Last week our teacher told us we were planting trees on Monday. Tanya and I thought she meant just us and a couple of other students (from our class and from others), mainly because we asked her and she seemed to tell us that it was just a chosen few while the others had class. Well, in China, if they say something, NEVER EVER BELIEVE IT.
This morning we got to the school gate and found a coach full of students, from at least four different classes, hardly the "select few" we'd been led to believe. Then it transpires we're going to a power company first, then a consumables company (Maiquer for anyone who knows / cares), then lunch, and finally tree planting in the afternoon. All this accompanied of course by some man (does he work for the uni? who knows?) wearing his CCP lapel badge oh so proudly. Let the fun begin.
The trip to the city / town where all this was taking place took about an hour (though of course no one told us about any of this prior to our arrival in the morning - we thought we'd be planting trees on campus for heaven's sake), and it was getting hot (well in my books it was, almost everyone else on the coach including Marta and Tanya were wearing coats and scarves - it was AT LEAST 20C at this point, that's definitely WARM at least), the A/C wasn't switched on on the bus at any point during the day - stupid Chinese (this is not the first time it has happened).
Anyway this smaller town looked AWESOME compared to Urumqi. I saw a double decker bus (I know! In China! WTF?), the streets were noticeably less crowded, as were the roads, there was visibly less litter, and at a traffic-light-controlled roundabout they had the nifty countdown thing that tells you how long the lights have until they change (also present I might add in a small city in Jiangsu province, maybe 1/10 the size of Urumqi or less) - why the hell is Urumqi so backwards if it's the largest city in this region?!
The trip to the power company (TBEA) was okayyy, nothing special; they tried to give us a quick tour round their show-off room, and they started with an intro in Chinese and English before saying they'd hand over to one of their younger employees who'd just come back from finishing his degree in the USA. Poor bloke, first up he tried to use a mic which actually distorted his voice to the point even I couldn't work out what he was saying, and secondly he was asked (politely) by the group to please talk in Chinese because (surprise surprise) they were 90%+ non-English speakers! Crestfallen, he handed back to his boss who conducted the tour in Chinese while I swam around checking out the scale models of their power plants and so on. There was a video presentation, some questions and answers (during which he asked where we were all from and upon finding out I was English tried to strike up a conversation - awkward? Somewhat, considering I really didn't know what to say!) ... Leaving the building we found a whole workforce apparently putting on a dance for us, until I realised it was just the daily workers' exercise (they troupe you outside, play some silly marching style tape, and you exercise in time to the music - to be honest, while it looks ridiculous due to the wholly Communist overtone of the music / idea in general, forcing people to at least stretch a bit and take some exercise isn't exactly a bad thing, right?)
On to the Maiquer company HQ (or something). Maiquer is a major bread and milk producer in China, for those who don't know. Shame their tour was so crap, it consisted of seeing one largish room filled with merchandise, then outside to a corridor leading down one side of a building - entering this, you had to cover your feet, but it was obvious they didnt clean the covers very well because my first one had chewing gum on it, the dopey girl giving them out thought I was being thick when I held it up and tried to tell me what to do with it, I had to actually hold the chewing gum up to her eye so I could get another cover, seriously they breed retards in this country. Anyway the corridor was just to show off some adverts but actually we were walked through there so fast we hardly had time to notice. We could just have skipped this and gone straight to the cafeteria where they sat us down to drink some milk samples (out of date? Tanya and I thought so, judging by one of the labels), and one of the employeers stood and talked for a long time about the company (he even kept going when it was obvious no one was listening) ... some way through this I took the liberty of going to their toilets. You have to take your shoes off and wear a pair of company-provided sandals (so glad I had my socks still on) to keep the room clean. Not much point though, it stank horribly and looked grotty - I hope they treat their food with more hygiene! *bleurgh*
Lunch was a restaurant affair, heaps of food, way too much, the Chinese tradition of feeding-your-guest-too-much-to-show-hospitality definitely in action there, though from my point of view it just screams WASTE, which is really quite unacceptable given that this nation still defines itself as "developing" and should therefore not be wasting anything! Don't get me started on this. Anyway it was edible and I wasn't sick, my company was good (a Korean family and two Kyrgiz students) and we had no problem making conversation at least!
The final stop of the day was tree planting. We drove out to a dusty field in the middle of nowhere save for some rather large impressive newly-built structures, were given an intro on how to dig the holes, fill them in slightly, plant the tree, complete the filling and move on, and were then issued with shovels, gloves, and some name cards (on which you were supposed to write you name, nationality, the date, and any message you wanted to leave, and the whole thing could be hung on your tree when you finished) and a pen. Bottled water came round later, which was great because by this time it was the hottest part of the day, and even Tanya and Marta were feeling it (jackets off and scarves being used as hats) ... I paired up with a Kazakh girl I didnt know (she's in another class) and we got cracking. She turned out to have some English, but we kept mainly to Chinese for the sake of conversation / learning, but she was good company :) The first hole we dug was great (they had marked out holes in white chalk, to show the rough size needed) but we'd neglected to find a hole with a tree next to it, so there was nothing to plant after all our effort! We moved on to another hole (with a tree this time!) and dug it properly, planted it, and filled out our name cards before taking photos and naming "our child" (Nick by the way, so it can be Nikita or Nicholas depending whether you think it's a boy or a girl we planted) ... Our next tree was much easier, the hole was ready-made but needed neatening up, but there was no digging at least :) Our second tree-child is Chris for anyone that cares (Chris for a boy and Christina for a girl) ... we planted one more, but the effort involved was so much less than for the first two that we didnt fill out cards for it and subsequently never named our third baby tree (aww how sad).
Off home on the coach, where we basically sweltered and tried not to die as the A/C still failed to materialise. Luckily going home seemed quicker than the morning's journey. I'm now at home and have realised I have a very basic sunburn (nothing peeling or burning hot skin just an itchy red) on my forearms. My neck seems to have escaped this time, but I'm going to hunt out the E45 now and invest in some sunblock when I visit the supermarket tomorrow. That's about all, when I put the pics on the computer I'll see about uploading a couple here :)
(Oh and despite the Azerbaijani muppets being there, there wasn't a single incident of ADHD hyperactive disrespectful disobedient nonsense from any of them, all day ... the mind boggles)
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
Monday, 20 April 2009
Friday, 17 April 2009
A Class Act All The Way
I've not blogged in a while - this is either because nothing's been going on, too much has been going on, or I've become terminally lazy and bored with everything and lost my will to journal events that will probably only make me angry when I read them again. However, I've summoned the strength to do just that, right now, for your benefit. And by benefit I mean "read this, and if you have an inkling of sense you'll never ever come to Xinjiang Normal University".
I've complained about the Stanleys before; but now I realise I've been slightly wrong - the root of the problem lies with three Azerbaijani students (two brothers and one sister). They are a nightmare. The youngest one (16?) cannot produce anything other than a monotonous non-stop tirade of sound when asked to read out loud (ignoring punctuation and even omitting a rest between paragraphs, let alone sentences); the middle sibling (Gulaga, I feel it's okay to mention his name since he writes it on EVERYTHING - the board, the desks, maps on the wall, the windows, you name it) is probably the most annoying possibly-ADHD person I have ever met, and he lacks social skills and a suitable mental age to boot ("teacher teacher pick me pick me", or simply not shutting up when the teacher is talking, or walking round the classroom in the middle of lessons, or - like most of the other students - dashing out when his phone rings to answer a call ... all this from a 17 year old dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, playing the man about town), and finally the oldest one, 18 I am told ... he seems to be the most normal of the three but this isn't saying much. He still lacks an attention span or any kind of common manners or courtesy that should be shown toward a teacher / in a university environment.
This week I've had the pleasure of seeing all these Central Asian students packing up their bags and preparing to leave about 10 minutes before the end of the lesson because they figured we were done with the interesting part of the class and the teacher's a bit of a pushover (she is, I have no idea how or why she puts up with so much shit from the class - someone told me on Monday she threw some chalk at these kids ... I said if I was the teacher I would throw the KIDS out of the window and be done with it; I went further to say if I was their teacher they'd all be dead by now, and I'm not kidding.) They need high-speed lead injections to their brains, the sooner the better.
It's not just these younger ones who can't pay attention either though - this week also saw an older woman in the class (I estimated 40+ though my friend says I'm being a bit harsh) committing such an act of duncery (I made that word up but it's rather nice I think you'll agree) that I actually turned around and reprimanded her. Gulaga had just spent a good couple of minutes embarrassing himself by answering the teacher's "What is the abbreviation for this type of train in China?" with "They are green", and I thought after the fairly obvious correction by the teacher there'd be no one else misunderstanding the simple question, but nooooo I was wrong. Behind me, this behemoth of a woman (seriously, she could do with losing a bit of weight) tries to answer the next question (identical but about a different type of train) with "They are white" ... I actually turned round and exasperatedly half-spat the words "ABBREVIATION not COLOUR" in Chinese ... god, would it kill them to listen? And if they don't understand could they just keep shut like I do most of the time?
While I'm on the subject of keeping shut, would it be possible for them to close their gobs while I'm being asked to read out loud? It would be the least they could do.
The worst thing about all this is not that their Chinese is better than mine (after all I kind of expect that from people who learnt all their Chinese in China and who havent had to go to high school because when they got here with Daddy from Azerbaijan he arranged for them to come straight to uni via an admissions contact of his so they wouldnt have to "do Biology, Chemistry, Physics, all those HARD subjects" as the youngest of the three put it) but that this is supposed to be a better class than I was in last semester!
Then again, what do you expect from the university who has not only managed to lose an exchange contract with a British uni (as far as I know, after just 2 years of sending students here, Newcastle has cancelled the exchange, or at least not offered it for this coming year), but also lost a contract with the US State Dept for English teachers (because they treat them all like shit, literally, and they simply wouldn't stand for it). Apparently Anniwar, the useless sack of crap who was supposed to be in charge of the foreign exchange people, has now been moved to a different department (but not sacked for some reason), so maybe there is hope for the future; however, as long as the university keeps allowing un-vetted foreign nationals in on the basis that they have money alone, and until it learns what a university ought to be like, I doubt very much that anything is going to change.
Rant over, I'm off to sleep. This week has been less than exciting. Next week I get to plant a tree or something. See how THAT goes.
DAYS TIL I AM IN THE UK: 95
I've complained about the Stanleys before; but now I realise I've been slightly wrong - the root of the problem lies with three Azerbaijani students (two brothers and one sister). They are a nightmare. The youngest one (16?) cannot produce anything other than a monotonous non-stop tirade of sound when asked to read out loud (ignoring punctuation and even omitting a rest between paragraphs, let alone sentences); the middle sibling (Gulaga, I feel it's okay to mention his name since he writes it on EVERYTHING - the board, the desks, maps on the wall, the windows, you name it) is probably the most annoying possibly-ADHD person I have ever met, and he lacks social skills and a suitable mental age to boot ("teacher teacher pick me pick me", or simply not shutting up when the teacher is talking, or walking round the classroom in the middle of lessons, or - like most of the other students - dashing out when his phone rings to answer a call ... all this from a 17 year old dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, playing the man about town), and finally the oldest one, 18 I am told ... he seems to be the most normal of the three but this isn't saying much. He still lacks an attention span or any kind of common manners or courtesy that should be shown toward a teacher / in a university environment.
This week I've had the pleasure of seeing all these Central Asian students packing up their bags and preparing to leave about 10 minutes before the end of the lesson because they figured we were done with the interesting part of the class and the teacher's a bit of a pushover (she is, I have no idea how or why she puts up with so much shit from the class - someone told me on Monday she threw some chalk at these kids ... I said if I was the teacher I would throw the KIDS out of the window and be done with it; I went further to say if I was their teacher they'd all be dead by now, and I'm not kidding.) They need high-speed lead injections to their brains, the sooner the better.
It's not just these younger ones who can't pay attention either though - this week also saw an older woman in the class (I estimated 40+ though my friend says I'm being a bit harsh) committing such an act of duncery (I made that word up but it's rather nice I think you'll agree) that I actually turned around and reprimanded her. Gulaga had just spent a good couple of minutes embarrassing himself by answering the teacher's "What is the abbreviation for this type of train in China?" with "They are green", and I thought after the fairly obvious correction by the teacher there'd be no one else misunderstanding the simple question, but nooooo I was wrong. Behind me, this behemoth of a woman (seriously, she could do with losing a bit of weight) tries to answer the next question (identical but about a different type of train) with "They are white" ... I actually turned round and exasperatedly half-spat the words "ABBREVIATION not COLOUR" in Chinese ... god, would it kill them to listen? And if they don't understand could they just keep shut like I do most of the time?
While I'm on the subject of keeping shut, would it be possible for them to close their gobs while I'm being asked to read out loud? It would be the least they could do.
The worst thing about all this is not that their Chinese is better than mine (after all I kind of expect that from people who learnt all their Chinese in China and who havent had to go to high school because when they got here with Daddy from Azerbaijan he arranged for them to come straight to uni via an admissions contact of his so they wouldnt have to "do Biology, Chemistry, Physics, all those HARD subjects" as the youngest of the three put it) but that this is supposed to be a better class than I was in last semester!
Then again, what do you expect from the university who has not only managed to lose an exchange contract with a British uni (as far as I know, after just 2 years of sending students here, Newcastle has cancelled the exchange, or at least not offered it for this coming year), but also lost a contract with the US State Dept for English teachers (because they treat them all like shit, literally, and they simply wouldn't stand for it). Apparently Anniwar, the useless sack of crap who was supposed to be in charge of the foreign exchange people, has now been moved to a different department (but not sacked for some reason), so maybe there is hope for the future; however, as long as the university keeps allowing un-vetted foreign nationals in on the basis that they have money alone, and until it learns what a university ought to be like, I doubt very much that anything is going to change.
Rant over, I'm off to sleep. This week has been less than exciting. Next week I get to plant a tree or something. See how THAT goes.
DAYS TIL I AM IN THE UK: 95
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Some Random Musings on Today and Tomorrow
I'm really quite uninterested in my birthday but for anyone who cares, it's happening tomorrow, I will be 22, and no it is not the first birthday I have had in China so this is yet another reason for it not being special. I will be going to my favourite place in Urumqi - the Texas Cafe - where one of the staff is also celebrating their birthday (a little older than 22 I am told), and from there I don't know, I don't have concrete plans because it seems to be a bigger deal for everyone else than it is for me, and I'm happy enough if I just sit down with some friends and chat.
In other news I woke up this morning, picked slightly at an irritating small scratch that first made itself known on the inside of my left nostril two days ago, and promptly leaked enough blood to fill up my left palm before I made it to the bathroom. Bloody marvellous (pun intended). Still that'll teach me to pick at wounds, as if I didnt learn my lesson 8 years ago.
I then got my timetable confused and went to the wrong class, which happened to be the one not taking place today, so I've missed today's lessons completely. Drat.
On the plus side of it all the weather is LOVELY - sunshine, warm, snow melting away, spring in the air and so on. If only Urumqi had a skydiving centre it would be perfect.
In other news I woke up this morning, picked slightly at an irritating small scratch that first made itself known on the inside of my left nostril two days ago, and promptly leaked enough blood to fill up my left palm before I made it to the bathroom. Bloody marvellous (pun intended). Still that'll teach me to pick at wounds, as if I didnt learn my lesson 8 years ago.
I then got my timetable confused and went to the wrong class, which happened to be the one not taking place today, so I've missed today's lessons completely. Drat.
On the plus side of it all the weather is LOVELY - sunshine, warm, snow melting away, spring in the air and so on. If only Urumqi had a skydiving centre it would be perfect.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Back To School
Blah, I've been back less than a week and I've already taken today off ... well it was just reading class, and I suppose I can do the catchup at home; I've moved myself permanently into Intermediate Group 1, which is still (I think) slightly larger than IG2, but (I'm guessing) more productive! The listening work is pretty simple (I think not only has my listening improved, not only is the audio quality a LOT better, but the stuff we are listening to is just EASIER) - I wonder how long this will last, the rest of the class isn't complaining just yet, but their Chinese is better than mine and they must surely be as bored with it as I am (last semester I was bored because I didn't understand enough despite three attempts at listening, now I am bored because I understand 95% of the tapes first time round), plus the teacher takes the lessons really slowly, she doesn't seem to grasp that the material is simple and our Chinese is actually alright by now. *SIGH* ... she also asked a very dunce question of me:
(going round checking people had been noting down words' meanings in their own languages)
her: oh good, good, you looked it up, good. oh, harry, did you look this stuff up? (there is no writing in my book you see)
me: er, sorry? (I didn't understand the word for looking things up, maybe I had forgotten it)
her: did you look these up?
me: "look up"? I don't understand (obviously this was in Chinese)
(she goes to explain it. someone shouts out "did you use a dictionary")
me: *perplexed and a little annoyed that the teacher can be so dense* but the words are given in ENGLISH! i AM English!
her: oh so you understand them all, ah yes i see.
GRAH! WHAT THE HELL?
Apart from that, classes seem to be okay. Chinese people this week have suddenly decided they must ask me "Are you American?", instead of asking where I come from. This invariably results in me telling them exactly where they can go. It's not so much that I mind being called American, it's more that they have the gall to just assume; I don't go around asking if they are Tajiks or Uzbeks for heaven's sake. Another thing that will not score you points is going "WHISSS WHISS" at me in an attempt to get my attention - I am not you dog, you backwards bastards. [The latter happens mainly in markets, not school, though I wouldn't be surprised if next week they all decided that was a decent way to act.]
