Hey you guys,
it’s already late, but I need to let you know that I had my very first FULL conversation with a taxi driver! We talked about his girlfriend, where he was from, Germany and China in comparison, the Canton Fair, and finally we found out that I’m 4 cm taller than he is!
This is a small step for the world, a big step for the Franzi.
A longer update will follow soon!
Last Saturday (October 1st) it was the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. For that reason I did not have to work last week. So I decided to use the time to get to know Guangzhou and some other cities in Guangdong. So after sleeping in on Saturday, Alex (the other “kulturweit” volunteer) and I against the advice of all my colleagues decided to do a little bit of sightseeing in Guangzhou. At first we went to the Sun Yat-sen memorial (I get the impression every city has a Sun Yat-sen memorial somewhere), which was located in a really nice park. After having taken the subway I understood why everybody was so surprised I wanted to do touristy stuff on Saturday. Even though the subway is always crowded, I was quite shocked when I got off the train at one of the bigger stations. It was impossible to move individually, you were just pushed with the crowd. On the outside of the Sun Yat-sen memorial a text praised the building to be ‘a pearl of Chinese architecture’. Thus, ‘gespannt wie ein Flitzebogen’ (German expression saying that I was very excited) I entered the building and was very surprised to see an ordinary theatre with a stage up in front. It was still nice to get a little more information about the founding father of modern China.
The next stop was one of the many parks in Guangzhou: the Yuexie Park, which appears to be by far the biggest. Since I had not gone to a park here before I expect to see a European style park (before I didn’t think that there were different styles of parks), but the park we entered was quite different from those I’m used to in Europe. I mean yeah there are trees and other green things, but other than that. Well, in Germany I guess people go to parks to relax and to be close to nature, however in the park there were cemented paths and loudspeakers with ‘relaxing’ music everywhere. Besides with more than 10 people per square meter (most of them taking pictures of the only two blond haired in the park) going for a quiet and relaxing walk is very hard. I guess I’ll have to come back when it is not national holiday.
After that we met with another volunteer to go for dinner. I had read in the Lonely Planet for China that there was supposed to be a very good Uyghur Restaurant ‘behind the TMall’. Although the TMall is really big and behind the TMall could mean all of its four sides we decided to try it. Yet the map in the guide book was not very exact. So suspecting that we were on the right track we walked down the street behind the TMall about 20 minutes. Not finding it Alex suggested to turn into one of the side streets because he thought that that would be the right direction. Once we had left the big street (it was already 7 pm and dark) there were fewer people and much fewer lights. So we kept on walking about another 20 minutes in that direction, passing parts of the streets without lights and no shops. I was convinced we were wrong, but Alex (usually having a very good sense of orientation) thought that we should be there soon. After another 5 minutes we turned right (you have to imagine that we were about 20 minutes walk away from any street we knew, around us were only street vendors and cookshops) because there were a couple of shops. At the end of the street I said that we should finally ask somebody. When Alex answered “Ask that guy he looks like a Uyghur” I looked at him skeptically, because how could one say how an Uyghur looks like by just one look? Well he actually had a good explanation and when I asked the guy he led us through some even darker streets, but finally (shortly before we were convinced that he was just going to rob us) we arrived at the restaurant. So I guess this story goes to show, how you just have to be lucky and follow the right people 🙂 Because the food was amazing and the people were extremely nice. So if anybody ever is in Guangzhou tell me and I’ll tell you were to find this amazing restaurant.
Finally, on Chinese national day we celebrated the Chinese minorities =)
Okay, now it’s already Friday and I’ve been thinking almost every day: “Oh my God that is so weird/ funny/ interesting I really need to update my block” =) Well, as you can see it took me a little while to actually do it, but I hope I won’t forget anything. So let’s start at the beginning of last week (There is lots to tell so I’ll first write about the first couple of days).
About typhoons and business cards
So last week was my first full week at work, start: Monday 9 am. But already on Tuesday there was an extraordinary meeting that I was supposed to attend. It was a meeting of the different organizations in that work in Guangzhou to promote the German culture in the Guangdong province. For that reason Nuri another “kulturweit” volunteer came from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. It was really nice to see her again and to hear about life in another Chinese mega-city. So, before going to the German Consulate General (which we almost didn’t find because it is located on the 14th floor in a building connected to a shopping mall) we decided to have lunch Chinese style. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that we ate Chinese lunch (even though that’s often the case), but more that we have lunch already around 11:30/12:00 o’clock. After that it is sometimes hard to find restaurants that are not doing a lunchtime break. I haven’t told you about the Cantonese (no clue if it is like that in all China) eating habits, but as I understood from all my Chinese travelling guides food is very important and often the central element of the day. So one of the most frequent questions asked in China is “吃了吗 (Chīle ma)?“, which literally means have you eaten already? But try to get it translated by translate.google.com you will see a surprising result =) So the Chinese people I’ve met so far have warm breakfast (rice soup is very common here in Guangzhou or something from the cookshops on the side of the streets) quite early, have lunch like I said around 11:30/12:00, dinner at 6:00/6:30 and for the hungry a night snack around 23:00. Most of the daily routine here revolves around food.
