Working Girl

Spring has sprung in Lianyungang. It sprung precisely on Sunday. It went from a freezing 3 Celsius on Saturday to a hot 18 Celsius on Sunday and there it has stayed! Why bother with an intermediate season when you can jump straight into the beginnings of summer?!  I’m more than ready for some heat, having spent most of the last two months in snow. Xinpu seems to have transformed into a bright, colourful hive of activity. It’s amazing what a little sunshine can do to your perception of things.

I am settling in nicely, and there is just one more emergency purchase I must make to make my life comfortable and that is some shoes. It is no exaggeration to say that I have worn the snow boots that my brother bought for me for this trip, almost constantly since I walked out of Abby’s flat (amazingly hangover free – has to be a first) on that cold and snowy morning when I left Cardiff. I have not only worn them every day to go out, but it has not been uncommon for me to have them on overnight too in certain beyond freezing situations. I think the lowest temperature I’ve been in so far was hovering around the -20 mark. These boots truly have been indispensable. However, now that it is suddenly not winter anymore, I must sadly wave adieu to them, but it's OK because they now stink anyway.

Thankfully Lianyungang is not short of places to buy shoes or indeed anything. The street I live on, which runs North-South through Xinpu has every conceivable outlet, from places to eat to liquor stores, hairdressers, florists, bakeries, coffee shops, brand stores, supermarkets, mechanics, kitchen supplies, electrical goods and anything else you can think of.

 

 The main road from my apartment up to the centre of the city.

 The daily fruit market near my apartment

 My complex is behind this row of shops.

 Shops and the fish market on my road. Tricky to tell what's what without going in and having a poke around.

My kitchen window. Go on - admit it. You're jealous... It may look like the aftermath of the apocalypse but there's a lovely, friendly community here.

Here are some of my neighbours playing cards downstairs. They always have a smile and a hello ready. Chinese people will happily blabber on at you regardless of the fact that you clearly have no idea what they are saying.

The bin area is being transformed into allotments as the weather heats up.

There are also little back streets with open fronted places selling all of the same stuff that you can get in supermarkets, but at a fraction of the price. Also common in China are Walking Streets, where you find a whole array of shops plus the masses of street food sellers.

Anything you like on a stick! Corn, meat, pineapple, fish...



 Corn on the cob or meat sticks

 Walking Street in Xugou, taken from outside my school

 China's answer to garlic bread. 40p for a huge soft tortilla slathered in garlic, spring onion, chilli and whatever else is going on, served in a bag with a stick. Fine dining indeed!

 A little rice cake with raisins, steamed in a mini bamboo container. 20p

 Food street near the school in Xugou

Nuts! Nuts and pineapples on sticks are the de rigueur snacks in China 

Although the Chinese seem to work from dawn until dusk seven days a week, the streets really come alive at night. All of the neon signs flicker into life, the street food vendors multiply and steam and smoke and all of the great smells of cooking permeate the air. You can buy anything from fresh fruit and veg to fried chicken or eggrolls (soft tortillas brushed with egg, chillies and a mysterious hot paste and filled with spring onion, some sort of savoury crispy doughnut and pickled vegetables), dumplings, noodles, rice or soups. There are also street barbeques where you choose what you’d like cooked, take a seat a patio table inside a temporary tent or just at tables put on the pavement, and drink a beer while your food is being cooked.

You can get almost anything at almost any hour of the day. I have set myself a budget of £5 per day and I hardly ever go over it, unless there is a bar or some wine purchasing going on. Having such enormous variety on my doorstep means eating well is very easy.

 Less than a pound for a gigantic bag of chillies.

Last week I went out for hot pot with some people from the school. It differs from the solo street type I had in Guangzhou. You are seated at a round table, with the hot pot in the centre. You order several items and then plop everything into the steaming broth, then it's a free-for-all as you scoop whatever you want out with your chopsticks and dunk into whichever side dish or sauce you have chosen. It looks a little like this:

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We also sampled the delights/horrors of Baijiu (pronounced bai-jo), Chinese rice wine. We then went onto a bar where I met some more ex-pats and I remember very little other than waking up on the floor of one of the teachers and spending the rest of the day in bed wishing that death was an option. I think that will be the first and last time I drink Baijiu.

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On a side note, baijiu is the word for white wine, hongjiu is red wine, mijiu is rice wine and pijiu is beer so my name is causing much mirth as it clearly means alcohol. I couldn't think of anything more apt.

I have also started work which although I’m not sure I’m any good at, I am enjoying. I spend two days a week at the school in Xuguo near the coast and two days a week at the Kindergarten in Xinpu. I have been provided with an e-bike, which I LOVE and this has afforded me more independence as I can now travel further and see more of Lianyungang.