Oh and in happy-making news, I got my exam results for last semester:
Grammar - 77
Listening and Speaking - 78
Reading - 84
I'm not sure how I pulled off the listening and speaking mark either! Those are all percentages, so they need to be multiplied by 0.85 for conversion to Newcastle's scale, which gives me 65.45, 66.3, and 71.4, a combined conversion of 67.7, not bad considering I swapped to IG1 briefly before the exams but took IG2's exam because I didn't think I would be able to pass IG1 at that time, and didn't revise very well for the IG2 exam anyway :) Makes me think with a bit of effort this semester I might be able to achieve something!
So there you go, I'm back into uni, life continues, oh and it's just 137 days until I leave China. Woop!
(going round checking people had been noting down words' meanings in their own languages)
her: oh good, good, you looked it up, good. oh, harry, did you look this stuff up? (there is no writing in my book you see)
me: er, sorry? (I didn't understand the word for looking things up, maybe I had forgotten it)
her: did you look these up?
me: "look up"? I don't understand (obviously this was in Chinese)
(she goes to explain it. someone shouts out "did you use a dictionary")
me: *perplexed and a little annoyed that the teacher can be so dense* but the words are given in ENGLISH! i AM English!
her: oh so you understand them all, ah yes i see.
GRAH! WHAT THE HELL?
Apart from that, classes seem to be okay. Chinese people this week have suddenly decided they must ask me "Are you American?", instead of asking where I come from. This invariably results in me telling them exactly where they can go. It's not so much that I mind being called American, it's more that they have the gall to just assume; I don't go around asking if they are Tajiks or Uzbeks for heaven's sake. Another thing that will not score you points is going "WHISSS WHISS" at me in an attempt to get my attention - I am not you dog, you backwards bastards. [The latter happens mainly in markets, not school, though I wouldn't be surprised if next week they all decided that was a decent way to act.]
Oh and in happy-making news, I got my exam results for last semester:
Grammar - 77
Listening and Speaking - 78
Reading - 84
I'm not sure how I pulled off the listening and speaking mark either! Those are all percentages, so they need to be multiplied by 0.85 for conversion to Newcastle's scale, which gives me 65.45, 66.3, and 71.4, a combined conversion of 67.7, not bad considering I swapped to IG1 briefly before the exams but took IG2's exam because I didn't think I would be able to pass IG1 at that time, and didn't revise very well for the IG2 exam anyway :) Makes me think with a bit of effort this semester I might be able to achieve something!
So there you go, I'm back into uni, life continues, oh and it's just 137 days until I leave China. Woop!
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Exams
See below this post for another post I only just uploaded (can't have the praise for my Mum go unnoticed!). Yesterday marked the start of my exam season, and today marked the end. Yes, just two days. Argh. Last week I was supposed to revise myself silly but I just couldn't find the motivation and ended up doing not as much as I'd hoped. This led to lastminute cramming, and a bit of worrying, but ... that's my own fault. So how were they?
Listening - awful. My worst area by far. I barely heard some of the dialogues, and just guessed most of the answers. I'll be lucky if I got even 20% correct. I wish they'd give us individual tapes, I might stand more of a chance then. Incidentally, anyone in first or second year at Newcastle care to comment on whether or not they've started to do that back home? We complained about it last year, European language students all get that opportunity, why should we be made to sit in a big room and listen to one tape at the front which is played just twice when other students get to play it as many times as they want in their time limit? Hmm.
Speaking - considering I didn't have a clue what was going to happen, I think I did alright. You choose a sheet (without seeing the content, there are 2 to choose from) and then have a few minutes to prepare. Unlike the UK though, you are preparing in the same room as other candidates who are taking the exam. It's annoying, but that's how it is so deal with it. First you have to read a passage, then answer questions on the passage. The third part involves completing sentences using the stuff provided in brackets as a guide. And the final bit is 4 questions, you choose one and just launch into an answer. I don't know if it was recorded, there was the teacher's phone on the desk but I'm guessing that was in case she got a call and not because she wanted to record my answers, but on a related note, it would help if the teacher showed some INTEREST in the student while they are being examined and didnt just look at her lap when the bumbling English idiot stumbles over some words in the passage. Still, I think it went better than Listening by far.
Last night I slept for about 4 hours. This was nowhere near enough (not my fault per se, I just couldn't sleep it was infuriating), so today's exams were tedious. Not SO hard, but tiring and an irritation to say the least.
Grammar - three or four sides, lots of questions, just hammer through and answer them. Based on the books you've been using all along, so just hope stuff you looked at comes up and you can make educated guesses at the stuff you don't know!
Reading - as with grammar, and much the same; really you either know something or you don't. It's all in your books. I was lucky enough to have skimmed over a couple of passages this afternoon which came up in the exam. Without them I don't know if I would even have known what the passages were about. Real planning would have been to actually revise all the (MANY) passages we looked at. Ah well, I got lucky, hurray for me.
So exams are over, and I'm monstrously tired. But before I complete this post, a word on taking exams in XNU. It's a disgrace. I know this doesnt happen with the Chinese students, because they are behaved, and their teachers come down on them like a ton of bricks if they step out of line, but with all these foreign bastards, it's a joke. Whispering and casual glancing at papers is rife, as are stupid childish antics that I would expect from a 13 year old trying to be the "cool kid" and not a 27 year old mother-of-three (so I am told) ... Guys came in almost an hour late. Lucky for them the exam was 2 hours long and the paper was short enough that it could be completed in under an hour with ease. At one point I saw this imbecile sitting in front of me turned round about 170 degrees just looking at my paper. I glanced up, gave him a look, and told him (verbatim) to "fuck off", before folding my paper up and hiding my answers from his nosy gaze. Some of the teachers are just as bad, either they'll not tell people off immediately for talking, or they'll just walk over to someone and then give them an "alright-I-caught-you-using-your-electronic-dictionary-so-just-stop-using-it" nod and it's like some huge joke to the student. The uni must be seriously hung up on getting these foreigners' cash because in the UK it doesnt matter where you come from or who you are, if you're cheating (even a bit) there's a disciplinary procedure and you can fail the module or even be asked (read told) to leave the uni.
No wonder people don't trust some Asian countries' exam certificates. It's an absolute joke.
Listening - awful. My worst area by far. I barely heard some of the dialogues, and just guessed most of the answers. I'll be lucky if I got even 20% correct. I wish they'd give us individual tapes, I might stand more of a chance then. Incidentally, anyone in first or second year at Newcastle care to comment on whether or not they've started to do that back home? We complained about it last year, European language students all get that opportunity, why should we be made to sit in a big room and listen to one tape at the front which is played just twice when other students get to play it as many times as they want in their time limit? Hmm.
Speaking - considering I didn't have a clue what was going to happen, I think I did alright. You choose a sheet (without seeing the content, there are 2 to choose from) and then have a few minutes to prepare. Unlike the UK though, you are preparing in the same room as other candidates who are taking the exam. It's annoying, but that's how it is so deal with it. First you have to read a passage, then answer questions on the passage. The third part involves completing sentences using the stuff provided in brackets as a guide. And the final bit is 4 questions, you choose one and just launch into an answer. I don't know if it was recorded, there was the teacher's phone on the desk but I'm guessing that was in case she got a call and not because she wanted to record my answers, but on a related note, it would help if the teacher showed some INTEREST in the student while they are being examined and didnt just look at her lap when the bumbling English idiot stumbles over some words in the passage. Still, I think it went better than Listening by far.
Last night I slept for about 4 hours. This was nowhere near enough (not my fault per se, I just couldn't sleep it was infuriating), so today's exams were tedious. Not SO hard, but tiring and an irritation to say the least.
Grammar - three or four sides, lots of questions, just hammer through and answer them. Based on the books you've been using all along, so just hope stuff you looked at comes up and you can make educated guesses at the stuff you don't know!
Reading - as with grammar, and much the same; really you either know something or you don't. It's all in your books. I was lucky enough to have skimmed over a couple of passages this afternoon which came up in the exam. Without them I don't know if I would even have known what the passages were about. Real planning would have been to actually revise all the (MANY) passages we looked at. Ah well, I got lucky, hurray for me.
So exams are over, and I'm monstrously tired. But before I complete this post, a word on taking exams in XNU. It's a disgrace. I know this doesnt happen with the Chinese students, because they are behaved, and their teachers come down on them like a ton of bricks if they step out of line, but with all these foreign bastards, it's a joke. Whispering and casual glancing at papers is rife, as are stupid childish antics that I would expect from a 13 year old trying to be the "cool kid" and not a 27 year old mother-of-three (so I am told) ... Guys came in almost an hour late. Lucky for them the exam was 2 hours long and the paper was short enough that it could be completed in under an hour with ease. At one point I saw this imbecile sitting in front of me turned round about 170 degrees just looking at my paper. I glanced up, gave him a look, and told him (verbatim) to "fuck off", before folding my paper up and hiding my answers from his nosy gaze. Some of the teachers are just as bad, either they'll not tell people off immediately for talking, or they'll just walk over to someone and then give them an "alright-I-caught-you-using-your-electronic-dictionary-so-just-stop-using-it" nod and it's like some huge joke to the student. The uni must be seriously hung up on getting these foreigners' cash because in the UK it doesnt matter where you come from or who you are, if you're cheating (even a bit) there's a disciplinary procedure and you can fail the module or even be asked (read told) to leave the uni.
No wonder people don't trust some Asian countries' exam certificates. It's an absolute joke.
Monday, 8 December 2008
Disruptions
I've moved back to Intermediate Class 2 until my exams (which take place in two weeks), mainly because the exams are all based around the books and vocab we have been learning, and if I take Intermediate Class 1's exams I will surely fail, having been in that class a mere three weeks or so. If I stay in Class 1 and take Class 2's exams I will have to do double work at home. Ergo, I've moved myself temporarily back into Class 2, so I at least stand a reasonable chance on these papers (except listening, I really think I am going to fail listening, and this worries me).
I headed along to room 417, where we used to have class, only to find we've now moved to 511. No problem, I nip up the stairs and after a couple of attempts in which I walked right past it, I find this new classroom. It's tiny. Maybe some of the class dropped out or were moved, and this meant room 417 (which really was quite big, easily seating 50 I would guess) became obsolete for the remaining few. I don't know. Either way, we're now in this small room. A couple of things happen when you downsize your classroom - it's warmer (yay, don't want to be cold in Urumqi), and it's noisier because things are so much closer. Allow me to paint a picture. This classroom has two columns of desks in it, two desks wide, so each row is 4 desks, and there are maybe five rows. A total of 20 desks. An aisle space about one and a half people wide, if that. There's a small space at the front for the teacher, and a whiteboard propped up against the window. There is no extra space; this is SMALL.
So what happens when there are eight students in the room, and one person comes in late (door at the back by the way) - anything this person does to change the atmosphere becomes immediately noticeable, that's what. Joy of joys the latecomer (seriously, why do you turn up half an hour late, and just barge your way in? It's not cool, clever, funny, and it certainly isn't mature), is the annoying kid (I refuse to call anyone who barely looks 18 an adult here) who doesnt bring any books and thinks he can just chat to his neighbour. Except there's a problem. This isn't the big room in which your piddling chat sort of murmured away in the corner. And your "mate" (who is actually hardworking and should have the balls to tell this idiot to piss off) isn't next to you, he's across this aisle. Oh, and you're not being discreet at all, in fact the sound of your voice is in direct competition with the teacher (who, bless her, is a really good teacher, but not so hot on the discipline and just tries to talk over this dick). Well, after about 10 minutes of this, I'd had enough. Actually I've had enough for a few weeks now, because so many of these damn Kazakhs are rude and discourteous, and I've wanted to just turn around and give them a mouthful. (One guy I know, an American in the Higher Class, told me in his first year here he actually got in fistfights with a couple of them over similar behaviour).
I turned around in my seat and, looking straight at him, said: "Will you close your mouth?" only it wasnt a question, it was a statement. I turned back. There was an audible silence. I'm the guy that sits quiet in class and speaks only when it's to answer a question. Then he speaks, in heavily accented (and by the sound of it, shaped by too much American gangsta music) English - "What you say to me?" ... on the second prompt I turn around again, and put it a little more forcefully, "Will you SHUT UP" and in return I get "Woah, what he say? [To me] Heeeeeeey, this is not America, this is Wulumuqi" - two things to note here, first of all I am NOT AMERICAN. DON'T GET IT WRONG, ESPECIALLY IF YOU KNOW I AM BRITISH. I can take it as a misconception, but this fool knows I'm not from that side of the pond. And secondly, I don't care if this is Urumqi, we're in a school situation, not in your back yard, homie, and I'm here to learn not smoke dope with you and your smacked-up crew. Oh and thirdly, with his manner of speaking he reminded me of someone I used to know (Mum, you know exactly who I'm talking about), and this just doesnt go down well. Seconds from making my next move (a response in Chinese, to make sure he understood, and failing that a response from my fists), and with the classroom quiet as anything now, save for this squirt's goads in whatever he thought was English, and something changed.
Nargiz, one of the bubbliest girls, bright too, and a friend of mine brought about by her younger brother speaking reasonable English and thus we have lunch together most days, turns around in her seat and starts giving this kid an earful. In Kazakh. Fast, loud, to the point. He starts arguing back, perhaps he figures she's just a girl. But then she gets up, and she's easily as tall as, if not taller than him, she comes out from her desk and goes round to him, and argues him right back into whatever cave he crawled out of (because I sure as hell wouldn't want to think people like that come from wombs), just in time for break. The bell goes, he leaves (and didnt come back for the remaining three lessons) and I am totally indebted. After that, she and a couple of the others told the teacher they didn't care much for this guy, that his first impression is bad, and that he's always smoking weed (why does this not surprise me?) - and when I said thanks, she said not to mention it because if I dealt with him there'd be trouble (I think she could see where it was going to go) but if she handled it there wouldn't be ... local knowledge I guess. The next three lessons were silent, it was awesome.
All I can say is, he'd better not be coming back to those classes until I'm back in Class 1, where, to put things fully in perspective, there are a lot more students (anywhere between 25 and 40 depending on the class), and in an average class there is no competition to hear the teacher. Teacher speaks, you listen. Simple as. Why can't it all be like that?!
In other news, I am thinking about compiling a list of current prices and useful places for people to go, something to help next year's students (if there are any, someone mentioned problems with the Urumqi-Newcastle connection), this sentences is partly a reminder to myself to actually do this, and partly a request for people to say what kind of things they think should be on this list :) Customer participation and all that.
I headed along to room 417, where we used to have class, only to find we've now moved to 511. No problem, I nip up the stairs and after a couple of attempts in which I walked right past it, I find this new classroom. It's tiny. Maybe some of the class dropped out or were moved, and this meant room 417 (which really was quite big, easily seating 50 I would guess) became obsolete for the remaining few. I don't know. Either way, we're now in this small room. A couple of things happen when you downsize your classroom - it's warmer (yay, don't want to be cold in Urumqi), and it's noisier because things are so much closer. Allow me to paint a picture. This classroom has two columns of desks in it, two desks wide, so each row is 4 desks, and there are maybe five rows. A total of 20 desks. An aisle space about one and a half people wide, if that. There's a small space at the front for the teacher, and a whiteboard propped up against the window. There is no extra space; this is SMALL.
So what happens when there are eight students in the room, and one person comes in late (door at the back by the way) - anything this person does to change the atmosphere becomes immediately noticeable, that's what. Joy of joys the latecomer (seriously, why do you turn up half an hour late, and just barge your way in? It's not cool, clever, funny, and it certainly isn't mature), is the annoying kid (I refuse to call anyone who barely looks 18 an adult here) who doesnt bring any books and thinks he can just chat to his neighbour. Except there's a problem. This isn't the big room in which your piddling chat sort of murmured away in the corner. And your "mate" (who is actually hardworking and should have the balls to tell this idiot to piss off) isn't next to you, he's across this aisle. Oh, and you're not being discreet at all, in fact the sound of your voice is in direct competition with the teacher (who, bless her, is a really good teacher, but not so hot on the discipline and just tries to talk over this dick). Well, after about 10 minutes of this, I'd had enough. Actually I've had enough for a few weeks now, because so many of these damn Kazakhs are rude and discourteous, and I've wanted to just turn around and give them a mouthful. (One guy I know, an American in the Higher Class, told me in his first year here he actually got in fistfights with a couple of them over similar behaviour).
I turned around in my seat and, looking straight at him, said: "Will you close your mouth?" only it wasnt a question, it was a statement. I turned back. There was an audible silence. I'm the guy that sits quiet in class and speaks only when it's to answer a question. Then he speaks, in heavily accented (and by the sound of it, shaped by too much American gangsta music) English - "What you say to me?" ... on the second prompt I turn around again, and put it a little more forcefully, "Will you SHUT UP" and in return I get "Woah, what he say? [To me] Heeeeeeey, this is not America, this is Wulumuqi" - two things to note here, first of all I am NOT AMERICAN. DON'T GET IT WRONG, ESPECIALLY IF YOU KNOW I AM BRITISH. I can take it as a misconception, but this fool knows I'm not from that side of the pond. And secondly, I don't care if this is Urumqi, we're in a school situation, not in your back yard, homie, and I'm here to learn not smoke dope with you and your smacked-up crew. Oh and thirdly, with his manner of speaking he reminded me of someone I used to know (Mum, you know exactly who I'm talking about), and this just doesnt go down well. Seconds from making my next move (a response in Chinese, to make sure he understood, and failing that a response from my fists), and with the classroom quiet as anything now, save for this squirt's goads in whatever he thought was English, and something changed.
