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