My badass e-bike with a horn that sounds like a shy flea farting.

 meep! meep!

The traffic also seems to be much easier to navigate when you are part of it as opposed to on foot attempting to dodge it!

 

Logic-defying traffic sign.

My second day at kindergarten involved a Parent–Teacher evening, during which I had to give a speech in front of two sets of around forty parents about myself and my teaching intentions for their offspring. This is a well to do establishment and the fees are high so I had to give the impression of being a competent person. Considering I had taught their kids for exactly one and a half hours, most of which I filled by singing songs and playing ball games, and it’s a job I have never done before, I feel that this is the closest I’ve ever been to being an actor! IT’S ALL LIES!!

 My commute to Kindergarten. It is situated at the edge of the city so the bike lanes are refreshingly clear.

Swanky kindergarten building.

Each day at kindergarten begins with everybody gathering in the yard for twenty minutes exercise. This means various theatrical dances to some kids' songs about driving in a big red car (beep beep) or prancing around like a prize ***** to Gangnam Style, which the kids love. (For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a cheesy dance/pop song with an accompanying ridiculous pretending-to-ride-a-horse dance, that has taken the world by storm. Seriously - watch this clip and you'll feel my pain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ. And yes, we do ALL of the moves...) I'm all for a less sedentary lifestyle and think that these methods should be more prevalent in the West, but dancing to Gangnam Style at 9am with two hundred little kids is a brutal way to start the day...!!  

I take the bus to school in Xuguo. The system is the very futuristic looking BRT and is fairly new. In fact it is still being built. So far there are only around three lines but it is expanding quickly. It costs 2CNY or 20p to travel anywhere on the system. I have a travel card that works like the Oyster card in London.

 

 The school is situated above a clothes shop on one of the main shopping streets in Xugou.

A typical classroom

I’m getting to know more people and settling into a rather pleasant lifestyle of eating good food, drinking with good company, biking like a native, working at a lovely job, lunching in the sunshine and all for less than £30 per week.

Hmmm, I could get used to this…

 

 

Creature Comforts

Day three proved to be no less eventful. I was taken by bus to the school in which I’ll be teaching, which is around 40 minutes away. Lianyungang is a city made up of several smaller cities. I live, along with most of the other westerners I’ve met, in Xinpu (pronounced Shin Poo). The main school is here and the one I’ll be working at is in Xugou (pronounced Shoe Go) which is nearer the coast. I will also be working at a Kindergarten which is around fifteen minutes from my apartment in the other direction. As most of my jobs have been peripatetic I am more than happy with this variety in my working week.

Xinpu on the left and Xugou, near the coast

 

Xinpu is the most Chinese place I have been to. There is little English and I have relied heavily on the help of the people I’ve met for even the most basic needs. It is very much a working city and not a place that a tourist would necessarily visit. There appear to be no museums or galleries, international restaurants, different districts like the Muslim Quarter in Xian or the French Concession in Shanghai and no subway, comprehensive bus system or indeed anything that would draw a casual visitor over any of the other cities. However, as much as it was clearly going to be challenging, it looked like precisely the kind of place I hoped to be and would enjoy living in, and I could not have had a warmer welcome from both the people associated with the school, my neighbours or the ex-pats.

Before visiting the school I was taken to a photo studio which was essentially a room in a nondescript building at the side of the road. In the room was a desk, a pile of logs, a toolbench, a central chimney with a fire and cooking pot, a shelving area full of oil and food and cloth and stuff and crap, a couple of chairs and a photography kit, complete with lights, backdrop and swanky Canon camera. I had my mugshot taken and waited while a man on a moped took away the memory card and returned with some passport style prints. I then went next door with my photos to a clinic where I underwent my medical, which is required to exchange my Visa for a Residents Permit. I went from room to room having eyes, teeth, heart rate etc. checked. I had my blood taken and an ultrasound to check my organs. I also had to take my top clothes off to have an ECG. Throughout all of the cursory examinations I had my new boss, Fish with me to do all of the talking. There is nothing like providing a pee sample and getting your baps out in front of your new boss to break the ice.

Anyway, medical done, food eaten, alcohol shop pointed out for future reference and onto the mobile phone shop to acquire a SIM card. It all looked like any other mobile phone shop apart from the marketing balloons that were written out in marker pen and the twenty five bottles of cooking oil lined up against the wall.