Nargiz, one of the bubbliest girls, bright too, and a friend of mine brought about by her younger brother speaking reasonable English and thus we have lunch together most days, turns around in her seat and starts giving this kid an earful. In Kazakh. Fast, loud, to the point. He starts arguing back, perhaps he figures she's just a girl. But then she gets up, and she's easily as tall as, if not taller than him, she comes out from her desk and goes round to him, and argues him right back into whatever cave he crawled out of (because I sure as hell wouldn't want to think people like that come from wombs), just in time for break. The bell goes, he leaves (and didnt come back for the remaining three lessons) and I am totally indebted. After that, she and a couple of the others told the teacher they didn't care much for this guy, that his first impression is bad, and that he's always smoking weed (why does this not surprise me?) - and when I said thanks, she said not to mention it because if I dealt with him there'd be trouble (I think she could see where it was going to go) but if she handled it there wouldn't be ... local knowledge I guess. The next three lessons were silent, it was awesome.
All I can say is, he'd better not be coming back to those classes until I'm back in Class 1, where, to put things fully in perspective, there are a lot more students (anywhere between 25 and 40 depending on the class), and in an average class there is no competition to hear the teacher. Teacher speaks, you listen. Simple as. Why can't it all be like that?!
In other news, I am thinking about compiling a list of current prices and useful places for people to go, something to help next year's students (if there are any, someone mentioned problems with the Urumqi-Newcastle connection), this sentences is partly a reminder to myself to actually do this, and partly a request for people to say what kind of things they think should be on this list :) Customer participation and all that.
Sunday, 9 November 2008
A Lazy Update
It's Sunday morning and I should probably be doing some kind of work ... but I'm taking some time to stay in bed a bit longer and generally laze if not sleep in (the Chinese for which is 睡懒觉 in case you were wondering, I know you weren't), while I try to recall some of the week's events. Also, there's no way I can leave the house right now - Marta went out last night and hasn't come back, and my crappy excuse for a main door key broke off in the lock yesterday evening (fortunately i was able to salvage the actual key part so the lock itself is still okay to use). Lucy had a front row seat to that event, being on the phone to me at the time; I could not believe that the key just sheared off in the lock. Oh wait, I COULD believe it because this is CHINA. That's fast becoming synonymous for "I've never seen this happen before, in quite this way, but it doesn't surprise me that it's happening to me here". I recall this happened the last time round as well, Sam and I came to the conclusion that "Nothing is impossible, you just haven't seen it yet" meaning you had to be in China to witness such an "impossible" event. Whatever the chances of it, having your front door key snap off in the lock is a damned irritation. I want Marta to get back here soonest so I can go and get another key cut, but since she was (presumably) on the lash last night I might be waiting some time.
I don't think so much has been going on recently. Or maybe it has and I've just not taken it all in - this is a problem when trying to document your life, some things happen that may be considered amazing or abnormal to people who don't experience them, but when you live it everything sort of blurs into "normality" ... I suppose one thing I look forward to every week is my Tai Qi class - not only is the teacher really good, but it's free (well for the students anyway, apparently our school pays the teacher, but free at the point of consumption is basically free as far as I'm concerned!) ... Every Thursday afternoon for about 90 minutes we knacker ourselves. I personally think the teacher's idea of a warm up is more work than the exercise itself! A quick run (no, that's not the knackering part) followed by several stretches, mostly for the legs, though after this week I will be adding some arm stretches too, and then some exercises. The first is okay - put your arms out to the sides and goose-step 10 - 15 paces (each foot, so 20 - 30 total). Then it gets a bit harder. With your arms still out to the sides, step forward, as you do so bring your leg up to kick your outstretched hand (same side). Do 10 - 15 paces. Finally, repeat but kick the opposite outstretched hand. Do all of these twice. Sound hard? Well it was to begin with, but now, about a month later, I am finding I CAN do this. Then there's some kicking practice, and a couple of routines (ah, I dont know the Chinese for any of this, I'm useless), which looked complicated when we first saw them, but are less so now we've done them a few hundred times. I can't wait to add breathing to it all, slow it right down and get a work out (holding some of those positions will be "fun"). This week was extra fun though because the teacher decided it would be good for us to box a little. So out came the gloves (I've never worn boxing gloves before) and some training. I would like to do more of this, I have a feeling for all my time in the gym my punches are still weak. Or maybe they're not. I should find someone to experiment on ;)
So Thursday was enjoyable. However, by Friday I found myself so knackered (I seem to have been burning the candle both ends for a few weeks now, I'm trying to regulate my body clock to something sensible but it's not happening so easily) that I stayed in bed most of the day, getting out only to shower and go to the gym (not for a workout, as I normally would, but instead to teach one of the receptionists some English - for free? maybe. Why? Well I wouldn't ordinarily, but since I'm in the gym on a Friday mostly anyway, it's not a problem to spend an extra hour there before / after working out which would otherwise be spent at home doing nothing). This week was slightly different though, because the Tai Qi from Thursday managed to strain my right tricep - all those punches! - and the inner side of my left thigh - all those kicks! I don't recall doing anything much on Friday apart from that.
Saturday I got up stupidly early (my friend texted me the wrong time to meet, fortunately I decided he had made a mistake and got up when I felt was suitable, but it was still early!) to go and give a talk at an English school. Well to be precise, a Uyghur school for teaching English. It's called NSP (Never Stop Program) and the guys that run it are now friends of mine. I'd offered to give a talk, about me, about England, about anything really, and play some language games with the classes, so I did. My morning session lasted 3 hours. That's a long time for a relatively unprepared class. The guys had got all of their morning students together, there must have been easily 150 people in the room, most of whom had reasonable English but had never used it with a foreigner before. So they were understandably delighted. We had lunch and then I was going to go to the gym but I needed time to digest (lag maan goes down slowly) so I did another hour in the afternoon, mainly questions and answers from the guys' more advanced students. It was fun, but wholly tiring! And to top it off, of course I went to the gym later, not going to miss THAT!
Coming home from the gym my key sheared off in the lock and I think that pretty much brings me full circle for the time being :)
Oh and Mum, I know I never reply to your emails and I've not written anything to you in a while, but thanks for all the letters, the bank card, the aid package and so on that have arrived this week :) Dad, I've written you a letter but it'll have to wait for posting. Lucy I'm in the middle of a letter to you. Other people, I need to write more I know!
I don't think so much has been going on recently. Or maybe it has and I've just not taken it all in - this is a problem when trying to document your life, some things happen that may be considered amazing or abnormal to people who don't experience them, but when you live it everything sort of blurs into "normality" ... I suppose one thing I look forward to every week is my Tai Qi class - not only is the teacher really good, but it's free (well for the students anyway, apparently our school pays the teacher, but free at the point of consumption is basically free as far as I'm concerned!) ... Every Thursday afternoon for about 90 minutes we knacker ourselves. I personally think the teacher's idea of a warm up is more work than the exercise itself! A quick run (no, that's not the knackering part) followed by several stretches, mostly for the legs, though after this week I will be adding some arm stretches too, and then some exercises. The first is okay - put your arms out to the sides and goose-step 10 - 15 paces (each foot, so 20 - 30 total). Then it gets a bit harder. With your arms still out to the sides, step forward, as you do so bring your leg up to kick your outstretched hand (same side). Do 10 - 15 paces. Finally, repeat but kick the opposite outstretched hand. Do all of these twice. Sound hard? Well it was to begin with, but now, about a month later, I am finding I CAN do this. Then there's some kicking practice, and a couple of routines (ah, I dont know the Chinese for any of this, I'm useless), which looked complicated when we first saw them, but are less so now we've done them a few hundred times. I can't wait to add breathing to it all, slow it right down and get a work out (holding some of those positions will be "fun"). This week was extra fun though because the teacher decided it would be good for us to box a little. So out came the gloves (I've never worn boxing gloves before) and some training. I would like to do more of this, I have a feeling for all my time in the gym my punches are still weak. Or maybe they're not. I should find someone to experiment on ;)
So Thursday was enjoyable. However, by Friday I found myself so knackered (I seem to have been burning the candle both ends for a few weeks now, I'm trying to regulate my body clock to something sensible but it's not happening so easily) that I stayed in bed most of the day, getting out only to shower and go to the gym (not for a workout, as I normally would, but instead to teach one of the receptionists some English - for free? maybe. Why? Well I wouldn't ordinarily, but since I'm in the gym on a Friday mostly anyway, it's not a problem to spend an extra hour there before / after working out which would otherwise be spent at home doing nothing). This week was slightly different though, because the Tai Qi from Thursday managed to strain my right tricep - all those punches! - and the inner side of my left thigh - all those kicks! I don't recall doing anything much on Friday apart from that.
Saturday I got up stupidly early (my friend texted me the wrong time to meet, fortunately I decided he had made a mistake and got up when I felt was suitable, but it was still early!) to go and give a talk at an English school. Well to be precise, a Uyghur school for teaching English. It's called NSP (Never Stop Program) and the guys that run it are now friends of mine. I'd offered to give a talk, about me, about England, about anything really, and play some language games with the classes, so I did. My morning session lasted 3 hours. That's a long time for a relatively unprepared class. The guys had got all of their morning students together, there must have been easily 150 people in the room, most of whom had reasonable English but had never used it with a foreigner before. So they were understandably delighted. We had lunch and then I was going to go to the gym but I needed time to digest (lag maan goes down slowly) so I did another hour in the afternoon, mainly questions and answers from the guys' more advanced students. It was fun, but wholly tiring! And to top it off, of course I went to the gym later, not going to miss THAT!
Coming home from the gym my key sheared off in the lock and I think that pretty much brings me full circle for the time being :)
Oh and Mum, I know I never reply to your emails and I've not written anything to you in a while, but thanks for all the letters, the bank card, the aid package and so on that have arrived this week :) Dad, I've written you a letter but it'll have to wait for posting. Lucy I'm in the middle of a letter to you. Other people, I need to write more I know!
Friday, 24 October 2008
Thank Yous and a General Update (October)
I tried posting a special Thank You blog last week (when I received certain goods in a yellow box) but this website didnt seem to like the idea of me uploading photos ... sorry, Mariamelia, I got your parcel, the coffee and card were both very warmly accepted! Now all we need are some filter papers for our cups, we don't have a machine or anything fancy for this non-instant (ie: proper!) stuff ... I'll email you photos when I dig your address out - I've hidden it somewhere, oh no! The Rio card is on my wall though - my collection is growing (thanks Mum, Lucy, Sheila) and it really takes attention off the filthy walls (which I am NOT cleaning because they are covered in some kind of plaster and it will just come off). I've rambled. The point is, THANK YOU :)
In other news, I can't remember where I got to last time with this blog, so apologies for repetition.
* The heating came on - yay! - the evening of October 14th the pipes finally started to warm up and by the 15th they were well and truly hot. Now we've kind of got used to the ambience, the temperature varies depending on the time of day, the pipes will be hot at one point and drop down to just warm at others, though we're not really sure how it is determined ... sometimes it's tropical (especially in my room, which is very small) and other times it's just NICE. I like nice. Sorry mum I know it's a silly word, I shouldn't use it, but I just have, twice. Anyway, we're not freezing yet!
* The weather on the other hand is definitely pushing that way. Frost in the mornings on some of the plants and the ground, puddles that ice over a bit, a distinct chill in the air, and a certain need to wear layers of clothing and keep moving in an attempt to stay warm. I've even bought gloves! Yeah, it took me that long. But there was no need to worry about prices, as usual Xinjiang came through with some mega-cheap stuff, in fact of the two pairs I bought the cheaper one is probably the warmer (though made of woolly stuff, so not great when it gets wet) - these are basic winter gloves, not going to stop the supercold temperatures we will face later in the year, but great for now. RMB 7.50 (that's something like 70p, my how the pound has fallen, but still it's cheap) - in fact there are some I have considered getting for other people ...
* I've started my Tai Qi classes at the university - I enjoy them way more than learning Chinese, but I suppose I know why I am here (grumble mutter groan complain) ... still, it's nice to have this break for an hour or ninety minutes on a Thursday afternoon. The warm up is the worst bit, I don't mind the gentle jog or the basic stretches we do, but some of the more advanced stretches are beyond me at this early stage. Having jogged a bit, and stretched your legs and back sufficiently, stand upright with your arms at ninety degrees to your body, hands all the way outstretched, parallel to the ground. Now walk along but as you "walk" be sure to kick your outstretched hand with the foot of the same side. A real kick, a nice smack sound. I can barely touch my hand and that's with leaning forward a bit. My teacher (and his student of three years) can both kick their hands really quite hard and walk ten paces like this while making it look easy and graceful. And if you thought that was going to be a long way to come, try kicking the opposite hand while doing this "walk" ... it's HARD. Once that's over with though, we can learn Tai Qi, forms, movements, etc. I think breathing will follow soon, but I'm guessing you need to know how to stand and move a little before you can add breathing in (please, people with experience correct me if I'm wrong). I'm adding advancing in Tai Qi and general fitness / flexibility to my list of things to achieve before coming home.
* I bought slippers for the house. Despite the heating being on, our floor is COLD. Also it's dirty and this saves my socks getting covered in dust ... can I have a pipe now?
* Every time I go to the shops and read the Chinglish on the front covers (and insides) of various notebooks and paper, I crack up. I need to take a camera, some of this is priceless. My favourite today was either the one that read something like "I am XXXX, this is my friend, XXXXX, together we are the Piano Rabbits" (I'm as baffled as you are!), or the book which had lots of soppy stuff about love written on the front, along with a picture of a couple of love-heart sweets containing the words "YOU SLUT". Saw one for you two Lucy, but I thought you might be a bit upset they'd misspelt something terribly famous.
* I came top of my class for a recent test. What makes this worse though, is (a) "top" was only 81% (and there are some people there who must be better than I am) and (b) I didn't even know we were going to have a test, whereas some of these people DID. Oh, and (c) the teacher was going round helping people (wtf? it's a test!) - to my credit I wasn't among those asking for help, but she did come over and just force it on me. Oh well. I think if I score higher on the next test (which I KNOW about) they might consider moving me up a class, at least for grammar. I can hope.
* I've not written anyone letters for a while. This must be amended. Hopefully by Monday I will have something to put in the post for a number of people ... no promises though!
That's it for now I think. Anything else happens, it'll just have to wait.
In other news, I can't remember where I got to last time with this blog, so apologies for repetition.
* The heating came on - yay! - the evening of October 14th the pipes finally started to warm up and by the 15th they were well and truly hot. Now we've kind of got used to the ambience, the temperature varies depending on the time of day, the pipes will be hot at one point and drop down to just warm at others, though we're not really sure how it is determined ... sometimes it's tropical (especially in my room, which is very small) and other times it's just NICE. I like nice. Sorry mum I know it's a silly word, I shouldn't use it, but I just have, twice. Anyway, we're not freezing yet!
* The weather on the other hand is definitely pushing that way. Frost in the mornings on some of the plants and the ground, puddles that ice over a bit, a distinct chill in the air, and a certain need to wear layers of clothing and keep moving in an attempt to stay warm. I've even bought gloves! Yeah, it took me that long. But there was no need to worry about prices, as usual Xinjiang came through with some mega-cheap stuff, in fact of the two pairs I bought the cheaper one is probably the warmer (though made of woolly stuff, so not great when it gets wet) - these are basic winter gloves, not going to stop the supercold temperatures we will face later in the year, but great for now. RMB 7.50 (that's something like 70p, my how the pound has fallen, but still it's cheap) - in fact there are some I have considered getting for other people ...
* I've started my Tai Qi classes at the university - I enjoy them way more than learning Chinese, but I suppose I know why I am here (grumble mutter groan complain) ... still, it's nice to have this break for an hour or ninety minutes on a Thursday afternoon. The warm up is the worst bit, I don't mind the gentle jog or the basic stretches we do, but some of the more advanced stretches are beyond me at this early stage. Having jogged a bit, and stretched your legs and back sufficiently, stand upright with your arms at ninety degrees to your body, hands all the way outstretched, parallel to the ground. Now walk along but as you "walk" be sure to kick your outstretched hand with the foot of the same side. A real kick, a nice smack sound. I can barely touch my hand and that's with leaning forward a bit. My teacher (and his student of three years) can both kick their hands really quite hard and walk ten paces like this while making it look easy and graceful. And if you thought that was going to be a long way to come, try kicking the opposite hand while doing this "walk" ... it's HARD. Once that's over with though, we can learn Tai Qi, forms, movements, etc. I think breathing will follow soon, but I'm guessing you need to know how to stand and move a little before you can add breathing in (please, people with experience correct me if I'm wrong). I'm adding advancing in Tai Qi and general fitness / flexibility to my list of things to achieve before coming home.
* I bought slippers for the house. Despite the heating being on, our floor is COLD. Also it's dirty and this saves my socks getting covered in dust ... can I have a pipe now?