Anyway, we went to have Japanese food, really good Japanese food. The meeting itself was very interesting, and because it was an ‘anniversary’ (the 10th meeting) there was German cake and coffee. The same day my colleague casually told me that there was supposed to be a typhoon in the next days. She must have seen the surprise in my eyes, but she assured me that I should not worry because it was not going to hit Guangzhou directly. The next day Wednesday it was once again extremely hot (about 35° and extremely humid), so I decided to go out in short pants and shirt. Yet a couple of hours later it started to rain, no sorry not rain but to pour, to rain cats and dogs, however you want to call it. It rained a lot and was extremely windy. And I thought, okay this will be over in a bit, but it kept on raining for more than 2 ½ hours!!!! Our hallway and the toilets got a little flooded, but other than that nothing changed. The same amount of people was on the street and everything went its normal way. Once, it stopped raining I was very happy because I had planned to go to a couchsurfing meeting and I didn’t see that happening with me in short pants while it was raining cats and dogs. Still somehow I managed to arrive at the bar without being too wet. It was very nice to finally meet some locals. What was very different from a European couchsurfing meeting was the amount of business cards I took with me at the end of the night. I had heard that cliché before (that Chinese are obsessed with business cards), but I wouldn’t have thought it to be that true. Everybody seemed to have a business card and some were really surprised that I didn’t. But what would it say on it? Franziska Koch, volunteer? I don’t know. But I realized that my Chinese name is way easier than to try to teach them how to pronounce my real name (it’s way too long and has too many consonants). So I guess I’ll be Kē Fā Lán (柯发兰) for the next year 😉 But I actually learnt that pronounced differently Fa Lan could also mean hairdresser or if you add a zi (子) at the end it is an old expression for France. But anyway, I guess it is still easier than Franziska.
Will write more soon, Franzi
Crazy. I was thinking about my last days here in China and even though I’ve only been here for six days, it feels like much longer. So many impressions, so many people, so many new things. I realized that my last entry was held very general, so I thought that today I’d give you a couple more specifics about my daily life and living situation.
For the first days after I arrived I stayed in a hotel on the university campus. Since my room was right next to what appeared to be a place to do gymnastics I was usually woken up by Chinese marching music in the morning. But already on Friday morning I went apartment hunting with Karin, a Chinese German language student. We already left at 9:30 am to go to the first real estate agency. After filling out a couple of forms, they checked their computer and showed me a couple of rooms in the area. The ones we thought were okay, we had a look at. In total we went to four different agencies and looked at about eight rooms. Lots of negotiating, asking questions and inspecting of the rooms. I was very happy I had Karin. I’m not sure how people find an apartment without a Chinese translator. Anyway, apparently I was very lucky because I found a good room in an apartment with a Russian girl as my flat mate, which is quite cheap and really close to my work place (only 15 minutes on foot and most of is walking on the beautiful Campus).
So, right away on Saturday it was moving time again. I went to look for a taxi with the language assistant of my department him and me fully packed with my luggage (a huge suitcase, two big backpacks and thousands of little bags). Unfortunately none of us knew Chinese, but we were determined to communicate to the driver anyway where we wanted to go. We were able to find a taxi quite quickly, so after trying to tell the driver for five minutes where I wanted to go (it was really not a hard route, just straight and then the next big street to the right), I gave up and called Karin to translate for me. This worked out immediately.
On Sunday then I met up with a two of the volunteers that I got to know at the preparation seminar in Germany the week before I left and who I knew are working in Guangzhou as well. We spent the whole day, walking and talking, taking the metro around Guangzhou, eating Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) and just being tourists. It was a lot of fun and I got to see a little more of the city. I won’t go into detail, but you can just have a look at the pictures.
On Monday I spent the whole afternoon at the police station and the real estate agency. In China every foreigner has to register right away where he is staying. This is why I went to the police station. For some reason I was expecting a huge and modern building at a big street with lots of policemen. But I was very surprised to see that the opposite was the case. Since none of us really knew where the police station was, we had to look for quite a while until we found out in which direction to go. Contrary to what I expected the police station was not situated at a big street, but in a living area about five minutes walk away from the big street. To get there you had to go through a maze of small streets. Further, the police station itself was only one room with two secretaries. Not at all what I was expecting. A couple of forms (you can see the Chinese love forms! They have them for everything! No matter what you want to do, exchange money, look for a room, you have to fill out at least one or two forms) and about 20 minutes later I was registered.
