Planes, Trains and Blue Trucks….Courtney’s First Impressions of China (Courtney)

Well, I just finished reading Marcus’ post, and I laughed so hard I’m no longer sure if I was laughing or crying by the end of it. I don’t think even that could paint a true picture of how things have been so far. It was great to have a good belly laugh though, mustering a smile has been a bit trying over the last couple of days, things have been fairly desperate and grim! These posts are pretty huge, as it’s our first few days, so we promise they wont be this big in the future!

For those of you not present at the airport, we nearly didn’t make it out of Melbourne, due to some dramas with our tickets. The stress of that on top of the emotion of the day was just too much, and it made it really difficult for me to give complete focus to the enormous thing that was taking place – us actually leaving the country and saying goodbye to those we love. As seems to be the way in China though, after that initial hiccup we were never asked to see our tickets again..it seems like everything we are told turns out to be the opposite at the moment!

Arriving in Shanghai was a great feeling, nerve wrecking but great to be there after so much planning. My heart was beating so loudly as we went through customs I honestly thought the immigration lady would hear it and deport me just on those grounds!

The trip from the airport to Wuxi was definitely one of the more harrowing of my life to date, however, seeing that we now live in China I do not think it will be our last! Our driver seemed determined to win the race that seemed to be in play, this is the only explanation I can give for the fact that we did an average speed of 140km the entire way there. Either that or they just wanted it to seem like Wuxi was really close to Shanghai. It was amazing driving along, it was like a stereotypical view of China. Everything grey and dreary and just people and movement everywhere. There was so much rumble and debris, I suppose you could say it was due to construction, but everything looks so rundown. I can’t say what it is like in a big city, as we didn’t see any of Shanghai, but the outer area is just so Chinese. The smog was significantly thicker than I actually thought it would be, the sun is really strong and goes from a yellow colour during the day, to a bright red as it sets. That is the only discernable part of the sky, everything else is just grey. Even the moon is bright orange- although I did manage to see a star last night! In amongst the inexplicable amount of fireworks that seem to go off each night..I try to comfort myself by thinking it is a welcome for Marcus and I.

Our first stop in China was at a road side truck/service station type thing – of course it was a good ten times larger than anything we have on the highways of Australia! It’s very amusing because the people who we were with then (and this continues now), asked us if we were hungry/thirsty/needing the bathroom etc, and even though we answered that we were fine, we still stopped to go to the bathroom and procure snacks. Michelle, one of the young English teachers (who is just lovely) accompanied me to the bathroom, which of course would be my first encounter with the Chinese squat toilet! Ah the joy. There must have been 50 toilets in the place, all empty, which was just great as it gave me no cover to try and figure out what to do whilst Michelle stood just metres away from me. Even at the smallish height of 5 foot 6 inches, I could still see clearly over the tops of all the walls! Thankfully though, my adventure was a great success, meaning of course that I got over confident in my abilities – needless to say further squat toilet meetings yesterday were not so successful, and my boots will never be the same.

Snacks were bought and we carried on our way. The traffic was just crazy, every lane full, and I was surprised at how little stopping and starting there was. The weirdest thing of all were the trucks – all of them, and I mean all of them, are the exact same shade of blue. It’s as though they have been bought and then deliberately painted. Coincidentally they all appear to be driven by the same downtrodden, smoking man..I don’t know how he managed to be in so many places at once. The driving is maddening, the painted lines literally mean nothing. My favourite moment was driving by one of the blue trucks, only to realize the back tray was carrying about 8 workmen!! All just hanging onto the railing, casually smoking, like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing a land record speed down a highway on the back of a truck! I was so amazed I actually made a small squeaking noise and pointed at them, to which I received numerous quizzical looks!

We arrived at the school to find out apartment overflowing with Chinese people. I honestly believe that whilst they pretended to have been ready for us, it was quite clear that everything in the apartment had been frantically purchased that day. There was stuff everywhere and we were just kind of standing in the center of this tornado, not quite knowing what to do. Seconds later the school principle arrives, Mr Shen, so we do rounds of introductions, before we are whisked off to be guests of honour at a banquet dinner. Not before I manage (through a series of hand gestures and charades) to indicate that we have been wearing the same clothes for 2 days, and would appreciate a minute to freshen up! This produced raucous laughter from all, but at least we had 5 minutes to put on new clothes, find out ski jackets and close all the freaking windows!!!