* Every time I go to the shops and read the Chinglish on the front covers (and insides) of various notebooks and paper, I crack up. I need to take a camera, some of this is priceless. My favourite today was either the one that read something like "I am XXXX, this is my friend, XXXXX, together we are the Piano Rabbits" (I'm as baffled as you are!), or the book which had lots of soppy stuff about love written on the front, along with a picture of a couple of love-heart sweets containing the words "YOU SLUT". Saw one for you two Lucy, but I thought you might be a bit upset they'd misspelt something terribly famous.
* I came top of my class for a recent test. What makes this worse though, is (a) "top" was only 81% (and there are some people there who must be better than I am) and (b) I didn't even know we were going to have a test, whereas some of these people DID. Oh, and (c) the teacher was going round helping people (wtf? it's a test!) - to my credit I wasn't among those asking for help, but she did come over and just force it on me. Oh well. I think if I score higher on the next test (which I KNOW about) they might consider moving me up a class, at least for grammar. I can hope.
* I've not written anyone letters for a while. This must be amended. Hopefully by Monday I will have something to put in the post for a number of people ... no promises though!
That's it for now I think. Anything else happens, it'll just have to wait.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Various Happenings from the Last Few Days
i've given up trying to remember what happened recently and when, if it was that important i'd be writing about it ... here's some events from the past couple of days though.
My Residency Permit
Getting this piece of golddust was like ascending Everest, or attempting to find Nirvana. Seriously, the Chinese system is shit. About two weeks ago we applied for our permits (this was after getting the temporary permit from our LOCAL police station) from the main office in Urumqi. This took two days, because on day one we were turned away at 1330 when everyone buggered off to have lunch. At the same time. I got annoyed about it in a previous blog, so I'm not going to waste breath here. The receipt they gave us said to come back on the 30th of September, no problem, so we did. Only it was closed. So we went the whole of our week off school without our main form of ID. What would have happened had we needed to leave the country in a hurry for whatever reason, I don't know. We went back the other day (October 7th) to get them ... easier said than done. First we needed to take a ticket to determine our place in the queue (and hope the chinese would play nicely!) - but which one? Miss Stone-Face on the desk was very little help but she did show me which ticket I needed, and so Marta and I got numbers 4007 and 4008. Fortunately the queue was at 4003, and moving relatively quickly, so we didn't have too long to wait. While sitting there Tanya turned up and took ticket 4011, so at least she wasn't too far behind us. Approaching StoneFace I handed over my receipt. She didn't seem in a good mood, so I didnt bother with pleasantries, I'm growing quite calloused to public service officials here, if they're not interested in being polite, neither am I. She found my passport and then motioned me to her colleague at the next counter (literally 6 feet along the desk), who took my receipt, ran it through a machine, stamped it, and gave me two of the carbon copies back before telling me I needed to pay the 400 RMB fee at the bank next door. WHAT?! Do it over the damn counter, woman. (Tanya said the last time she did this, she just paid over the desk, none of this bank malarky). But that's how it works, so off we went and got one ticket for the three of us at the bank. It didnt take too long to get to our place in the queue (about 15 minutes) and there was minimal fuss with the actual payment. Back to the PSB, where the bank-charge woman stamped our receipts AGAIN, and then motioned us back to StoneFace. This is a really good example of Chinese stupidity. Finally we got our passports pretty much chucked at us by this unpleasant dour woman, and with that we were free to go, legal residents of Urumqi, Xinjiang. At last.
Buying a Mattress (YAY)
I think everyone will be pleased to know that I finally found time (and could be bothered) to go and buy a mattress. I didn't think it would make THAT much difference - given that I've got used to sleeping on my makeshift bedding for the past 5 weeks - but it really does. And it was worth the slight hassle involved. In Urumqi there is a GIANT SHOPPING MALL - more of a market place but I digress - it's ridiculously large, the building from the outside is impressively massive in itself, and inside it stretches on as far as you can see ... not just this, but the site is split over two sides, it's incomprehensibly huge. Our first attempt, we went in the wrong side, and spent a while browsing what looked like very upmarket stores, not at all what we had been led to imagine it was like. We tried the other side however, and found an emporium of low-cost high-quality goods, all of which can be haggled over (joy). Although I found a mattress stall very quickly, I didnt have the exact measurements for my bed (d'oh!) and I couldn't risk it being too long, since my bed is a TIGHT fit in my room ... So we had to come back the next day, except I left my measure-strings (I dont have a tape measure, so I cut lengths of string, one for width and one for length, clever eh?) at home, which necessitated an extra taxi journey. Oops. Finally we made it, and I found a mattress I liked - in retrospect I could have had the cheaper, slightly more compressible one, but I didnt think it would fit on my bed, and this one felt nice so I just went with it. Like I say, my back is much harder and stronger than when I came here. They didn't hike the price up massively like friends said they would - actually they seemed really quite nice. There was some mild haggling, but I actually asked first if I could negotiate, and the owner of the store agreed, but within reason. We came to 550 RMB including delivery. Fair enough really. I was prepared to pay more than that overall!!! :) Getting it in the house was a struggle, because there was some car jam created by my driver arriving outside my flat, so he had to leave sharpish (in fairness I told him it was okay and I could manage) - but I underestimated the weight of this thing! I was struggling it inside when an old man came in the stairwell and offered to help; I turned the offer down because the guy was OLD, we're talking late 70s early 80s here ... but he insisted and together we got this thing inside my house (he offered to move it to the bedroom but I said a firm no, because my room wasn't tidy enough to get it in there, and also because he had more than helped!) - but the surprise came when I went to the stairs to get my water bottle, and picked up his bags for him. The old guy gamely walks with these HEAVY bags of shopping at least twice a week from what I can work out. Each carrier bag must have been about eight kilos, minimum. And this guy is not even uncommon around here - certainly the older generation in China knows how to look after itself!
Long story short, my room is now a lot more comfortable, the mattress is covered, I have a second, Chinese style thin mattress, also covered on top of it to make it cushy, and a duvet on top ... it's all bright colours (orange bunnies on the duvet and bright pink flowers on the Chinese mattress) so my room feels a lot warmer, and of course I now enjoy spending time in here. Viva Winter.
Settling Down A Bit
I sometimes got really homesick being here. It's never happened before, so I'm quite unused to dealing with it. But anyway, yesterday I had a wonderful day, which made me forget (mostly) about not being with people I love in England. As I went to my first class, a Chinese girl stopped me and asked if I spoke English (I love it when they ask that, as if they think I'm not a native speaker, I get a kick out of saying that not only do I speak English, I AM English) ... she wanted help with something, so I said okay (not even sure what she needed help with!) but please meet me after my class. 1200 and she was there, almost on the dot, thanking me in advance - haha, I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing! We found a classroom that wasn't being used, and she introduced herself (Ava) and explained the situation. She's an English student, and there's a national English competition taking place, but to select people from each province there are obviously local rounds to take part in. Makes sense really. There are 3 parts to this competition - a prepared speech delivered from memory, an impromptu speech (not sure how it works), and a Q+A session at the end. Everything is done in front of an audience (both Chinese and native English speakers), and a panel of judges (of course!). She needed help tweaking her prepared speech before the competition (at the weekend!!! So soon!), and would I please assist? Haha, sure! I thought I was going to have to translate an email! Phew! Turns out there are no native speaking foreign teachers at XNU this year / semester, so unlike other universities she'd desperately been trying to find a foreign student. I spent an hour sorting her stuff out - her topic was nice and abstract so there was a lot of imagery to work around ... and finally it was done and she was happy, but would I also do her friend's work? Yeah, alright. Fortunately her friend (Annie) had chosen a much more literal topic and the writing was more straightforward, I only had to spend about 30 minutes smoothing it out and making sure she understood why I was changing bits and bobs. Mint, job done. They thanked me and I've now made 2 new Chinese friends (yay) - I hope they do well this weekend!
I then had lunch with another Chinese friend, a guy I met in a mobile phone store when I was buying my Xinjiang SIM card, who I had given my number to (wasn't sure about it but I figured I needed friends!) ... and so we met for the first time in a month and a half, and it turns out I made a really good decision giving him my number. The guy (Fei) is really nice. He's local, so I'm guessing he knows all there is to know about Urumqi, he's patient with my Chinese, and he's easy to get along with, which is good since I'm meeting up with him partly to improve Chinese and partly to help him with his English ... We had a really good lunch, and have plans to make this a weekly thing, with some topics to discuss so we can focus our learning. After this, as if I'd not done enough already, I went to the gym, had a good workout, and generally felt much better about being here. So maybe I'm settling in after all.
Thanks and General Appreciations
I'd like to thank some people without whom my trip so far would have been pretty much unbearable. Sorry if I miss you out, this is being done off the top of my head:
Mum - for the numerous letters, photos and aid parcels (more on that next post). I've not received your cake yet, but I live in hope!
Lucy - for writing at least 10 sides of A4 every time you send me a letter, which comes at the ridiculous cost of £1.22 each time (I wonder how the recession will change that?!), for the emails, texts, and long phone calls, even the ones that wake me up in the morning.
Nana - I know you don't read this, but your letters and that phone call are all very much appreciated. :) I've replied too!
Mariamelia - for the comments and postcard that now forms part of my growing wall decorations! My regards to your daughter, wherever she's got herself now ... !
Fiona - who would have thought I'd still be in touch with someone I lived with for just 3 months in first year at uni? And who would have thought the same person would be sending me coffee and chocolates from Northern Ireland to China?! If I've got money next summer (and I hope I do), I'm coming over NI for sure, let me know if there's something Chinese you want! I can't wait for your parcel :)
My Postman
- Zhou Qi Ming is a godsend. The guy calls me when there's a package for me, arranges a time to meet me at the depot, has a chat, speaks nice and slow, helps my friends out when they don't know where their depot is (because the postmen scribble Chinese on their missed-call slips), and seems easy going with a sense of humour!
Anyone Who Is Going To Send Me Stuff - I can't wait! Thanks in advance!
My Residency Permit
Getting this piece of golddust was like ascending Everest, or attempting to find Nirvana. Seriously, the Chinese system is shit. About two weeks ago we applied for our permits (this was after getting the temporary permit from our LOCAL police station) from the main office in Urumqi. This took two days, because on day one we were turned away at 1330 when everyone buggered off to have lunch. At the same time. I got annoyed about it in a previous blog, so I'm not going to waste breath here. The receipt they gave us said to come back on the 30th of September, no problem, so we did. Only it was closed. So we went the whole of our week off school without our main form of ID. What would have happened had we needed to leave the country in a hurry for whatever reason, I don't know. We went back the other day (October 7th) to get them ... easier said than done. First we needed to take a ticket to determine our place in the queue (and hope the chinese would play nicely!) - but which one? Miss Stone-Face on the desk was very little help but she did show me which ticket I needed, and so Marta and I got numbers 4007 and 4008. Fortunately the queue was at 4003, and moving relatively quickly, so we didn't have too long to wait. While sitting there Tanya turned up and took ticket 4011, so at least she wasn't too far behind us. Approaching StoneFace I handed over my receipt. She didn't seem in a good mood, so I didnt bother with pleasantries, I'm growing quite calloused to public service officials here, if they're not interested in being polite, neither am I. She found my passport and then motioned me to her colleague at the next counter (literally 6 feet along the desk), who took my receipt, ran it through a machine, stamped it, and gave me two of the carbon copies back before telling me I needed to pay the 400 RMB fee at the bank next door. WHAT?! Do it over the damn counter, woman. (Tanya said the last time she did this, she just paid over the desk, none of this bank malarky). But that's how it works, so off we went and got one ticket for the three of us at the bank. It didnt take too long to get to our place in the queue (about 15 minutes) and there was minimal fuss with the actual payment. Back to the PSB, where the bank-charge woman stamped our receipts AGAIN, and then motioned us back to StoneFace. This is a really good example of Chinese stupidity. Finally we got our passports pretty much chucked at us by this unpleasant dour woman, and with that we were free to go, legal residents of Urumqi, Xinjiang. At last.
Buying a Mattress (YAY)
I think everyone will be pleased to know that I finally found time (and could be bothered) to go and buy a mattress. I didn't think it would make THAT much difference - given that I've got used to sleeping on my makeshift bedding for the past 5 weeks - but it really does. And it was worth the slight hassle involved. In Urumqi there is a GIANT SHOPPING MALL - more of a market place but I digress - it's ridiculously large, the building from the outside is impressively massive in itself, and inside it stretches on as far as you can see ... not just this, but the site is split over two sides, it's incomprehensibly huge. Our first attempt, we went in the wrong side, and spent a while browsing what looked like very upmarket stores, not at all what we had been led to imagine it was like. We tried the other side however, and found an emporium of low-cost high-quality goods, all of which can be haggled over (joy). Although I found a mattress stall very quickly, I didnt have the exact measurements for my bed (d'oh!) and I couldn't risk it being too long, since my bed is a TIGHT fit in my room ... So we had to come back the next day, except I left my measure-strings (I dont have a tape measure, so I cut lengths of string, one for width and one for length, clever eh?) at home, which necessitated an extra taxi journey. Oops. Finally we made it, and I found a mattress I liked - in retrospect I could have had the cheaper, slightly more compressible one, but I didnt think it would fit on my bed, and this one felt nice so I just went with it. Like I say, my back is much harder and stronger than when I came here. They didn't hike the price up massively like friends said they would - actually they seemed really quite nice. There was some mild haggling, but I actually asked first if I could negotiate, and the owner of the store agreed, but within reason. We came to 550 RMB including delivery. Fair enough really. I was prepared to pay more than that overall!!! :) Getting it in the house was a struggle, because there was some car jam created by my driver arriving outside my flat, so he had to leave sharpish (in fairness I told him it was okay and I could manage) - but I underestimated the weight of this thing! I was struggling it inside when an old man came in the stairwell and offered to help; I turned the offer down because the guy was OLD, we're talking late 70s early 80s here ... but he insisted and together we got this thing inside my house (he offered to move it to the bedroom but I said a firm no, because my room wasn't tidy enough to get it in there, and also because he had more than helped!) - but the surprise came when I went to the stairs to get my water bottle, and picked up his bags for him. The old guy gamely walks with these HEAVY bags of shopping at least twice a week from what I can work out. Each carrier bag must have been about eight kilos, minimum. And this guy is not even uncommon around here - certainly the older generation in China knows how to look after itself!
Long story short, my room is now a lot more comfortable, the mattress is covered, I have a second, Chinese style thin mattress, also covered on top of it to make it cushy, and a duvet on top ... it's all bright colours (orange bunnies on the duvet and bright pink flowers on the Chinese mattress) so my room feels a lot warmer, and of course I now enjoy spending time in here. Viva Winter.
Settling Down A Bit
I sometimes got really homesick being here. It's never happened before, so I'm quite unused to dealing with it. But anyway, yesterday I had a wonderful day, which made me forget (mostly) about not being with people I love in England. As I went to my first class, a Chinese girl stopped me and asked if I spoke English (I love it when they ask that, as if they think I'm not a native speaker, I get a kick out of saying that not only do I speak English, I AM English) ... she wanted help with something, so I said okay (not even sure what she needed help with!) but please meet me after my class. 1200 and she was there, almost on the dot, thanking me in advance - haha, I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing! We found a classroom that wasn't being used, and she introduced herself (Ava) and explained the situation. She's an English student, and there's a national English competition taking place, but to select people from each province there are obviously local rounds to take part in. Makes sense really. There are 3 parts to this competition - a prepared speech delivered from memory, an impromptu speech (not sure how it works), and a Q+A session at the end. Everything is done in front of an audience (both Chinese and native English speakers), and a panel of judges (of course!). She needed help tweaking her prepared speech before the competition (at the weekend!!! So soon!), and would I please assist? Haha, sure! I thought I was going to have to translate an email! Phew! Turns out there are no native speaking foreign teachers at XNU this year / semester, so unlike other universities she'd desperately been trying to find a foreign student. I spent an hour sorting her stuff out - her topic was nice and abstract so there was a lot of imagery to work around ... and finally it was done and she was happy, but would I also do her friend's work? Yeah, alright. Fortunately her friend (Annie) had chosen a much more literal topic and the writing was more straightforward, I only had to spend about 30 minutes smoothing it out and making sure she understood why I was changing bits and bobs. Mint, job done. They thanked me and I've now made 2 new Chinese friends (yay) - I hope they do well this weekend!
I then had lunch with another Chinese friend, a guy I met in a mobile phone store when I was buying my Xinjiang SIM card, who I had given my number to (wasn't sure about it but I figured I needed friends!) ... and so we met for the first time in a month and a half, and it turns out I made a really good decision giving him my number. The guy (Fei) is really nice. He's local, so I'm guessing he knows all there is to know about Urumqi, he's patient with my Chinese, and he's easy to get along with, which is good since I'm meeting up with him partly to improve Chinese and partly to help him with his English ... We had a really good lunch, and have plans to make this a weekly thing, with some topics to discuss so we can focus our learning. After this, as if I'd not done enough already, I went to the gym, had a good workout, and generally felt much better about being here. So maybe I'm settling in after all.
Thanks and General Appreciations
I'd like to thank some people without whom my trip so far would have been pretty much unbearable. Sorry if I miss you out, this is being done off the top of my head:
Mum - for the numerous letters, photos and aid parcels (more on that next post). I've not received your cake yet, but I live in hope!
Lucy - for writing at least 10 sides of A4 every time you send me a letter, which comes at the ridiculous cost of £1.22 each time (I wonder how the recession will change that?!), for the emails, texts, and long phone calls, even the ones that wake me up in the morning.
