot. Three days are not enough time to really befriend anyone, but there is a group of people that I’ve been talking to a lot throughout the weekend, and everything is suddenly looking up.

Next week will be an exciting one: My classes start tomorrow, and at the end of the week, I’ll be joining my friends Skye and Xinxin on a trip to Ji’nan, the capital of Shandong Province (山东省), where we will be attending Skye’s nephew’s wedding on Saturday. As I’ve mentioned in last week’s post already, I’m looking forward to it a lot.

To everyone who’s reading this: I hope you had a great week. Thanks for stopping by to read my rambling week review – I’ll try to be back next Sunday.

Freitag, 31. August 2018

... and back again, again

I'm back again. Both as a (semi-regular) blogger, and in China.

The fact that this is my fourth time in this country is absolutely mind-blowing (I didn't blog last time since I only stayed for three weeks, during which I had the privilege to introduce my boyfriend to China and China to him).

For anyone who doesn't know: I arrived in Shanghai on Monday, I'll be living and studying here for the upcoming semester, and I won't be back in Austria until mid-February.

Right now, I'm living with Skye, her husband ("Shushu"), and her son Xinxin, whom I've stayed with every time I've been in Shanghai so far, but I'm moving to my university's dormitory next week. (Looking forward to the bureaucracy. There are at least 5 documents I need to pick up from various places within Shanghai until I can move.)

from left to right: Shushu, Skye, me, and Xinxin in 2012

I'll try to write new blog posts on a somewhat regular basis this time (emphasis on "try to"), I'm going for once a week (although I'm fairly sure I won't be able to stick to that), so if anyone bothers to check once every two weeks, there's (hopefully) going to be new content.

The format is not quite clear yet; probably a mix of my impressions of Chinese culture and whatever is going on in my personal life. Depending on how many things I can think of to write about, I'm hoping it's going to be more of the former than of the latter, but anyway, I am confident that there will be something for everyone. If there's anything in particular you want me to talk about, please tell me, I'll welcome them with open arms. Now that this culture has become so familiar to me, I have somewhat lost the frame of reference for what Europeans might consider to be strange or unusual.

In a little more than a month, I hope to do a really interesting story, because, the way Chinese people are, in the first two days I received two wedding invitations to Chinese weddings, one mid-September and one early October. For me, this is really exciting because I have heard so much about Chinese weddings, so it's going to be fascinating to be there (and, in your case, hopefully fascinating to read about.)

Lots of love to everyone, I'll be back next week.