Start as you mean to go on

I had been to China last summer so arriving here wasn’t so much of a shock to the system, however, it truly hit home that I was here when I started eating rice for breakfast, using a squat toilet and wearing a smog mask to go outside. The university that we are staying at is very nice and we were able to give our rooms a personal touch. For me, this meant a day of dragging my bed half way across the room, going to IKEA to spend all my money and covering my walls in pictures of my loved ones. My room for the next year now feels a little more like home. Some of the many things I love about China are; how cheap everything is; how good (most of) the food is’ how nice and friendly everyone is and how you can walk for miles and every step you see something new. Everyone who was lucky enough to get this Scholarship will know just how fortunate we are, we are genuinely treated like royalty.

The University is located in a very nice area and everything we could possibly need is around us. On campus we have a building that has a 7/11, a smoothie bar, a nail bar, a stationery shop and a fruit shop, all just in the basement. Above that there are 2 floors of canteen areas that serve very good traditional Chinese food, and you can get your whole dinner for about £1.20. To top it all off there is a western restaurant on the third floor, which (almost) tastes like home.  Around campus there are quite a lot of street food shops, which I have not yet ventured into but there will for sure be a day. There is also the Scholars favourite noodle bar, where you choose the contents of your bowl, there is every type of meat and vegetable you could possibly want and you can have however much you want, it then gets added to broth and covered in a peanut sauce.  I love spicy food so I then I add my body weight in chilly and spring onions, highly recommended! Believe it or not, we also have a Tesco within walking distance, this excited me very much as I thought I was just going to walk in in a get myself a £3 Tesco meal deal, but no, it’s all still very Chinese.

Of course, being an 18 year old Student, I can’t forget about the multiple bars and clubs around us, all within a walking or cycle distance. Bikes are available for us to use but I haven’t yet got my WeChat pay up and running, however, is on this weeks To Do List.  Bikes are placed all over the city, and they only cost 1yuan (10p) to ride until you want to get off. It is a mode of transport that a lot of the local people use, as it’s so cheap and easy but it is also very quick as there is a specific cycle lane so bike traffic is brought to a minimum.

We have also given  the trains a try by travelling to another city during mid-term and although the whole 10 hours of traveling only cost us about £14, I don’t think I will ever forget the 5 hour train trip to Jinan, the capital of eastern China’s Shandong Province.  Ten of the Scholars travelled but few of us got split up on the train from the rest of the group and I ended up sitting on my own in carriage 2 with a Chinese family sitting around me.  I spent the whole journey with my fellow passengers simply staring at me and trying to get conversation out of me in Chinese, I managed to tell them my name and that I was from Scotland that was about all the questions I could understand.  On the way back, we could only get standing tickets so we had to just hope for the best. We thought that there might be a carriage solely for standing tickets so that we could just sit on the floor, but no, you must stand/sit between the seats with other people sitting on them, so we just made the best of a slightly strange situation and sit on our neck pillows for 5 hours, hoping that no one needed to get past.  As you can imagine, every time someone had to get past we all had to get up so they didn’t step on us. Also at home when you are approaching a stop it will be spoken for the passengers to hear through the speakers; here someone walks down the carriage shouting it out, of course at every stop we were woken up from our light nap to let people past. Being here really makes you appreciate Scot Rail but I’m still going to use the trains again, not quite put off.  Jinan was amazing and we spend a few days there and visited The Mountain of a Thousand Buddha’s and I will definitely be going back there when my family visit.

We have also been on the subway a few times to go to places more local.  The subway system requires you to going through security like in an airport, then you buy your ticket, which is a small green plastic coin and costs on average 3yuan (30p), then you’re off. As you can imagine, with Tianjin’s population being 15.47million, the trains are packed, but I love using the trains because it allows you to get around easily and makes you feel like this is your home rather than a holiday where you just jump in a taxi. Lastly, walking is the best way to see the city that we are living in for the next year, we are lucky enough to have quite a lot of interesting things within walking distance, like the ICT Mall and Joy City, obviously because I love shopping, there’s also a huge coliseum with an international shop underneath it and many pizza shops. I don’t think we could have possibly asked for more, or a better location for our Uni and it just makes it even better that it’s here in China!