Nana - I know you don't read this, but your letters and that phone call are all very much appreciated. :) I've replied too!
Mariamelia - for the comments and postcard that now forms part of my growing wall decorations! My regards to your daughter, wherever she's got herself now ... !
Fiona - who would have thought I'd still be in touch with someone I lived with for just 3 months in first year at uni? And who would have thought the same person would be sending me coffee and chocolates from Northern Ireland to China?! If I've got money next summer (and I hope I do), I'm coming over NI for sure, let me know if there's something Chinese you want! I can't wait for your parcel :)
My Postman
- Zhou Qi Ming is a godsend. The guy calls me when there's a package for me, arranges a time to meet me at the depot, has a chat, speaks nice and slow, helps my friends out when they don't know where their depot is (because the postmen scribble Chinese on their missed-call slips), and seems easy going with a sense of humour!
Anyone Who Is Going To Send Me Stuff - I can't wait! Thanks in advance!
Thursday, 2 October 2008
So Much Has Been Happening Part 1 : National Day Awards
I've done it again - I've left blogging for so long that I don't know where to begin any more ... damn. I'm currently in the middle of an 8-day break, which is really strange because: (a) in order to give us this break we had classes at the weekend, to make up for what we would "lose" during this holiday, (b) we've only been at uni for a month and already we're having some kind of half-term time off, and (c) perhaps most annoying, our next proper break isn't until January 15th. I don't count the one day that we get off for New Year's Day. What this adds up to is that this weeklong holiday (for National Day? The PRC is 59 years old now) is our last break for the next 14 weeks. By UK standards that's a ridiculous length of time not to have a break while in education. By the standards of other countries close to China, however, it's pretty normal, as my friend and classmate Tanya (she's Russian) confirms. Anyway, while I'm on this holiday I thought I should update the blog, and see what's been happening in the past 10 days or so (from memory, so things might not be totally chronological). Also, it's quite long, so I think these updates will have to be in sections.
National Day Foreign Experts Award Ceremony
When I was brought into the corridor during a lesson-break to have a chat with one of my teachers, I really had no idea what he was on about when he said that a few of us foreign students (one from each country?!) would be having a party ... I thought maybe Xinjiang Normal University had finally got its act together and was organising something for its foreign guests to do so they would get to know one another ... well, I was wrong. But as it turns out it wasn't entirely bad. The downside to being invited to this party was the question of attire. I was told I couldn't wear casual clothes at all, it was a formal thing. Damn, why did I leave all my smart clothes back in the UK - oh yes that's right, because I am a STUDENT and not some kind of ambassador businessman. Smart people will say I should always have at least one set of good clothes with me, and pedantic people will add that I am an "ambassador for Newcastle University", but to be honest, when I was packing these were not on my mind. More pressing was how I would lug my life around Shanghai, on a train, and across Urumqi. And to that end I kept things as light as possible. So, cue me having 24 hours to find "good" clothes, having just decided on a weekly budget, which would now get shot right down because of this impromptu party that I wasn't so much invited to as told to attend.
I'll cut my frantic searching short by saying that I tried the "normal" shops first, and didnt see anything I liked especially and that it was all quite expensive by Chinese standards (though cheap as chips by Western views). I wandered desolately home and on the way I saw a building I'd never been in (but passed many times). Turns out it's a huge indoor market, so I spent some time trawling round there - they had everything, jackets, coats, gloves, shirts, food, crockery, you name it. Eventually I found a stall with some good quality trousers at a reduced price (which meant the owner wasn't willing to bargain over them, which I thought was a shame because they could have been cheaper - yes, China has made me that tight already), but two pairs of good trousers (sort of thick, like denim, but not quite like jeans), one brown and one black, for 100 yuan (about 8 quid). Not the best deal in the world but not the worst either, and look I was pressed for time here, I still didn't even have a shirt or good shoes!
The shirt I acquired from a supermarket, for 40 yuan, yes yes it's most likely a phenomenal rip off, but I didn't have the time to be running around markets or whatever finding the "best deal". It took about 30 minutes to buy it though, because there's no place to try on the item you want to buy, and the store muppets were so gormless they didnt measure me until right at the end, when all I had been asking them to do before was measure me, so I could see what Chinese size I was. Really, shopping in this stupid country gets me down. It did in 2006 and it does now. I really hate it. The shoes were a story in themselves, after trying some local stores and not getting anything I wanted (I actually had to argue with one shop assistant who kept giving me sizes smaller than UK 9 that I COULD NOT FIT IN THE SIZE 8.5 SHOES BECAUSE I AM AT LEAST A SIZE 9 AND STOP GIVING ME SMALLER SHOES THEY WILL NOT WORK), I took a bus about three stops further than I'd ever been before, just to see if there was anything I could see, a bit of an adventure and also because my local area wasn't offering anything decent by way of shoes. I ended up in a place called Bei Men (北门) or Northgate if you want a literal translation. I wandered around a bit there, not seeing anything great until I chanced on a military surplus store. Heck, if theyre anything like in England, you can surely pick up something half decent looking which will also double as casual shoes AND be alright for the beginning of winter (ideally I wanted a pair of Converse (or lookalikes) but they didnt have my size in any stores) - I was trying to save money here, I don't need / want three pairs of shoes for different things, I just wanted one all rounder that would stop me using my gym trainers as casual wear. Anyway, I went into this store, and they had some alright looking stuff, and it was all dead cheap compared to my budget and what I had seen in other places. They didn't have smart shoes in this first store, but they had boots, and I was thinking ahead for when winter comes, should I just get some military boots, slightly large so I can whack two layers of socks in them, and be done with the funny looks I might get? So I asked to try them on ... and the woman had to (oh no) get off her arse and go out to a storeroom and come back with a pair of boots for me to try. Well, they fit alright, but I suddenly realised they weren't quite what I wanted for a formal dinner, and also they would need some breaking in, which is fine but takes time and hurts and I didn't want to be doing it now. But for 185 RMB it was worth bearing them in mind. I said I didnt want to buy them. Or rather that I wanted to buy them but I had no money on me, I was just looking. This SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF the women running this shop, but I've become quite callous when it comes to shopping in this damn country - if you run to "assist" me when I enter your store, I will leave. If you get offended at something trivial, I will leave. I HATE "customer service" in the UK, I've worked for companies where you have to "greet" (even if this is just acknowledgement, like "hey") the customer within X seconds of them entering the store, and then approach them for a sale after a couple of minutes. They at least had some "research" behind their methods, but it was still annoying as hell for both us and the customers I'm sure. Here it's a bit like that, but there's no slowly slowly approach, it's full on pouncing on the customer the minute they enter. Or, as with this case, feeling really put out if the customer doesnt want to buy after you've helped them find something in their size. What? Like you were doing so much before? I came in your shop and you were SAT ON YOUR BACKSIDE WATCHING TV. I think that's what annoyed her most, is she had to get up. So I left, because I couldn't be bothered with her attitude, and if I want the boots maybe I'll go back there.
Maybe. Except when I got out of the shop I looked down the street and it was another case of Chinese idiocy - they don't put one store selling an item and then the next store a distance away so there is some kind of competition and maybe someone will make a profit. No, they take a store selling an item / type of item and then put seven of them right next to each other. So I basically had my pick of all the military surplus stores, right down this road, and I felt really not bad at all about ditching the first one because in some of the others the people were a lot nicer! It actually happened that in the second store I found a pair of shoes that would have been good, but the bloke didnt have my size (shame, because he was really nice). And it was actually the LAST store I got to that said they had my size, but fetching my size came with a strict proviso. If they fit me, would I buy them? (the implication being that they wouldnt go fetching them for me just to try on, maybe the store down the other end had telephoned everyone to say watch out for the white bastard). By this point I was quite sure I liked these shoes, and I NEEDED some for this dinner, so I said yes, they got my shoes, they fit, and I bought them. 85 RMB for a pair of shoes that feel like slippers on the inside, look smart enough on the outside, and will probably be fine until the weather gets much wetter and then I'll need something a bit more waterproof and above the ankle, like boots.
So now I had my "formal" wear, it's a shame we don't have an iron so the shirt had the lines from where it was in the box, and I didnt have a smart jacket or jumper but you can't win them all. I went to the dinner with a shirt that had box-creases, trousers that were brand new, and shoes that passed at a glance for formal wear. Was it worth it? Sort of. The award ceremony itself was OKAY (it was the Tian Shan awards for outstanding contributions by Foreign Experts for the economic and social development of Xinjiang Region), the reason we were there was because one of the lecturers at XNU was receiving an award, and we were foreign students (so, maybe they thought the next generation of people to potentially receive this if we helped Xinjiang later in life), but there were some rather simpering speeches made, notably by one of the award recipients (a Brit I think, though his accent was strange), who has either been brainwashed, had a VERY PRIVILEGED look at Xinjiang, or was simply paid to say some nice stuff, who knows, he sounded sincere anyway. That aside, it was really the entertainment and food that got me. This meeting was held in the Sheraton, and it didn't disappoint - courses upon courses came to our table, tea and wine flowed freely (though they kept filling the glass only about 1/3 of the way up, which was annoying because if I'm going to have wine I want a full glass, not to have to keep asking for more), and there were several Uyghur dances and songs performed. All the while I was chatting with newfound foreign student friends, and it was actually a very good night out (Nikki I know you are reading this, Gregg says hello).
I didnt have my camera, so I cant put photos up, but maybe there'll be a couple from the night, because one of our teachers was there with a v snazzy camera and he took some group photos while we were at the table together. It was interesting, and kind of worth the rushing around buying clothes ... well I think that's enough to write about for the moment, I'll keep updating throughout the week.
National Day Foreign Experts Award Ceremony
When I was brought into the corridor during a lesson-break to have a chat with one of my teachers, I really had no idea what he was on about when he said that a few of us foreign students (one from each country?!) would be having a party ... I thought maybe Xinjiang Normal University had finally got its act together and was organising something for its foreign guests to do so they would get to know one another ... well, I was wrong. But as it turns out it wasn't entirely bad. The downside to being invited to this party was the question of attire. I was told I couldn't wear casual clothes at all, it was a formal thing. Damn, why did I leave all my smart clothes back in the UK - oh yes that's right, because I am a STUDENT and not some kind of ambassador businessman. Smart people will say I should always have at least one set of good clothes with me, and pedantic people will add that I am an "ambassador for Newcastle University", but to be honest, when I was packing these were not on my mind. More pressing was how I would lug my life around Shanghai, on a train, and across Urumqi. And to that end I kept things as light as possible. So, cue me having 24 hours to find "good" clothes, having just decided on a weekly budget, which would now get shot right down because of this impromptu party that I wasn't so much invited to as told to attend.
I'll cut my frantic searching short by saying that I tried the "normal" shops first, and didnt see anything I liked especially and that it was all quite expensive by Chinese standards (though cheap as chips by Western views). I wandered desolately home and on the way I saw a building I'd never been in (but passed many times). Turns out it's a huge indoor market, so I spent some time trawling round there - they had everything, jackets, coats, gloves, shirts, food, crockery, you name it. Eventually I found a stall with some good quality trousers at a reduced price (which meant the owner wasn't willing to bargain over them, which I thought was a shame because they could have been cheaper - yes, China has made me that tight already), but two pairs of good trousers (sort of thick, like denim, but not quite like jeans), one brown and one black, for 100 yuan (about 8 quid). Not the best deal in the world but not the worst either, and look I was pressed for time here, I still didn't even have a shirt or good shoes!
The shirt I acquired from a supermarket, for 40 yuan, yes yes it's most likely a phenomenal rip off, but I didn't have the time to be running around markets or whatever finding the "best deal". It took about 30 minutes to buy it though, because there's no place to try on the item you want to buy, and the store muppets were so gormless they didnt measure me until right at the end, when all I had been asking them to do before was measure me, so I could see what Chinese size I was. Really, shopping in this stupid country gets me down. It did in 2006 and it does now. I really hate it. The shoes were a story in themselves, after trying some local stores and not getting anything I wanted (I actually had to argue with one shop assistant who kept giving me sizes smaller than UK 9 that I COULD NOT FIT IN THE SIZE 8.5 SHOES BECAUSE I AM AT LEAST A SIZE 9 AND STOP GIVING ME SMALLER SHOES THEY WILL NOT WORK), I took a bus about three stops further than I'd ever been before, just to see if there was anything I could see, a bit of an adventure and also because my local area wasn't offering anything decent by way of shoes. I ended up in a place called Bei Men (北门) or Northgate if you want a literal translation. I wandered around a bit there, not seeing anything great until I chanced on a military surplus store. Heck, if theyre anything like in England, you can surely pick up something half decent looking which will also double as casual shoes AND be alright for the beginning of winter (ideally I wanted a pair of Converse (or lookalikes) but they didnt have my size in any stores) - I was trying to save money here, I don't need / want three pairs of shoes for different things, I just wanted one all rounder that would stop me using my gym trainers as casual wear. Anyway, I went into this store, and they had some alright looking stuff, and it was all dead cheap compared to my budget and what I had seen in other places. They didn't have smart shoes in this first store, but they had boots, and I was thinking ahead for when winter comes, should I just get some military boots, slightly large so I can whack two layers of socks in them, and be done with the funny looks I might get? So I asked to try them on ... and the woman had to (oh no) get off her arse and go out to a storeroom and come back with a pair of boots for me to try. Well, they fit alright, but I suddenly realised they weren't quite what I wanted for a formal dinner, and also they would need some breaking in, which is fine but takes time and hurts and I didn't want to be doing it now. But for 185 RMB it was worth bearing them in mind. I said I didnt want to buy them. Or rather that I wanted to buy them but I had no money on me, I was just looking. This SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF the women running this shop, but I've become quite callous when it comes to shopping in this damn country - if you run to "assist" me when I enter your store, I will leave. If you get offended at something trivial, I will leave. I HATE "customer service" in the UK, I've worked for companies where you have to "greet" (even if this is just acknowledgement, like "hey") the customer within X seconds of them entering the store, and then approach them for a sale after a couple of minutes. They at least had some "research" behind their methods, but it was still annoying as hell for both us and the customers I'm sure. Here it's a bit like that, but there's no slowly slowly approach, it's full on pouncing on the customer the minute they enter. Or, as with this case, feeling really put out if the customer doesnt want to buy after you've helped them find something in their size. What? Like you were doing so much before? I came in your shop and you were SAT ON YOUR BACKSIDE WATCHING TV. I think that's what annoyed her most, is she had to get up. So I left, because I couldn't be bothered with her attitude, and if I want the boots maybe I'll go back there.
Maybe. Except when I got out of the shop I looked down the street and it was another case of Chinese idiocy - they don't put one store selling an item and then the next store a distance away so there is some kind of competition and maybe someone will make a profit. No, they take a store selling an item / type of item and then put seven of them right next to each other. So I basically had my pick of all the military surplus stores, right down this road, and I felt really not bad at all about ditching the first one because in some of the others the people were a lot nicer! It actually happened that in the second store I found a pair of shoes that would have been good, but the bloke didnt have my size (shame, because he was really nice). And it was actually the LAST store I got to that said they had my size, but fetching my size came with a strict proviso. If they fit me, would I buy them? (the implication being that they wouldnt go fetching them for me just to try on, maybe the store down the other end had telephoned everyone to say watch out for the white bastard). By this point I was quite sure I liked these shoes, and I NEEDED some for this dinner, so I said yes, they got my shoes, they fit, and I bought them. 85 RMB for a pair of shoes that feel like slippers on the inside, look smart enough on the outside, and will probably be fine until the weather gets much wetter and then I'll need something a bit more waterproof and above the ankle, like boots.
So now I had my "formal" wear, it's a shame we don't have an iron so the shirt had the lines from where it was in the box, and I didnt have a smart jacket or jumper but you can't win them all. I went to the dinner with a shirt that had box-creases, trousers that were brand new, and shoes that passed at a glance for formal wear. Was it worth it? Sort of. The award ceremony itself was OKAY (it was the Tian Shan awards for outstanding contributions by Foreign Experts for the economic and social development of Xinjiang Region), the reason we were there was because one of the lecturers at XNU was receiving an award, and we were foreign students (so, maybe they thought the next generation of people to potentially receive this if we helped Xinjiang later in life), but there were some rather simpering speeches made, notably by one of the award recipients (a Brit I think, though his accent was strange), who has either been brainwashed, had a VERY PRIVILEGED look at Xinjiang, or was simply paid to say some nice stuff, who knows, he sounded sincere anyway. That aside, it was really the entertainment and food that got me. This meeting was held in the Sheraton, and it didn't disappoint - courses upon courses came to our table, tea and wine flowed freely (though they kept filling the glass only about 1/3 of the way up, which was annoying because if I'm going to have wine I want a full glass, not to have to keep asking for more), and there were several Uyghur dances and songs performed. All the while I was chatting with newfound foreign student friends, and it was actually a very good night out (Nikki I know you are reading this, Gregg says hello).
I didnt have my camera, so I cant put photos up, but maybe there'll be a couple from the night, because one of our teachers was there with a v snazzy camera and he took some group photos while we were at the table together. It was interesting, and kind of worth the rushing around buying clothes ... well I think that's enough to write about for the moment, I'll keep updating throughout the week.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Pissup in a Brewery, Anyone?