When I say the apartment is freezing, it really doesn’t describe the artic, bone aching temperature in here. There is no heating, or drapes or floor coverings, and it is literally mind numbingly cold and wet. We have every warm piece of clothing on that we own – as in, I’m sitting here in jeans, long sleeve top, singlet under that, knee length socks, slippers, polar fleece jacket, scarf, ski jacket..and when I’m done typing I’ll be putting my gloves back on! It is really really miserable, as is the one major factor which is really getting to us. All we keep thinking about is everything we have given up to come here, it’s very hard to justify at the moment. We cannot get warm, I wake in the night with this hacking cough, the bed is so cold when we get in that it feels wet. The bathroom has been dripping with moisture since we got here…it can’t be good for our health. Mr Shen, the principle, lent us one of his heaters, but it does absolutely nothing. Supposedly this afternoon the heater is being installed, they came yesterday but couldn’t do it, so the damned thing sits taunting us downstairs!! The bed is, well actually, I was going to write is possibly the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever felt, but that honour goes to our WOODEN couch. Yup..the entire thing is made from wood!! Oh man, the hits just keep on coming. The bed, whilst a king size, is I think made from concrete, I haven’t actually looked under the mattress yet as I don’t want to confirm my worst fears, but it feels like you are lying on the floor. Living it up Chinese style over here!

Thankfully the shower is now fixed…ah, my shower yesterday was kind of Kramer-esque (remember when he decided to make food in the shower? I had that kind of scene going on, I was actually laughing to myself wishing there was some discreet way of photographing the experience, it was that bad) with ice cold water just spraying randomly all over the bathroom – needless to say nothing came out dry! Through some stroke of genius I put a towel in my suitcase – luckily as we didn’t have any towels in the apartment! Then of course I successfully stuffed the toilet, I’ll leave that up to your colourful imaginations, but trusty Mr Pan came to our rescue, first calling the maintenance man, then getting down and dirty himself with a plunger. Oh the embarrassment. Might I point out that Mr Pan is a computer science teacher, we are yet to figure out why he has been assigned to us and not one of the English teachers, but that is Chinese logic for you! Mr Pan has been amazing, with his limited English we have managed to get a lot of things organized, and he has gone to great lengths to make us feel comfortable (sadly, the majority of them have failed!)

My favourite Mr Pan moment so far, was yesterday morning, when he was given the task to make us breakfast. We were to call Mr Pan upon waking and he would come over. So we give him a call and he pops over a few minutes later with some plastic bags full of goodies. One contained steamed buns and some sort of green cake. The other contained two hard boiled eggs and two prima packs of milk. At this point we hadn’t unpacked any of the kitchen stuff as the kitchen was pretty filthy and I didn’t fancy putting everything away only to pull it all out again once we got some cleaning products (the apartment has been empty for 2 years). So Mr Pan sees this, and obviously thinking we are incompetent and lazy, begins unpacking. First out comes the microwave, which we get set up. In goes the eggs and milk to warm up. Mr Pan is fiddling with the dials (the only thing in the apartment which is in English), and puts it on for 2 minutes. I contemplate trying to explain that this might be too long, but realize it would be redundant, and so start unpacking some other stuff. Seconds later comes an explosion. We all race back into the kitchen to find black smoke billowing from the brand new microwave! Oh the look on poor Mr Pan’s face. It took my all of my power to contain my laughter (even now as I type this I am shaking with laughter) as we opened the microwave to find all the contents had exploded. It took forever to clean up!! I tried to take a sneaky photo but I think he would have died of shame.

Marcus has been doing incredibly well with Mr Pan and the English barriers. I have been so impressed, he’s out with the phrase book and playing charades, trying to get everyone understanding what is going on. Actually all of our interactions have been positive, everyone is lovely and going out of their way to help us. The banquet dinner was the best, everyone knew it was a big deal to be out with the school principle, thankfully Marcus and I have read enough to know to wait to be told where to sit, wait before eating, before drinking etc. I think we impressed them! Moreso Marcus, who got well into the swing of “toasts”. Mr Shen bought the most expensive Chinese wine available, 500 grain wine, which was obviously supposed to make us feel very special. It tasted somewhat like a cross between vodka and bleach, hideous stuff! So there were toasts for everything, I was trying to be polite by pouring a drop into my glass and just letting it touch my lips, but I think they were a little disappointed by my lack of drinking prowess! Raymen, the head of the English department more than made up for the rest of us though.

