September in China
For me, it was quite difficult to prepare for going to China. I was moving to the other side of the world, away from all my friends and family to live with 21 other strangers who would become my new China family. I knew what I had to take with me: t-shirts, shoes, trousers, sunglasses, money, little memories from back home and of course my stock cubes and gravy granules.
However what was harder to prepare for was the mental and emotional side of things. I was leaving my home for ten months to move to arguably one of the most contrasting countries to Scotland.
It was a huge thing to do and one month in I can tell you it was the best decision I have ever made. The experience we are getting over in China is absolutely phenomenal, and we are having a great time exploring the city, learning the language and meeting many friends of different nationalities. We have friends from the Ukraine (乌克兰), Russia (俄罗斯), Slovakia, Indonesia, Italy (意大利), Korea (韩国), England (英国), Portugal, France (法国), Belgium, the United States (美国) and of course China (中国). So not only are we learning about Chinese language and culture, we are also learning about many others due to the university being an international university. The university has many students living on campus which means we have convenient access to a canteen, shops and a restaurant. There is even a hairdressers (理发店) on campus!
Personally, as someone who has studied very little Mandarin, the classes are very difficult. The teachers don't speak English which creates a barrier that we are slowly but surely overcoming. It really makes you appreciate it when people can speak your language. There aren't as many English speakers as you would think here which I like as it forces me to constantly practice my Mandarin skills.
The city I live in is Tianjin which is in the north of China and it is one of the largest cities. It has a population of over 15 million which is crazy compared with the 5.4 million people in Scotland. Because of the huge population, space is very important. Therefore, people tend to live in very tall buildings. There are bicycles everywhere which also gives a reasonably good gauge of the sheer number of people. There can be literally thousands of them on a single street which is really amazing to witness. They have many convenient apps as well, such as WeChat, mobike, ofo, didi and alipay. From banking to hiring a bike to getting a taxi to ordering food, WeChat does it all. I think I will really miss WeChat when I return home! I will at least use it to stay in touch with all the friends I have made here over the year.
Next week we are off university for national holiday week and we have decided to travel to Shandong province to go to a city called Jinan. We are all extremely excited as it has many beautiful features; natural and architectural. For example, we are visiting Thousand Buddha Mountain which is in the city, Mount Tai, Baotu Springs and Daming Lake. It will be a great trip and it will hopefully give us an insight into the contrast between different regions and cities in China.
The food so far has been absolutely amazing. Of course every now and then you don't actually know what you're eating. One of my favourite foods so far is ‘jianbing’. Not easy to describe but it is sort of like an eggy floury wrap with spices and vegetables and this deep fried crunchy stuff. It's a staple for me and very delicious (I promise). I also love spicy beef rice with carrot, spring onion and sweetcorn. Despite only being here for a few weeks, there are many things I miss. Cheese for example and of course my family and friends every now and then.
The ‘China experience’ is actually such a difficult thing to describe. There are so many tiny little things that happen that cause us to just look over at each other whilst muttering a single word, “China”. And it’s because there are just so many things that happen here that you would never see back home, the funny thing is that there is actually nothing specific, you just need to be here to understand it or to realise how impossible it is to sum up what life is like here. However, this creates a strong bond between us all and we can just embrace and share the crazy, amazing but fairly challenging experience we are undertaking.