*There was an alternative title to this post. I'll leave it up to your imaginations, suffice to say it was clean but very much taking the biscuit*
Will it never end? Seems like we get a couple of days when things run smoothly, and then everything hits the fan again. Two examples from the past two days.
POSTING A PRESENT ABROAD
How hard can it be to find a post office with an international service? This is a big deal - every other country I have been to has a facility for international postage in every post office, regardless of size, location, or how often this function is required. Sending a package to another country is as simple as going to a desk, filling out the required forms, and watching your post disappear into the black hole of the post office backroom. Here, it's enough if I can find a place that's open when I want it to be. Doesnt help that on the most recent holiday (Mid Autumn Festival?) the post offices stay closed but the banks open. Kind of like an odd bank holiday. So my second attempt to send this parcel was scuppered by poor timing (my first was ruined by the post muppet telling me that the present - a mug, yes you guessed correctly Lucy - was for drinking tea, and the letters -rolled up inside the mug for convenience - were for posting; actually I thought this was quite insulting and I wanted to hit the bloke square in the face for being so obnoxious, I was already having a crap day). Anyway, finally the post offices were open and I thought I would get this sorted once and for all. I went in and was informed there was no international service at that office. Honestly, what is wrong with this stupid place? I asked where I could find a branch to send my package and they said Hongshan. I asked if that was the one near the Xinhua Bookstore and they said yes, take the 101 bus (yes, yes, I know THAT). So I took the bus, it was the middle of the day, blazing hot, and I wasn't feeling good at all. But I got there, and it was a lot cooler inside, and then the fun began again. Turns out they don't have an international service. And after I got quite frustrated with them, it turns out they aren't the Hongshan branch, it's another 2 stops up the road. Gaaaaargh. I asked why they couldnt just have an international service in all branches like in England (or anywhere else for that matter) and was told (in English), "Ah, but that is your country and ... this is China" (yes, it IS China, which is fast becoming synonymous for "difficult" and "hopelessly slow" - aptly I learnt a very good Chinese word this week, 乱 (luan) which means "messy" or "disorganised".) Feeling even worse, I went to the Hongshan branch, where (after a LOT of hassle, rewriting my address on the parcel, and filling out various customs forms - acerbically I might add, the frustration by this point becoming tangible) the package was good to go and all that remained was the small matter of RMB 86 to pay for it. WHAT?! GBP £7.00!!!!!!! for a small parcel?! Gobsmacked, and with no other option, I paid for this service, but really, that is extortionate. I think post day is going to be a once a week, maybe once every ten days affair, and will mainly be limited to sending letters, certainly nothing much bigger if that's how much I'm going to have to pay!
On the plus side I wasn't required to show my passport (a first, maybe?)
OBTAINING A RESIDENCY PERMIT
It has been about 10 days since we got our temporary residents' permits, which took about 18 days from arriving in China (there was a 30 day limit, it wasn't exactly optional, but the process took forever). Now we need the permanent ones (apparently we have another 30 days to get this sorted, good, we'll probably need it), which are both a sheet of paper and a sticker in the passport (I think). This morning we finally got the uni to give us all the necessary documents for this permit, and off we went to the PSB office. For the record, our handbooks state that a member of the international school staff should accompany us, but I didn't see anyone offering, and like most other things I'm beginning to suspect it was a load of mouth and not much trousers. We got to the PSB offices at about 1220, took a ticket when we went in and noted the number ... 1070 ... the display was reading number 1032 or something ridiculously far from our turn, and as usual a massive crowd of people was aimlessly shoving and trying to plonk their docs on the table first (despite this numbering system, it would seem the Chinese attitude of "just barge and shove and get in front of everyone else" has infected foreigners now) ... so we decided to go for lunch and see what the numbering system was doing when we got back. about 45 minutes later and it was all the way up to 1042. hardly an improvement, and quite frankly shocking - if these people would actually QUEUE and follow some sort of discipline, I'm sure it would have gone a lot quicker. And finally, at 1330, the guard from the front door comes along and starts making a cut off point, because the office stops working around then (WHY?!) and informs us they will reopen at 10 the next day, please come back then. So we are skipping classes (I sent my teacher an apologetic text, explaining this), just to get this stupid bureaucractic rubbish done, when it should have been sorted weeks ago, we should have had more assistance, and it certainly shouldn't have taken longer than today to finish.
In brief, I would suggest the following changes to improve efficiency and keep people happy:
* Make your postal service, just that.
* Do the same for your banks (remember the hassle we went through earlier?)
* Work proper hours, and don't send everyone off to lunch at the same damn time, that's what SHIFTS were invented for.
* Research, and subsequently enforce, the idea of queues in public offices (at least, if not everywhere)
* University, if you say you are going to provide a service, provide it.
As soon as we have this stupid permit sorted, we are going out to celebrate in a small (but very nice) restaurant near our house. And we're taking at least one of our teachers with us, we have two absolute stars to thank.
Will it never end? Seems like we get a couple of days when things run smoothly, and then everything hits the fan again. Two examples from the past two days.
POSTING A PRESENT ABROAD
How hard can it be to find a post office with an international service? This is a big deal - every other country I have been to has a facility for international postage in every post office, regardless of size, location, or how often this function is required. Sending a package to another country is as simple as going to a desk, filling out the required forms, and watching your post disappear into the black hole of the post office backroom. Here, it's enough if I can find a place that's open when I want it to be. Doesnt help that on the most recent holiday (Mid Autumn Festival?) the post offices stay closed but the banks open. Kind of like an odd bank holiday. So my second attempt to send this parcel was scuppered by poor timing (my first was ruined by the post muppet telling me that the present - a mug, yes you guessed correctly Lucy - was for drinking tea, and the letters -rolled up inside the mug for convenience - were for posting; actually I thought this was quite insulting and I wanted to hit the bloke square in the face for being so obnoxious, I was already having a crap day). Anyway, finally the post offices were open and I thought I would get this sorted once and for all. I went in and was informed there was no international service at that office. Honestly, what is wrong with this stupid place? I asked where I could find a branch to send my package and they said Hongshan. I asked if that was the one near the Xinhua Bookstore and they said yes, take the 101 bus (yes, yes, I know THAT). So I took the bus, it was the middle of the day, blazing hot, and I wasn't feeling good at all. But I got there, and it was a lot cooler inside, and then the fun began again. Turns out they don't have an international service. And after I got quite frustrated with them, it turns out they aren't the Hongshan branch, it's another 2 stops up the road. Gaaaaargh. I asked why they couldnt just have an international service in all branches like in England (or anywhere else for that matter) and was told (in English), "Ah, but that is your country and ... this is China" (yes, it IS China, which is fast becoming synonymous for "difficult" and "hopelessly slow" - aptly I learnt a very good Chinese word this week, 乱 (luan) which means "messy" or "disorganised".) Feeling even worse, I went to the Hongshan branch, where (after a LOT of hassle, rewriting my address on the parcel, and filling out various customs forms - acerbically I might add, the frustration by this point becoming tangible) the package was good to go and all that remained was the small matter of RMB 86 to pay for it. WHAT?! GBP £7.00!!!!!!! for a small parcel?! Gobsmacked, and with no other option, I paid for this service, but really, that is extortionate. I think post day is going to be a once a week, maybe once every ten days affair, and will mainly be limited to sending letters, certainly nothing much bigger if that's how much I'm going to have to pay!
On the plus side I wasn't required to show my passport (a first, maybe?)
OBTAINING A RESIDENCY PERMIT
It has been about 10 days since we got our temporary residents' permits, which took about 18 days from arriving in China (there was a 30 day limit, it wasn't exactly optional, but the process took forever). Now we need the permanent ones (apparently we have another 30 days to get this sorted, good, we'll probably need it), which are both a sheet of paper and a sticker in the passport (I think). This morning we finally got the uni to give us all the necessary documents for this permit, and off we went to the PSB office. For the record, our handbooks state that a member of the international school staff should accompany us, but I didn't see anyone offering, and like most other things I'm beginning to suspect it was a load of mouth and not much trousers. We got to the PSB offices at about 1220, took a ticket when we went in and noted the number ... 1070 ... the display was reading number 1032 or something ridiculously far from our turn, and as usual a massive crowd of people was aimlessly shoving and trying to plonk their docs on the table first (despite this numbering system, it would seem the Chinese attitude of "just barge and shove and get in front of everyone else" has infected foreigners now) ... so we decided to go for lunch and see what the numbering system was doing when we got back. about 45 minutes later and it was all the way up to 1042. hardly an improvement, and quite frankly shocking - if these people would actually QUEUE and follow some sort of discipline, I'm sure it would have gone a lot quicker. And finally, at 1330, the guard from the front door comes along and starts making a cut off point, because the office stops working around then (WHY?!) and informs us they will reopen at 10 the next day, please come back then. So we are skipping classes (I sent my teacher an apologetic text, explaining this), just to get this stupid bureaucractic rubbish done, when it should have been sorted weeks ago, we should have had more assistance, and it certainly shouldn't have taken longer than today to finish.
In brief, I would suggest the following changes to improve efficiency and keep people happy:
* Make your postal service, just that.
* Do the same for your banks (remember the hassle we went through earlier?)
* Work proper hours, and don't send everyone off to lunch at the same damn time, that's what SHIFTS were invented for.
* Research, and subsequently enforce, the idea of queues in public offices (at least, if not everywhere)
* University, if you say you are going to provide a service, provide it.
As soon as we have this stupid permit sorted, we are going out to celebrate in a small (but very nice) restaurant near our house. And we're taking at least one of our teachers with us, we have two absolute stars to thank.
Thursday, 11 September 2008
More Culture Shock?
... where to start?
I have no idea how to begin this post, or even what it will be about. Quite a lot of things have happened recently, and I'll try and put them in some order. At the end I think I will include some observations of life around here, because there are some things that need to be said.
We started classes on Monday and the pace of work here is definitely faster than anything I've been exposed to before. Firstly, there was some confusion over our timetables - on paper I have about 24 hours a week (maybe 25), which is about double my lessontime in the UK (because all my courses in England require me to go away and research stuff and learn around topics, whereas here there is direct tuition and you go away and learn the stuff that is very relevant to the books, words you dont know, etc). So that alone came as a bit of a shock. But I discovered some of the lessons are optional (those on Chinese culture for example) and some are repeats (there are 2 culture lessons a week, one is taken at a slower pace, but both are optional and there is no test, it's purely for information and enjoyment). Some are optional but I will be attending (the HSK lessons, for example, more on that when I've actually had one - tomorrow? the teacher didn't turn up to the last one). And some are just nondescript, we were supposed to have a "Second Learning Class" this afternoon, but no one showed up, so we got the impression it's optional. We can ask tomorrow. At any rate we think it might just be a homework class, in which case sod that, I can do homework at home, as the name suggests. So my workload is now down to about 20 hours a week, hurray. But what a 20 hours!
This week alone I have been introduced to somewhere between 70 and 100 new words, new uses for words I knew, or combinations of words, and I've been expected to learn them within a day of seeing them. How it works is, my grammar and language teacher will go through a passage with us from the book. We'll see the new words, say them, use them in the passage, have things explained, etc. When we come back the next day, we have a test on these words. So you have about 24 hours to learn however many new words are being given to you, approximately 30 per lesson. We've had two lessons this week. Yup, that's right, twice this week I have had to learn 30 words (pronunciation, written form, meaning), and be tested on them. It was really brought home when the teacher got two students to go and write words she called out on the blackboard. I did not want to be shown up, so I got down and learnt the words! How much of it stays in my head is another matter, I'm guessing this pace is too intense to store EVERYTHING, unless you are recapping and using the vocab constantly. And even then you have to remember how to write it all. Yikes.
The same goes for listening class, all new words have to be learnt, and the reading class, and so on. This amounts to a LOT of new words. It doesn't help that sometimes I know some of the words in the list but don't know what other words in the book mean. I'm constantly using a dictionary to get the meanings of just about everything. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. Oh and my listening is rubbish. I barely understand the tapes when they are played, the people speak so fast. Talking of fast, that's one thing the day is not. Classes are two hours each, with a break every hour (about 5 or 10 minutes), but that's a lot of classtime. 0930 - 1130, 1140 - 1330, break for lunch, and then some days I have a class from 1600 - 1750. I imagine in the winter that last class will see me leaving university in pitch black and minus 20-something Celsius. Brrrr.
Thinking of "university", this place is WEIRD. It's not at all what I imagine an institute of higher education to be like. Perhaps the languages courses for foreigners recruit differently, I don't know. All I can say is the behaviour of some members of my class (notably the Kazakh males - the girls are really good students and I don't tar them with the same brush at all) is simply unacceptable. They turn up late for classes (three of them trooped in 50 minutes late today), are rude (one of the three walked past the teacher, who was telling him off, and just muttered "yeah yeah yeah"), and basically behave like they are in some crap middle school. Take for example the guy in Marta's class who was asked by the teacher to remove his chewing gum because they were doing pronunciation; he refused, the teacher insisted, so he opened the classroom door and spat his gum into the corridor. In the words of one of the teacher-trainers who will be working here for the next 2 years showing Chinese teachers how to teach Western-style, "I would have made him go out there, pick it up, and put it back in his mouth". Excuse my French, but too fucking right.
It's got to get to a head some time. I don't want to be in a class with these people really. Theyre not disruptive all of the time, but being even a BIT disruptive is inexcusable at a university. And getting up in the middle of a class to leave the room to use your phone ("sorry teacher" - yeah? if you are so sorry don't bloody well do it, moron) is bang out of order. Why the teachers don't take a firmer stance, or just kick people out of their classes, I do not know. It's even written in our handbooks (which we now, have, long story) that such measures can be taken. And yet for some reason they don't. If it goes on like this much longer I think I will be having a word with my teachers or writing a letter to the head of the school. These guys can go in their own damn class and maybe the rest of us can get on and learn.
In other news, Marta and I finally got our Temporary Residence Permits (YAY), and will soon have proper ones stamped into our passports (hope they look nice) ... and we were also given the International Students Handbook, which we should have got when we arrived, but our college forgot (how convenient). This book tells us how to do EVERYTHING from getting our residency permit to getting a dining card for the school canteen. In short, having this on Day 1 would have made things a lot easier for us. Still, we have copies now, that's what matters.
Penultimately, could someone please tell me if they have ever encountered something like this in child-raising around the world: the children here, up to a certain age (I assume whenever they know to go to the toilet on the toilet and not in their pants) have trousers that have been manufactured with a split around the middle, which allows the kid to squat / be held by their parents and urinate / defecate freely without soiling their clothes. This is bad enough, but when a parent is holding their child over paving and there is a grassy plot five meters away, one has to wonder about the workings of the Xinjiang mind. I've not seen it elsewhere in China so I don't know if it extends to other countries nearby, or other provinces, or what. I know nappies are expensive (and wasteful?) but there are things like terry-cloths, right? It's really brought home when you walk down the street and see a kid run out of a shop, squat himself down on the steps outside, pee, and then get up and run off again. I hope winter comes soon because they can't keep their kids like this when it's below zero. Disgusting. Simply disgusting.
Oh and finally, to Mum, Aunty Anne, or anyone else not technologically inclined, you can all leave comments on this blog (which will centralise things for me and save emailing everything) by clicking on the comments link, the grey bit underneath each entry that says how many "attempts to shut me up" have taken place. You don't need to be a member of blogger or wordpress or google, you can leave your name or remain anonymous, it's up to you, but I do like people commenting and I do (occasionally) respond! :)
I have no idea how to begin this post, or even what it will be about. Quite a lot of things have happened recently, and I'll try and put them in some order. At the end I think I will include some observations of life around here, because there are some things that need to be said.
We started classes on Monday and the pace of work here is definitely faster than anything I've been exposed to before. Firstly, there was some confusion over our timetables - on paper I have about 24 hours a week (maybe 25), which is about double my lessontime in the UK (because all my courses in England require me to go away and research stuff and learn around topics, whereas here there is direct tuition and you go away and learn the stuff that is very relevant to the books, words you dont know, etc). So that alone came as a bit of a shock. But I discovered some of the lessons are optional (those on Chinese culture for example) and some are repeats (there are 2 culture lessons a week, one is taken at a slower pace, but both are optional and there is no test, it's purely for information and enjoyment). Some are optional but I will be attending (the HSK lessons, for example, more on that when I've actually had one - tomorrow? the teacher didn't turn up to the last one). And some are just nondescript, we were supposed to have a "Second Learning Class" this afternoon, but no one showed up, so we got the impression it's optional. We can ask tomorrow. At any rate we think it might just be a homework class, in which case sod that, I can do homework at home, as the name suggests. So my workload is now down to about 20 hours a week, hurray. But what a 20 hours!
This week alone I have been introduced to somewhere between 70 and 100 new words, new uses for words I knew, or combinations of words, and I've been expected to learn them within a day of seeing them. How it works is, my grammar and language teacher will go through a passage with us from the book. We'll see the new words, say them, use them in the passage, have things explained, etc. When we come back the next day, we have a test on these words. So you have about 24 hours to learn however many new words are being given to you, approximately 30 per lesson. We've had two lessons this week. Yup, that's right, twice this week I have had to learn 30 words (pronunciation, written form, meaning), and be tested on them. It was really brought home when the teacher got two students to go and write words she called out on the blackboard. I did not want to be shown up, so I got down and learnt the words! How much of it stays in my head is another matter, I'm guessing this pace is too intense to store EVERYTHING, unless you are recapping and using the vocab constantly. And even then you have to remember how to write it all. Yikes.