I caught the bus back to Xinpu and went home, starting to feel overwhelmed by everything. A new job is a pretty big deal when it comes alone. A new job, in a new field, in a new city, in a new country, with a new language and a new culture and a new set of people had suddenly boggled my mind. I returned to my apartment feeling like the culture shock had just crept up on me while I wasn’t looking. It’s also the little things that take you by surprise, like this headed notepaper that was on the reception desk at school:

Or seeing all of the pavements covered in snot instead of the chewing gum at home. Or not knowing how to buy simple things like a battery for your torch or thread for a ripped bag. Or suddenly realising you have no idea where you are or how to get to where you’re going as you cannot read anything and you haven’t mastered any more than a dozen words of Mandarin yet, most of which are of more use in a bar than in asking for directions. Or being woken up at 5:30 by a massive BANG that shook the foundations, as an apartment two blocks up from you was blown out by a gas explosion. Or the live tank of toads next to the frozen chicken feet in the supermarket. I attempted to process and digest the enormity of what I’d let myself in for and made a decisive decision to go to sleep.

I got up the next day with a survival plan. I decided that some home comforts were needed to balance out the über Chinese experience that I was having. If I was going to enjoy this, I needed to take the advice of one of the teachers and create some space for simplicity and calm. My apartment was going to be a home from home and my tranquil space away from the craziness, so I went to Walmart, which I’d been told about the previous day, and bought some home comfort essentials: pasta, olive oil, wine, slippers, store cupboard food and various other bits and bobs. With the help of Fish I ordered some good coffee and a coffee pot, some balsamic vinegar and some coconut oil. The internet was being installed so I could listen to Radio 4 and watch Netflix.

 

 

 

 

 In here will be easy. Out there is madness, and whatever comes my way I intend to be ready for it!

Lantern Festival

My second day was eventful. I went to the main school to meet the other western teachers. I sat in on a couple of classes and slowly started to feel the fear!

Lunch was served in the school and was a communal affair with everybody joining in to make and then devour what appeared to be hundreds of my favourite dumplings. I was then shown around a little more of the city in the afternoon and then headed home before meeting up with a few people to celebrate the lantern festival.

 Red, a fellow teacher from Norway, his girlfriend Emily and Lilly, who also works at the school.

 

 

Betty, who works at the school

The lantern festival marks the official end of the Chinese New Year and is as big a celebration as the New Year itself. We were treated to another spectacular fireworks display before heading to a park which housed hundreds of a completely bonkers array of brightly lit displays.  Hundreds of lanterns are floated up to the sky and it really is a sight to behold.

The night ended with a few beers at a local bar, where I was delighted to meet some ex-pats who were all very drunk. I instantly felt at home!

Home Sweet Home

381 miles approx

I experienced the final kind of train travel when I was allocated the top bunk in a hard sleeper. There is approximately 17 inches vertical space so this bunk would not be suitable for anybody bigger than a child.

 

 

The night passed as most nights do on a Chinese train – loudly. Following a journey that has spanned two continents, seven countries, nine time zones and around 9800 miles, I awoke to a beautiful sunrise as we came into Lianyungang which was to become my home for the next six months.

I was met warmly at the station by Mrs He and her husband, who run the school and own the apartment in which I was to live. I was driven first to the school to meet a few people, offered breakfast and then taken to my apartment where a brand new power shower was being installed. Following a rest I spent the rest of the day being shown around the immediate local area.

I ended the day back at my apartment being shown how everything worked. The apartment is in a typical Chinese high rise concrete building, and I am on the second floor.

I asked about heating and discovered that there is no such thing in this part of China. Anywhere south of the Yangtze doesn't bother with such frivolous nonsense. The apartment was cold. And I mean COLD. The kind of cold that makes your bones hurt.

No, this is not a smoke ring. It's bloody freezing.

I later found out that during the winter Chinese people don't shower at home, but use public amenities weekly, as it's too cold to wash at home. My first purchase was a fan heater. 

It costs a fortune to run and only heats up around 4 inches directly in front of it, but any kind of additional heat was vital. The only other option was to set up home inside the fridge, which was a degree or two warmer.

When I asked my landlady what to do with my rubbish, she opened the kitchen window and pointed down to the 'gardens' strewn with litter and debris so naturally I assumed she was going to tell me to throw it out of the window like a crazy person, but no - she pointed to a the mounds of litter and told me, with no trace of irony, to put it in the bin. 

 

I was presented with a mobile, a bike and my own keys to my very own apartment.

Ah! Home sweet home!

 

 

My killer knife set

 Honestly, what modern housewife wouldn't want one of these bad boys?

I finally get one of my very own Chinese sweeping brushes. I think they are beautiful!

 No plates here. I'll have to make conical sandwiches.

 

 

My bed with three duvets and a blanket. I sleep with all of my clothes on too. There is an air con machine here which takes the chill off a little but also dries my face and lungs out. Hmm.

 My laundry room. I later discovered it takes around 4 days to dry clothes.

Spare room if anybody wants to pop over for the night!