Yesterday we were seen by the students for the first time at lunch, they are unaware that they are getting foreign teachers. Lots of giggles and points ensued. Lunch is held in a mammoth cafeteria, kind of like what I imagine a prison canteen to be like! The food an interesting mix of meat, vegie slop, rice and fish heads…mmmh, tasty. Everything so far smells the same, all kind of like some sort of pork dish, it is all I can smell at all hours of the day and night, so much that I now think that I smell like it too. Speaking of food, we have also tried jellyfish, and a delicious soup of duck cooked in duck’s blood! Glad I didn’t find that one out till we got home.

In the afternoon we went shopping for supplies with Mr Pan and Raymen. We bought everything you could imagine, yet still need a ton of stuff. We had 4 trolleys, yes 4, full by the time we left, yet it all came to about 1300 RMB which is about $250. The people in the shop were just amazed by us (until this morning we hadn’t seen another Westerner – even though I did ask Raymen if there were other foreigners in Wuxi and he replied “yes, there are many Japanese and Koreans”, go figure). I couldn’t even tell you how many people just stopped dead in their tracks to watch us going about our business, at one point I wandered off to the vegie section by myself and it was literally, I’m not kidding, like a chain reaction, one person would nudge the next person and point at me and so on. We then headed to a closer market, to be shown around which was much more like what we were expecting – live animals, fish, stuff and rubbish everywhere!! Just to give you an idea, we now have in our kitchen the two biggest bottles of oil and soy sauce I’ve ever seen, two jumbo sized boxes of cookies (these were here when we got here, and much fuss was made as to how wonderful it was to have the equivalent of 5kgs of cookies in one’s house), about 48 boxes of milk, special dumplings for the lantern festival, 30 individually wrapped oranges and a bag of pork and honey straps (a gift from Mr Pan’s wife) an assortment of steamed buns which just keep appearing with everyone who comes over, an entire bag of “little oranges” (some of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten), about 2kgs of raw sugar cane (supposed to bring luck to our new home) and 10kgs of rice. Yup, 10kg…if anyone can tell me how I’m supposed to store that now that it is open it would be most appreciated!

Last night we went to bed at the rocking time of 8 o’clock, it was so cold we had no further incentive to stay up, even though we were dressed fully and wrapped in a quilt on the wooden couch. We had to be ready to go at 8:30 this morning, and weren’t allowed breakfast, for our medicals. I think having our medicals will go down as one of the more ridiculous experiences we will have. We get to the travel health clinic (I had assumed it would be at a hospital but no), which is this huge building. Of course the reason why it’s so large is that there is one person to do each task. So we fill in the forms, have our photos taken, then are led (now with another teacher Miss YingMing…I think) down to the “Blood Sample Station”. Which is just a row of chairs with people at them having blood drained from them. I get Miss YingMing to explain that I normally pass out when having a blood test, she tells this to the nurse who just says, that’s ok, just close your eyes. So I sit down hoping that someone will attempt to catch me as I fall to the floor. All goes smoothly, until we get to the next section, which is urine test. I wander down the hall, feeling a bit woosy. What do you think the worst thing to be confronted with could be when feeling like you want to pass out? Oh yes….a squat toilet! Needless to say I was back in the waiting room and lying down on the chairs within a jiffy! From there, we went from room to room, first having a blood pressure checked, then our lungs and hearts (each by a different person, in a different room, even though the only instrument used was a stethoscope). Then we had ultrasounds, then ECG scans, then we had our eyes, ears and throats checked by this older man. This man then wanted us to read from a chart, which was just hysterical as none of us could understand what we were supposed to do – he was getting rather frustrated by the time I figure out what he wanted! Then last but not least, an xray. Our results wont come in for a few days, and then they will be able to start applying for our working visas. What a morning! Of course at the end of this Mr Pan returns with breakfast, yet again more bread buns and milk drinks. We have done everything in our power to explain that I can’t eat certain things, but it is as though anything we say is taken as meaning that we want it.

That’s about it for now, we have taken a stroll around the school and taken some photos (Mr Pan also took some photos of us yesterday with the school camera, interestingly the fountains and waterfall were operating yesterday, however not today, we think only for the photo shoot!) and now we are just sitting here shivering, waiting for the maintenance men to come and watching CCTV (the English channel which equates to nothing more than falsified happy news and advertisements!) We are hoping that with the installation of the heater that things will improve. Still no word yet on when we start working, we assume this coming week but we are kind of being left in the dark about all of that at the moment. Not sure whether just to relax or worry about it! Only time will tell.

Until next time, hope you are all well and WARM back in the land of oz.
Courtney
xx