The same goes for listening class, all new words have to be learnt, and the reading class, and so on. This amounts to a LOT of new words. It doesn't help that sometimes I know some of the words in the list but don't know what other words in the book mean. I'm constantly using a dictionary to get the meanings of just about everything. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. Oh and my listening is rubbish. I barely understand the tapes when they are played, the people speak so fast. Talking of fast, that's one thing the day is not. Classes are two hours each, with a break every hour (about 5 or 10 minutes), but that's a lot of classtime. 0930 - 1130, 1140 - 1330, break for lunch, and then some days I have a class from 1600 - 1750. I imagine in the winter that last class will see me leaving university in pitch black and minus 20-something Celsius. Brrrr.
Thinking of "university", this place is WEIRD. It's not at all what I imagine an institute of higher education to be like. Perhaps the languages courses for foreigners recruit differently, I don't know. All I can say is the behaviour of some members of my class (notably the Kazakh males - the girls are really good students and I don't tar them with the same brush at all) is simply unacceptable. They turn up late for classes (three of them trooped in 50 minutes late today), are rude (one of the three walked past the teacher, who was telling him off, and just muttered "yeah yeah yeah"), and basically behave like they are in some crap middle school. Take for example the guy in Marta's class who was asked by the teacher to remove his chewing gum because they were doing pronunciation; he refused, the teacher insisted, so he opened the classroom door and spat his gum into the corridor. In the words of one of the teacher-trainers who will be working here for the next 2 years showing Chinese teachers how to teach Western-style, "I would have made him go out there, pick it up, and put it back in his mouth". Excuse my French, but too fucking right.
It's got to get to a head some time. I don't want to be in a class with these people really. Theyre not disruptive all of the time, but being even a BIT disruptive is inexcusable at a university. And getting up in the middle of a class to leave the room to use your phone ("sorry teacher" - yeah? if you are so sorry don't bloody well do it, moron) is bang out of order. Why the teachers don't take a firmer stance, or just kick people out of their classes, I do not know. It's even written in our handbooks (which we now, have, long story) that such measures can be taken. And yet for some reason they don't. If it goes on like this much longer I think I will be having a word with my teachers or writing a letter to the head of the school. These guys can go in their own damn class and maybe the rest of us can get on and learn.
In other news, Marta and I finally got our Temporary Residence Permits (YAY), and will soon have proper ones stamped into our passports (hope they look nice) ... and we were also given the International Students Handbook, which we should have got when we arrived, but our college forgot (how convenient). This book tells us how to do EVERYTHING from getting our residency permit to getting a dining card for the school canteen. In short, having this on Day 1 would have made things a lot easier for us. Still, we have copies now, that's what matters.
Penultimately, could someone please tell me if they have ever encountered something like this in child-raising around the world: the children here, up to a certain age (I assume whenever they know to go to the toilet on the toilet and not in their pants) have trousers that have been manufactured with a split around the middle, which allows the kid to squat / be held by their parents and urinate / defecate freely without soiling their clothes. This is bad enough, but when a parent is holding their child over paving and there is a grassy plot five meters away, one has to wonder about the workings of the Xinjiang mind. I've not seen it elsewhere in China so I don't know if it extends to other countries nearby, or other provinces, or what. I know nappies are expensive (and wasteful?) but there are things like terry-cloths, right? It's really brought home when you walk down the street and see a kid run out of a shop, squat himself down on the steps outside, pee, and then get up and run off again. I hope winter comes soon because they can't keep their kids like this when it's below zero. Disgusting. Simply disgusting.
Oh and finally, to Mum, Aunty Anne, or anyone else not technologically inclined, you can all leave comments on this blog (which will centralise things for me and save emailing everything) by clicking on the comments link, the grey bit underneath each entry that says how many "attempts to shut me up" have taken place. You don't need to be a member of blogger or wordpress or google, you can leave your name or remain anonymous, it's up to you, but I do like people commenting and I do (occasionally) respond! :)
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Chocolate Kettles
A very long entry, in which I lose the will to live. Also, if you are offended by rude language, don't read. The frustration is at points tangible.
Marta and I have just had an awful couple of days – today was probably the worst, because it was just an extension of the uncertainty of the last so long. The vast majority of people here are so unbelievably unhelpful, and when things are getting done, they take about ten times what they ought to … a few examples from the very recent past.
* SETTING UP A BANK ACCOUNT – you would think this was a relatively simple task, no? On Friday, Marta and I went with Zohra to the Bank of China to set up some local accounts. The first difficulty was finding the branch, because it had moved, without notice or leaving directions, to a temporary location about a mile away while its ordinary premises were being redecorated. The temperature, even early in the morning, was high, and neither Marta nor I had had enough water or breakfast – fortunately we were able to pick these up on the way. Having found the branch, we had a meeting with a man who appeared to be the bank manager (and also the security guard, who seemed to know as much about banking as all the clerks there, really it was weird), and it eventually transpired that we couldn’t open accounts today, even with Zohra being there to translate and all, no, we had to come back on Monday. Seriously. They have a day for people to open bank accounts, this is just odd (not to mention inconvenient). So, okay let’s come back on Monday.
Well, we went back on Monday, and oh my, I’m glad we budgeted some time for it – setting up Marta’s account (she wants one which can have USD put into it, but take RMB out, so her parents can send her money, because she’s lost her Polish bank card, which was her only source of money for a year – that in itself is stupidity) … it took at least 20 minutes before we were seen, despite being there bang on 10 as requested, and then a further 40 minutes (minimum) to even get to a stage approaching the opening of a bank account. Finally she was done, and luckily my account (a simple RMB-only job) took only a few minutes to get sorted.
The whole process took 90 minutes, to set up two accounts. What a joke. Even worse, tonight the bank phoned Marta and said they had forgotten to take back one of the (many) slips of paper that they had given her in the account-opening palaver, and could she please come in tomorrow to give it back? Yes, the afternoon is okay. Christ.
* REGISTERING WITH THE UNIVERSITY – so, you’re an exchange student, you’ve just travelled thousands of miles to be at your new institution, and you know damn well that the students who have gone to your place of study will be well-received, looked after, guided through all the formalities, etc etc. You expect the same in return? Well, don’t. Not if you come to XNU anyway. The entire affair so far has been nothing short of shambolic. If we didn’t have Zohra we would be absolutely lost. Anniwar was so vague last week, “oh you will come back on Monday to register for classes, have your medical examination, and so on, your college will take care of you”. Today we went back to ask some basic questions, like if a printer was available (Marta forgot to print off a couple of important documents, so we wanted to hook my computer up to a printer and get them sent off as soon as possible) – the answer was that our college would take care of it, for sure.
US: Oh and where IS our college???
HIM: It’s on the 4th floor of this building, you didn’t know this?
US: No we did not know this, we don’t know anything here.
HIM: Didn’t you talk to last year’s students?
US: No, barely, and not about this. (We expect this to be the kind of information that is provided when we arrive not passed on like some kind of chain letter!)
So, down to the fourth floor we go. There’s a room with a load of international-looking people inside, it seems to be the place to wait for some kind of registration … but we need to sit down, it’s been boiling outside again, and we’re virtually passing out. As we take a seat, maybe it looked like we were queue-jumping, because the bloke in the desk opposite got uppity, but we explained we were just sitting. Then we got chatting to a Japanese student, who had some English as well, and while this was going on some woman came over and asked if we wanted to pay the tuition fee. WHAT FUCKING TUITION FEE? We are EXCHANGE students. We tried to get this across to her, but she didn’t understand and then the main man in charge of the office, some fat bastard, told us to go to the 8th floor. “But we just came from there!”, we protested, but he jabbered off in Chinese at us, and then said “Hao?” (OK?) to which I said no, not OK and he just said “Good, not okay, go upstairs”, and basically shoved us out of the office, in front of everyone. Both Marta and I felt treated like shit, and totally confused about the whole situation. The Japanese girl has arranged to come back in the morning for some kind of language test, and maybe we will be there for it too (or maybe just to REGISTER, would be nice) … now, onto the medical exam.
* MEDICAL EXAMINATION – the university requires us to have something like a urine test, blood test, X-ray (possibly) and ECG, presumably to make sure we aren’t diabetic, HIV-positive, carrying TB, or about to drop dead from heart failure (I hope they check blood pressure too, because by now mine is absolutely through the roof). They require it. You would expect them to a) set it up for incoming students, b) have the facilities close to hand, c) give out information on where these facilities are located, d) all the above. Apparently (a) has been done, but without (b), (c) and (d), that’s quite useless. By hook and by crook, and through our multi-national foreign friends (both teachers and students, all of whom are being fucked around as much as we are) we discover that the medical centre is at a different location (someone wrote the address so we can use a taxi), and yes they require all the above tests, and it’s a good thing we didn’t have them done in the UK because they don’t recognise foreign lab results (or not without a fuss, anyway), oh and you can’t eat on the morning of your tests, they have to be “clean”, which makes me think they are testing sugars. The centre is only open for foreigners’ testing on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, which means we have missed the boat for today, what with having eaten and all. Still, this gives us time to get the required passport photos, photocopies of our passports and visas, and medical examination fee together, as well as some food for immediately after the testing, because seriously, not eating and then going out in the heat they have here, and then having blood taken after 10 in the morning (plus a long wait if I know the Chinese system by now) is a little more than stupid. I will pass out, simple as.
It is unbelievable, and unacceptable, that a host institution does not have available someone (or some people, plural) to guide visiting students through their registration and help them set up in the university. The people who are available as standard are rubbish – it is only by chance that we have Zohra, who is patient and goes out of her way to help us. Without her, I don’t know what we would have done – packed up and left by now, I am almost certain.
* PRINTING – we need to buy a memory stick, transfer the files, and print them off someplace else, nowhere and no one here at the university seems to have a printer. Marta if you are reading this, you could have avoided this problem by just turning up to one of the year abroad meetings and / or paying attention to everything I told you about the process.
* HOUSE REGISTRATION – you want to live somewhere in China, you have to register with the local police. Local is the key word there. You’d think any old police station could register you but no, it has to be the one nearest you. Why they couldn’t tell us this before, I don’t know … so we spent ages this afternoon hanging around waiting for the police office on campus to reopen (they have some kind of afternoon break, from about local time 1200 til 1400, which is Beijing time 1400 til 1600, and most annoying really. They opened and it then took a further half hour to establish some kind of contact and then for them to tell us (via Zohra, on the phone) that we need to go to the police office nearest our house, now we are living in a different part of town … add to this the extremely lazy and unprofessional look of almost all the police stations I have seen here, and the picture is not a pretty one. Virtually everyone we are dealing with in this country is unhelpful, and worse, they can’t see they are being anything other than normal.
* MAIL – if people send us post, apparently the way we get it is someone comes round and rings our doorbell (no mail slots or anything), and then rings our telephone number (I will include them on the mail printouts when I get round to posting that) if we are not in (which we may not be, given that we have classes and hopefully some kind of social life developing) … so this is just one more crazy annoying thing that we have to contend with, living here. I hope nothing goes missing, maybe people can just send us postcards or letters, nothing too special to begin with, so we know the system works.
* CHINA MOBILE – I bought my SIM the other day from a China Mobile store, and they said come to a CM store in September to add on Caller ID Display function, an extra Y5 a month … it didn’t occur to me that that was only 40p and I should have asked for it there and then, but anyway, I went to a CM store today and I wasn’t able to understand a word they said to me, except the gist of it which was they couldn’t / wouldn’t / weren’t going to do it for me. Infuriated, I left.
* SHOPPING – we went shopping today, for other household goods. Slowly but surely we are turning this flat into something resembling some kind of Western home. If we could sort out the fridge (there appear to be a load of insecty-type things that live inside it, if we can’t clear them out or put poison down for them, I think we might just ask the landlady to buy us a new fridge, it would be better for the apartment anyway). I digress, we went to a department store because of the many things we still ought to have for basic living, a mattress for my bed is definitely high on the list. Currently I am sleeping on one side of Marta’s double bed because the mattress in her room is at least remotely comfortable (once you fold your duvet in half and lie on top of that) … Mine is a thin padding that covers my bed, which is a couple of boxes put crudely together in some kind of DIY fashion – honestly, it’s crap. And why my room, so small, needs a double bed which takes up most of the living space, I do not know. Point is, we went shopping, and got a mattress, and a pillow, and we then had to pay for these items immediately. But surely you check out with ALL your goods and pay at the main till? No, not here. So then we spent another 30 minutes in the store looking at other things while wheeling around these two products that we had just bought … incroyable. For the record, the “mattress” I now have really isn’t so great either, it’s some kind of thin thing again, but because it’s just me on the bed I am going to use half the bed for books and general storage, and the other half (nearer the door) for sleeping on, so I can fold this “mattress” in two and then wrap up in my duvet as well, to pad myself somewhat. It’s crazy.
* OLYMPICS – “Wow, you’re going to China in 2008? Aren’t you excited? Are you going to Beijing? Do you think you will see the Olympics?” … a number of people have asked me these questions a number of times. The answers are “Yes”, “No”, “Hell no”, and “Again, no” … Beijing is not a pretty city. At least it wasn’t when I went there for a week in 2006. The only nice bit was when I got out of the city and went to the Great Wall for a day, that was amazing and I would definitely go again (Lucy?) … Beijing being busy with Olympic fever just makes it an even less exciting prospect as far as I am concerned; it’s most of the reason I chose to fly to Shanghai in the first place. Visas were supposedly harder to get hold of and prices rose, flights became hard to find, and now even at the university things are put on hold while we wait for students to make their way back to XNU having been in Beijing – but of course no one tells us this until today, while we are stressing that our classes have begun and we don’t know where they are. Also, if term starts in another week, that could have been a week that I spent in England. I am not pleased.
* POSTAL SERVICE – I want to send a present to Lucy. I want to put a letter inside this present, the two must travel together, that’s how it works. So I go to the post office and try to get a box for the present. Yes I can have a box, says the idiot behind the counter. But we won’t send that. Why not? Because it might break. I’m sorry but since when has a post office made the decision not to send something in case it breaks? That’s the sender’s risk. And also, I would PAD IT OUT, I am not stupid. But no, “We can send the letter. But not that” … I cannot believe this country. Or maybe it is just this postal branch, I will try a different one and see what they say ☹ Sorry Lucy, no letter or present just yet, I’ve been stupidly busy getting frustrated with all the other rubbish that is going on here.
* REGRETS – do I have any? Oh yes. Not having even LOOKED AT the other apartment we were offered, because it was out of our price range (though realistically speaking it wasn’t, we just didn’t want to spend that much, but maybe we should have since it came furnished and was apparently very nice to live in last year). So if I could go back and do this all again, I would at least LOOK at the other place. On the plus side, living here is not SO bad, and I do like the grounds of the complex we are in, and everyone here is Chinese so there’s no chance we can speak English with the neighbours, and I am sure at some point (maybe when we have some classmates, a routine, a house that works somewhat normally, and some more contact with our Western friends who are having as much trouble as we are and who exert some kind of calming normality influence on me, I will stop getting stressed about everything. Right now, however, I just wish that I was at home, and that I had never bothered learning Chinese or coming here. Really.
Mum and Dad, if you’re reading this, yes I am actually that frustrated and depressed, and I’m sorry I haven’t phoned or texted but texts cost 49p each (from my O2 card, the Chinese one won’t send to the UK and if it does I don’t know how much it costs), so I have just been texting Lucy. We are due to have the internet installed tomorrow evening, so hopefully I will be able to get online regularly then and you can Skype me or I can call you, whatever. I miss almost everything back home, and you know I don’t get homesick easily (ever?) – all the events of the last few days have just made me want to pack up and go. I guess I will stick it out, at least a couple of months, see if things improve. It doesn’t help that Marta and I made this choice on a flat, but by local standards it is definitely (more than) good. I think that just makes it worse.
[EDIT – Today, Tuesday, I am much less stressed. See more recent entries]
Marta and I have just had an awful couple of days – today was probably the worst, because it was just an extension of the uncertainty of the last so long. The vast majority of people here are so unbelievably unhelpful, and when things are getting done, they take about ten times what they ought to … a few examples from the very recent past.
* SETTING UP A BANK ACCOUNT – you would think this was a relatively simple task, no? On Friday, Marta and I went with Zohra to the Bank of China to set up some local accounts. The first difficulty was finding the branch, because it had moved, without notice or leaving directions, to a temporary location about a mile away while its ordinary premises were being redecorated. The temperature, even early in the morning, was high, and neither Marta nor I had had enough water or breakfast – fortunately we were able to pick these up on the way. Having found the branch, we had a meeting with a man who appeared to be the bank manager (and also the security guard, who seemed to know as much about banking as all the clerks there, really it was weird), and it eventually transpired that we couldn’t open accounts today, even with Zohra being there to translate and all, no, we had to come back on Monday. Seriously. They have a day for people to open bank accounts, this is just odd (not to mention inconvenient). So, okay let’s come back on Monday.
Well, we went back on Monday, and oh my, I’m glad we budgeted some time for it – setting up Marta’s account (she wants one which can have USD put into it, but take RMB out, so her parents can send her money, because she’s lost her Polish bank card, which was her only source of money for a year – that in itself is stupidity) … it took at least 20 minutes before we were seen, despite being there bang on 10 as requested, and then a further 40 minutes (minimum) to even get to a stage approaching the opening of a bank account. Finally she was done, and luckily my account (a simple RMB-only job) took only a few minutes to get sorted.
