We're Alive! Marcus's first impressions of..this place

I am in two minds on whether to write something tonight as my hands are so cold it’s not funny. The computer that is in the apartment is in the spare room – which is also about the same temperature as the freezer – so yeah, enjoy if you come over to visit! Though I really want to write something about my first impressions before they fade away into lesser detail.

As I sit here, in ski jacket and beanie watching my own breath, there’s the sound of non-stop fireworks going off outside. The whole town is sending them up in celebration of the Chinese Lantern Festival which is today, today being Thursday I think, 21st Feb. We aren’t outside watching them as 1. It’s cold as hell, and 2. We’re tired as hell and it now being 6:36pm, will likely be in bed before 7:30pm.

Ok a whole crap load of firecrackers just went off right outside my window, scaring the bejesus out of me!

Now that I’ve actually sat down to write something, I don’t really know where to begin. It has been extremely difficult up to this point, and this is only the end of our first full day here. I keep thinking of Sam saying how he went through a ‘what the HELL are we doing here???” phase when he first got to Japan to teach, and that’s basically exactly how we are feeling right now.

There’s so many fireworks going off outside in the surrounding town that it’s like a war-zone or something. They have been going off for I reckon half an hour straight now, unbelievably. In fact, I actually woke up this morning to the sound of fireworks going off, at what must have been about 6am. They certainly love their loud poppy things. These guys outside are setting off crackers, using big sparkler things and all kinds of other stuff.

My very first impression of China was big, massive even, on an unbelievable scale. I have never seen anything like it. It’s quite honestly the most full on place I think I have ever seen, though I am almost not remotely well-traveled either. We landed at the main Shanghai airport, the Shanghai Pudong International Airport and were nervous as hell about actually gaining entry. Flashback to checking in back at Melbourne Airport and we were told there was no way known we’d be allowed into China on a one-way ticket. So thanks to our travel agent(shoutout to STA travel Camberwell) being absolutely clueless, we had to el pronto buy a ticket out of the country. Mum and Graham stepped in here and paid for them which was super awesome and soo appreciated. So with a bit of dodginess and a lot of support from the guy behind the counter, we have tickets to fly to Hong Kong in 2 months time, which we will cancel as soon as we get our residency visa’s.

So with that in mind we were paranoid as hell about gaining entry into China. The airport is massive – but not so stylish. It was functional, and huge. It felt like a Russian building or something, it just felt..I don’t even know how to describe it…Communist. It’s hard to explain, but every part of it was huge. From the exit point, we had to walk down a very long corridor, which fed into another very large, sparse area for immigration. There were police all over the place, in dark blue, very military looking uniforms. It felt like the whole place was being watched. From there we filled out our Foreigner entry cards then literally that was it. No bag checks, no questions, nothing. The woman behind the counter checked our passports, then we collected our luggage and just went straight out – not even through an xray machine.

We then walked down the walk of fame. Here were hundreds of Chinese folk lining up along metal barriers, a lot of them holding up signs, every single one of them watching us – was very confronting! We picked out our names on one of the signs held by a very friendly woman who ended up being one of the English teachers here at the school, her name, Michelle. She was lovely, and had great English. She came I assume because of her English ability. We were quickly joined by Mr Pan who is likewise super friendly, but his English is fairly poor. Mr Pan, whose first name is Zili, and calls himself to us, Pan Zilli, has been going out of his way since that time to make us feel comfortable, and to help us. He quickly ducked into a food store as we exited the airport and bought us each an ice-tea drink which I still don’t know what it was. It tasted pretty average, but the gesture was nice!

So we went out to the carpark, after walking down what again was a massive terminal, this time absolutely packed with Chinese, now being in the public section, then via another maze of corridors and lifts, finally to the carpark. Here we met the schools driver, whose name I wouldn’t have a clue, nor could he speak English, but excelled at nodding and smiling, and off we went!

The car was sort of like a Toyota Tarago – actually it may have been one. There were these super dinky ‘Australia’ woolen seat coverings with a stitched koala in them eating what I assume were gum leaves. They looked brand new. I tried to take a sneaky photo of one to upload to the blog – sneaky as I didn’t want it to look like I was making fun of something that obviously thought was a nice gesture. That’s one of the things I have noticed about the Chinese already, they can be very thoughtful like this – cept they have very questionable taste – as evidenced by the cushions we bought today for our hard wooden couch. The guys like, “How about these ones, do you like these?” with that ‘These look wonderful!!’ look on his face, to which we just nodded.

So we left the airport and it was onto this massive highway. I think for the entire trip to Wuxi, which took around 2 hours, perhaps a little more, it was on this freeway that was four lanes in each direction. I didn’t even realize until about 15 minutes into the trip that we were driving on the right hand side of the road. I had no idea Chinese drivers drove on the left of the car – I had always thought it was the right, like us. I asked Michelle about this and she told me they actually drive on both sides of the car there – and having now experienced their roads and drivers first hand, YES I CAN BELIEVE THIS!!!

The fireworks are STILL going. It’s unbelievable.