Well, I could go on and on about everything that happened and what I did, but I think this is enough at first.
Maybe some more things I noticed: Firstly, everywhere in China there seems to be German classical music. If you call someone it automatically plays “Für Elise”, in the restaurants I often heard “Freude schöner Götterfunken” or German ringtones. I was very surprised. Secondly, Chinese English can be quite funny. Regardless, if it is instructions in the metro or on advertisements on billboards. Especially, shirts with English sayings on it are very popular. Unfortunately, the people that wear those shirts don’t always seem to know what it says on their shirt.
Franzi
About four days ago I arrived in China, in my opinion the perfect time to reflect on what has happened in the past days. I will try to keep you updated with a lot of amusing stories ( =) ) and hopefully some pictures to give you a good impression of my year. But, first of all…
… what the hell am I doing in China?
Well, that’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot of times in the past days. First part of the answer: I am doing a year-long voluntary service at the Information Center of the German Academic Exchange Service at the Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Second part: I’m taking a year off between Bachelor and Master to learn Chinese and get an impression of the Chinese culture. This is why I’ve been taking Chinese courses, freaking out about weight limit of 30 kg for my flight and trying to read a lot of books on China. However, September 20th approached fast and I still felt unprepared.
September 20th, 2011
On the day I was supposed to leave I still had to pack and organize a lot of things. A long time it looked like it was going to be close, but finally we arrived at Hamburg Airport about 3 hours before take-off. Luckily, I decided to check my luggage in early, because as it turned out there were some unexpected problems with my Chinese visa. Nevertheless, on time at 9:25 pm my plane and I took off with the direction of Dubai Airport. With lots of delicious food and about 2 movies and a little bit of sleeping later I arrived in Dubai just to take off 5 hours later with the direction of Guangzhou. After landing and about an hour of standing in line at the immigration control I was picked up by a Chinese student to be taken to the Campus and the hostel.
Something between Mumbai and New York
How to describe my impressions of Guangzhou? The area around the Sun Yat-Sen 大学 (Sun Yat-Sen University) reminds me of certain areas in Mumbai, India: Huge streets, lots of cars and masses of people (only the cows, goats and buffalos in the middle of the streets are missing). Also the smell here in Guangzhou is different, somehow it’s sweeter. On the other hand, a couple of subway stations further downtown huge, silver and extremely modern skyscrapers remind me of New York and its skyline. To my surprise Guangzhou is a very green city. Not at all how I imagined a Chinese city with 12 million inhabitants. However, I expect to be more surprised, the more I see from Guangzhou.
About doves and other interesting stuff
The first days were filled with a couple of ‘firsts’ (like the first time I ate dove or the first time a Chinese person understood a sentence I said) and lots of organizational stuff: apartment hunting, getting money, choosing a ‘good’ cell phone number, and so on and so on… wait! A good cell phone number? How can a cell phone number be good or bad? This is actually quite interesting: as the Chinese word for the number four (sì = 四) sounds the same as the Chinese word for death (si = 死), four is considered an unlucky number. Particularly bad is the combination 145 (wuyaosi), which sounds like wo yao si (我要死), which translates to “I want to die”. Eight (ba = 八) on the other hand stands for money and fortune. So a cell phone number containing lots of eights and no fours is better than one with lots of fours. Unfortunately I was not too successful and ended up with two fours and no eight. Ils sont fous les Chinois…
Questions…
Over the past days thousands of questions have crossed my mind, this is to give you a small impression: How do I find out my inner temperature or my inner humidity? How many people fit into a 36 story apartment building? How expensive should a one bedroom apartment be? For the sake of positive Feng Shui, is it really sensible to have two nightstands instead of one? How high is the electricity bill to illuminate the Zhu Jiang (珠江 = Pearl River) every night? What food is considered ‘cold’ and what ‘warm’ (for those of you that are now thinking: ‘what the heck, warm food is warm and cold food is cold!’ Not with the Chinese. I will keep you updated once I find out what system there is behind those categories)? When will I be able to understand a Chinese real estate agent? Do you take the furry toilet-seat-cover off before going to the toilet? How do I get the Chinese taxi driver to drive to my new apartment without sufficient Chinese from my side and no street name knowledge from his side? What’s the shortest way from my apartment to work? How hard does a mattress have to be?