The whole process took 90 minutes, to set up two accounts. What a joke. Even worse, tonight the bank phoned Marta and said they had forgotten to take back one of the (many) slips of paper that they had given her in the account-opening palaver, and could she please come in tomorrow to give it back? Yes, the afternoon is okay. Christ.
* REGISTERING WITH THE UNIVERSITY – so, you’re an exchange student, you’ve just travelled thousands of miles to be at your new institution, and you know damn well that the students who have gone to your place of study will be well-received, looked after, guided through all the formalities, etc etc. You expect the same in return? Well, don’t. Not if you come to XNU anyway. The entire affair so far has been nothing short of shambolic. If we didn’t have Zohra we would be absolutely lost. Anniwar was so vague last week, “oh you will come back on Monday to register for classes, have your medical examination, and so on, your college will take care of you”. Today we went back to ask some basic questions, like if a printer was available (Marta forgot to print off a couple of important documents, so we wanted to hook my computer up to a printer and get them sent off as soon as possible) – the answer was that our college would take care of it, for sure.
US: Oh and where IS our college???
HIM: It’s on the 4th floor of this building, you didn’t know this?
US: No we did not know this, we don’t know anything here.
HIM: Didn’t you talk to last year’s students?
US: No, barely, and not about this. (We expect this to be the kind of information that is provided when we arrive not passed on like some kind of chain letter!)
So, down to the fourth floor we go. There’s a room with a load of international-looking people inside, it seems to be the place to wait for some kind of registration … but we need to sit down, it’s been boiling outside again, and we’re virtually passing out. As we take a seat, maybe it looked like we were queue-jumping, because the bloke in the desk opposite got uppity, but we explained we were just sitting. Then we got chatting to a Japanese student, who had some English as well, and while this was going on some woman came over and asked if we wanted to pay the tuition fee. WHAT FUCKING TUITION FEE? We are EXCHANGE students. We tried to get this across to her, but she didn’t understand and then the main man in charge of the office, some fat bastard, told us to go to the 8th floor. “But we just came from there!”, we protested, but he jabbered off in Chinese at us, and then said “Hao?” (OK?) to which I said no, not OK and he just said “Good, not okay, go upstairs”, and basically shoved us out of the office, in front of everyone. Both Marta and I felt treated like shit, and totally confused about the whole situation. The Japanese girl has arranged to come back in the morning for some kind of language test, and maybe we will be there for it too (or maybe just to REGISTER, would be nice) … now, onto the medical exam.
* MEDICAL EXAMINATION – the university requires us to have something like a urine test, blood test, X-ray (possibly) and ECG, presumably to make sure we aren’t diabetic, HIV-positive, carrying TB, or about to drop dead from heart failure (I hope they check blood pressure too, because by now mine is absolutely through the roof). They require it. You would expect them to a) set it up for incoming students, b) have the facilities close to hand, c) give out information on where these facilities are located, d) all the above. Apparently (a) has been done, but without (b), (c) and (d), that’s quite useless. By hook and by crook, and through our multi-national foreign friends (both teachers and students, all of whom are being fucked around as much as we are) we discover that the medical centre is at a different location (someone wrote the address so we can use a taxi), and yes they require all the above tests, and it’s a good thing we didn’t have them done in the UK because they don’t recognise foreign lab results (or not without a fuss, anyway), oh and you can’t eat on the morning of your tests, they have to be “clean”, which makes me think they are testing sugars. The centre is only open for foreigners’ testing on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, which means we have missed the boat for today, what with having eaten and all. Still, this gives us time to get the required passport photos, photocopies of our passports and visas, and medical examination fee together, as well as some food for immediately after the testing, because seriously, not eating and then going out in the heat they have here, and then having blood taken after 10 in the morning (plus a long wait if I know the Chinese system by now) is a little more than stupid. I will pass out, simple as.
It is unbelievable, and unacceptable, that a host institution does not have available someone (or some people, plural) to guide visiting students through their registration and help them set up in the university. The people who are available as standard are rubbish – it is only by chance that we have Zohra, who is patient and goes out of her way to help us. Without her, I don’t know what we would have done – packed up and left by now, I am almost certain.
* PRINTING – we need to buy a memory stick, transfer the files, and print them off someplace else, nowhere and no one here at the university seems to have a printer. Marta if you are reading this, you could have avoided this problem by just turning up to one of the year abroad meetings and / or paying attention to everything I told you about the process.
* HOUSE REGISTRATION – you want to live somewhere in China, you have to register with the local police. Local is the key word there. You’d think any old police station could register you but no, it has to be the one nearest you. Why they couldn’t tell us this before, I don’t know … so we spent ages this afternoon hanging around waiting for the police office on campus to reopen (they have some kind of afternoon break, from about local time 1200 til 1400, which is Beijing time 1400 til 1600, and most annoying really. They opened and it then took a further half hour to establish some kind of contact and then for them to tell us (via Zohra, on the phone) that we need to go to the police office nearest our house, now we are living in a different part of town … add to this the extremely lazy and unprofessional look of almost all the police stations I have seen here, and the picture is not a pretty one. Virtually everyone we are dealing with in this country is unhelpful, and worse, they can’t see they are being anything other than normal.
* MAIL – if people send us post, apparently the way we get it is someone comes round and rings our doorbell (no mail slots or anything), and then rings our telephone number (I will include them on the mail printouts when I get round to posting that) if we are not in (which we may not be, given that we have classes and hopefully some kind of social life developing) … so this is just one more crazy annoying thing that we have to contend with, living here. I hope nothing goes missing, maybe people can just send us postcards or letters, nothing too special to begin with, so we know the system works.
* CHINA MOBILE – I bought my SIM the other day from a China Mobile store, and they said come to a CM store in September to add on Caller ID Display function, an extra Y5 a month … it didn’t occur to me that that was only 40p and I should have asked for it there and then, but anyway, I went to a CM store today and I wasn’t able to understand a word they said to me, except the gist of it which was they couldn’t / wouldn’t / weren’t going to do it for me. Infuriated, I left.
* SHOPPING – we went shopping today, for other household goods. Slowly but surely we are turning this flat into something resembling some kind of Western home. If we could sort out the fridge (there appear to be a load of insecty-type things that live inside it, if we can’t clear them out or put poison down for them, I think we might just ask the landlady to buy us a new fridge, it would be better for the apartment anyway). I digress, we went to a department store because of the many things we still ought to have for basic living, a mattress for my bed is definitely high on the list. Currently I am sleeping on one side of Marta’s double bed because the mattress in her room is at least remotely comfortable (once you fold your duvet in half and lie on top of that) … Mine is a thin padding that covers my bed, which is a couple of boxes put crudely together in some kind of DIY fashion – honestly, it’s crap. And why my room, so small, needs a double bed which takes up most of the living space, I do not know. Point is, we went shopping, and got a mattress, and a pillow, and we then had to pay for these items immediately. But surely you check out with ALL your goods and pay at the main till? No, not here. So then we spent another 30 minutes in the store looking at other things while wheeling around these two products that we had just bought … incroyable. For the record, the “mattress” I now have really isn’t so great either, it’s some kind of thin thing again, but because it’s just me on the bed I am going to use half the bed for books and general storage, and the other half (nearer the door) for sleeping on, so I can fold this “mattress” in two and then wrap up in my duvet as well, to pad myself somewhat. It’s crazy.
* OLYMPICS – “Wow, you’re going to China in 2008? Aren’t you excited? Are you going to Beijing? Do you think you will see the Olympics?” … a number of people have asked me these questions a number of times. The answers are “Yes”, “No”, “Hell no”, and “Again, no” … Beijing is not a pretty city. At least it wasn’t when I went there for a week in 2006. The only nice bit was when I got out of the city and went to the Great Wall for a day, that was amazing and I would definitely go again (Lucy?) … Beijing being busy with Olympic fever just makes it an even less exciting prospect as far as I am concerned; it’s most of the reason I chose to fly to Shanghai in the first place. Visas were supposedly harder to get hold of and prices rose, flights became hard to find, and now even at the university things are put on hold while we wait for students to make their way back to XNU having been in Beijing – but of course no one tells us this until today, while we are stressing that our classes have begun and we don’t know where they are. Also, if term starts in another week, that could have been a week that I spent in England. I am not pleased.
* POSTAL SERVICE – I want to send a present to Lucy. I want to put a letter inside this present, the two must travel together, that’s how it works. So I go to the post office and try to get a box for the present. Yes I can have a box, says the idiot behind the counter. But we won’t send that. Why not? Because it might break. I’m sorry but since when has a post office made the decision not to send something in case it breaks? That’s the sender’s risk. And also, I would PAD IT OUT, I am not stupid. But no, “We can send the letter. But not that” … I cannot believe this country. Or maybe it is just this postal branch, I will try a different one and see what they say ☹ Sorry Lucy, no letter or present just yet, I’ve been stupidly busy getting frustrated with all the other rubbish that is going on here.
* REGRETS – do I have any? Oh yes. Not having even LOOKED AT the other apartment we were offered, because it was out of our price range (though realistically speaking it wasn’t, we just didn’t want to spend that much, but maybe we should have since it came furnished and was apparently very nice to live in last year). So if I could go back and do this all again, I would at least LOOK at the other place. On the plus side, living here is not SO bad, and I do like the grounds of the complex we are in, and everyone here is Chinese so there’s no chance we can speak English with the neighbours, and I am sure at some point (maybe when we have some classmates, a routine, a house that works somewhat normally, and some more contact with our Western friends who are having as much trouble as we are and who exert some kind of calming normality influence on me, I will stop getting stressed about everything. Right now, however, I just wish that I was at home, and that I had never bothered learning Chinese or coming here. Really.
Mum and Dad, if you’re reading this, yes I am actually that frustrated and depressed, and I’m sorry I haven’t phoned or texted but texts cost 49p each (from my O2 card, the Chinese one won’t send to the UK and if it does I don’t know how much it costs), so I have just been texting Lucy. We are due to have the internet installed tomorrow evening, so hopefully I will be able to get online regularly then and you can Skype me or I can call you, whatever. I miss almost everything back home, and you know I don’t get homesick easily (ever?) – all the events of the last few days have just made me want to pack up and go. I guess I will stick it out, at least a couple of months, see if things improve. It doesn’t help that Marta and I made this choice on a flat, but by local standards it is definitely (more than) good. I think that just makes it worse.
[EDIT – Today, Tuesday, I am much less stressed. See more recent entries]
Room 101
Househunting was frustrating and haphazard. There was no formal support from the university, just Zohra’s assistance, which was able and her patience most abundant, but the method of finding a place to live here was just to go from one complex to the next and look for adverts … We had been offered a place that last year’s students used but had ruled it out on the grounds it was too expensive (not by Western standards but by the average here, which seemed to be a good way to go – after all, people are living here just fine, right?) … so the first place she showed us was in a great location, just 10 minutes (if that!) walk from the university, in the teachers’ complex, so nice and safe and quiet and scenic. Except the flat, it really wasn’t very nice at all … the bathroom wasn’t great, there was only one bedroom (the living room could be made into a second one apparently), and there was even a room that wasn’t being rented out (why? the landlord was using it for storage, quite cheeky I think, to expect us to pay for a house we can’t even fully use!) … So we moved on, the next place was too small, the next one didn’t want to rent to us, I don’t know why, until we found a housing complex with a lot of adverts, and one that looked good. So Zohra called the number and the results were sounding very positive. Then a lady who was putting up posters on the advert wall introduced herself as an estate agent and would we be interested in seeing a place in this complex? Well, sure … ! I mean, it’s a bit far from the uni, but there’s a bus service and it shouldn’t be too hard, right? So we made an arrangement to see this flat, but by that time Zohra had to go, she was busy in the afternoon, fine we can look at it ourselves and if we need her in the morning for signing a contract she will be around. Yay. So that’s what happened. We looked around, we liked it a lot more than the other houses we had seen – it wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t rubbish either, and we thought yes, we would be happy living here for 11 months. The rent is very reasonable, and although we have had to buy some amenities in the last couple of days, we’re still not breaking the bank over our living … however it has some problems too, like the little insecty creatures living in our fridge – I think some poison is in order there, or a new fridge, and the fact that the beds (mine in particular) are very hard – well mine is just some MDF with a thin padding over it! Oh and the toilet we thought was blocking, but it turns out it was our flushing technique (you need to hold the button down), and the shower method in this part of the country is crazy (you have the shower next to the toilet and just stand there, it will drain into the floor, it’s very … basic. Not to mention our shower doesn’t even fit into the holder on the wall, it rests on some makeshift line that the landlord put in … Oh and our washing machine is in the same room which makes it quite cramped. I think the bathroom is my least favourite part of the house. Maybe my own room, I don’t know I haven’t slept in it yet, I haven’t had a mattress! If I can find a decent gym with decent showers I will probably end up just washing there for the most part and maybe here just once or twice a week. Still, the place is habitable, and it will make me appreciate what I have back at home that much more, when I return.
Oh and for those of you versed in English TV … yes, we are living in Room 101, address printout to follow for anyone who wants to send us mail to cheer us up.
Oh and for those of you versed in English TV … yes, we are living in Room 101, address printout to follow for anyone who wants to send us mail to cheer us up.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Choosing A University
The first post in what I hope will be a year-long blog of my Year Abroad experience - here I answer the question I get asked not most, but quite a lot ... "Why on earth are you choosing to study in Urumqi???"
Choosing was based on personal preference versus available spaces at the host universities. Where this process was concerned, the main problem was its speed (or relevant lack thereof) and the onus on students as a group to sort out themselves and their destinations. If you have no prior knowledge of China, then the choice of 6 different universities could seem quite daunting. Information and Year Abroad (YAB) meetings came quite late into the year, as did finalising choices; with hindsight I can now say that everything has worked out okay, everyone knows where they are going and most people have received paperwork from the host institutions. But be prepared to feel like the SML is taking their time! As for how to choose, your opinions, personal experience, likes (and dislikes!), and ability to handle interesting / new / different situations will all affect your final decision, but here's how I came to mine (the six institutions are Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Haikou and Urumqi):
* I lived in Shanghai for a month on my GAP year, and found that while it is in China it is not terribly Chinese. No one really stared at you (something Chinese will do when something / someone is interesting or strange to them) which is a good measure of how urban the place is! Not to mention the pollution and size of the city (circa 20 million people) - I quickly grew to dislike Shanghai, so that was automatically ruled out.
* As the capital, Beijing is heralded as a political and cultural hub, and the quality of the Chinese spoken there is second to none. Indeed, 北京话 (beijinghua, or Beijing Dialect) is standard across China, in a fashion similar to Queen's English - or what it would be if everyone in England was taught to speak "correctly" rather than in their regional accents / dialects. For a linguist, studying at the Beijing Cultural and Language University (BCLU) would be a dream. However, I have been to Beijing, and my opinion was quite jaded by the dreary weather (it was February), the smog and pollution, the masses of concrete (Tiananmen Square is just a large concrete plaza), not to mention its proximity (as with Shanghai) to the sea, giving its summers a propensity for humidity - all these lined up to rule out Beijing.
* Haikou is based on the island of Hainan, south of the Chinese mainland. It is like Florida in terms of climate, but with (I think) more monsoons. It is humid in the extreme - and yes, your accommodation might come with internet included, and air conditioning units, but it is likely I would never want to leave my room, and that both of these things would become a necessity rather than a luxury.
* Moving away from the sea, the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu are both located in Sichuan province. The main problem I have with Sichuan province is not the geology (it was recently the centre of a whopping earthquake), but the food. People belittle my reasoning here, but Sichuan food is spicy. I cannot handle more than a korma, and certainly not any chilli dishes - a recent excursion to a well-known Japanese restaurant proved this when my girlfriend offered me a slice of chilli and I foolishly accepted. It is likely that I would be eating three times a day (minimum), which amounts to approximately 1000 meals during my time in China. To feel upset and discomfort one thousand times in the course of a year is not something I want to remember from my YAB.
* Finally, we are left with Urumqi (Wulumuqi) - a landlocked city, 2000km from the nearest sea, where the summers are hot and dry, and the winters are exceedingly cold (average of -15C). A city which, though heavily industrialised, is only a short journey from stunning views (the Tianshan mountain range runs south of the city, and Heavenly Lake is so close that when it freezes over in winter I am told people go en masse to skate on it). A city where the options for local travel are not to the traditional Asian destinations of South Korea, Vietnam or Japan, but the more untouched countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and parts of Siberia (Russia). Yes, I am biased. But the city seems perfect for me, given the aforementioned choices - it is only 2 million people in size, it has a national ethnic minority (more on them in a later post), an ethnic language by default, and I will be forced to use my Chinese to communicate because English speakers are few and far between. Oh, and it's cheap as chips.
So, my advice to students who are given a range of options, but not much information, and are forced to make a relatively fast decision - get together quickly (use Facebook, set up a group to discuss issues), and then get your heads into some books or pick the brains of people who have either been to China and returned (fourth year students) or those of us out there. Read as much as you can, and ask as many questions as you can, because nothing is a stupid question - if you arrived in Chongqing and didn't like chilli but had neglected to ask, you might find yourself in for a horrible year.
(If anyone wants to contact me regarding Urumqi, please feel free. Either leave a comment on my blog or email me at h.l.joseph@ncl.ac.uk)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