So we hit the freeway and suddenly we’re immersed in China. This freeway was completely above ground, and it was by no means the only one. There were exits and bypasses and what not all over the place, ALL of them built off the road. This wasn’t just laying down a road surface on the earth, these were all full-on constructed roads. Beside them there were trees. These trees were all mostly bare due to winter, and all not overly tall, but they had all been planted, and there were thousands of them. They basically lined the freeway the whole time we were on it – which was the whole trip. They were in groups, you might drive for 2 minutes past one variety, then it’s another, or there might be a short bush thing(pruned) with a larger one behind it. I just cant fathom how many people, or how much work goes into what is something you would basically overlook.

It was smoggy – or foggy, or a combination of both. Everything in every direction was this light grayish colour due to it. The sun was just a red blob in the sky. There was absolutely no cloud pattern, or blue sky, just this haze. I think a lot of it would be actual fog going by how cold the air is, but it also has that foggy look to it. Today was a little clearer I think, but still foggy(just not as bad as yesterday).

For the entire duration of the 2 hour drive, either side of the road was…I don’t really know what to call it, EVERYTHING! There were buildings of absolutely every description. Row’s of high rise apartments, factories, more apartments, these really nice Chinese looking square buildings with those great curved roofs. Waterways, so many waterways, and tiny patches of farming land scattered around them. There were little shanty town type things and construction sites and you name it, it was there. All buried in the smog. And everything was populated. It’s not like back in Australia where you might drive through a suburb and not see people all over their homes etc, these buildings had people all around them. There was never a stretch where you didn’t see anyone, nor were there hardly any places that actually had vacant land. Every now and then we would see a larger building type area which looked like a town, but I was told that nope, even here an hour and a half away from the airport, this was still classed as Shanghai. Massive, simply massive.

This was by no means what you would call beautiful, or even appealing. The only way I could really describe it accurately would be overpowering. I still find it hard thinking about it, really comprehending the scale of what’s here. It’s like this particular part of China is one big factory, and squeezed in amongst all the progress are the people. Every time we saw side streets off the highway(down below as the whole damned thing was raised), you could see them teeming with bicycles and motorbikes and all manner of other vehicles. The highway itself was filled with mostly trucks(all blue strangely enough), busses and regular cars. Every single one of them was a hardcore tooter. Every single blue truck has at least one Disney character sticker on their windows – often with Chinese girls behind them. Sort of like a cross between a playboy pin-up(no nudity of course!) and a kid’s room. Weird as.

You don’t need to read up on Chinese etiquette to find out how they use their horns here, you learn it in about the first 5 minutes of driving. Actually I reckon the first time our driver used his horn was in the first 50 seconds of us being in the car. They use their horns not to have a go at each other or to tell them off, but what seems mostly to let other cars know they are there and to be aware. We’d drive beside something, and the driver would toot toot tooooot toot like 4-5 times as we passed. The highway was the easy part, it was 4 lanes on either side and just pointing straight. While on it, trucks would still drift into different lanes, and at one point our van was cruising at a cool 140km/hour and dodging in and out of them, it’s still nothing compared to the streets once you get into the actual towns themselves. And I don’t even feel right calling them towns as they don’t really have any identity. Everything looks the same. Like along the highway, it was one massive stretch of stuff. You simply pull off the road and you’re in amongst shops and people and smaller vehicles of every description, but there’s nothing to actually distinguish it from anything else.

I was hoping Wuxi might have looked different. Like we’d pass through these lovely green fields for a while then suddenly, hey presto, here’s this lovely town, but no. Wuxi was just another part of the same mess that is the two hour drive back to Shanghai Airport. It’s not terrible or anything, it’s just not really recognizable. We haven’t been into the city CBD yet, so that might help.

So I guess my first impressions in a nutshell is the place is somewhat overwhelming. We find it very difficult at night, like right now, and for the first time in my life I actually feel very homesick and miserable. Mum emailed me some photographs of us leaving the airport and both Courtney and I found them very difficult to look at. While it’s been extremely hard to this point, our spirits raise somewhat during the day, though we’re nervous as hell about starting teaching next week – to which we still have no details.

That’s it for me for now, there’s about a billion other things I want to talk about but I am going to bed before my fingers drop off – and yes, the fireworks are still going.

* next day edit –the fireworks went for around at least 2 hours or so straight – STRAIGHT. And just to add happiness to the mix, as soon as I hopped into bed – no shit, as soon as I hopped into bed, they started going off right next door. I looked out the window, and booyah! Fireworks! If I wasn’t so damned cold and miserable last night I would have enjoyed them!

** Unrelated interesting thing that Courtney noticed – our bathroom door when closed at night, with the bamboo outside our window and the red full moon in that same direction, left this most awesomely artistic looking bamboo silhouette on our door. Will have to try and remember to get a photo of it.

-Sorry for the wall of text with no pretty pictures to break it up. We cant yet get any photos off our camera as the adapters we brought for our laptops don't work - and the fact they dont have internet access either.