Midterms, Mountains and Municipal Leaders

大家好！

October has been an absolutely insane month and there are so many stories to tell, so this blog is likely to be significantly longer than some others. Of course, I hope the months to come are just as interesting and eventful as October has been.

Meeting the Mayor

Although this technically happened in late September, I only briefly mentioned it in the last blog, so I’ll discuss it in further detail here.

The centre for international exchange at the uni informed all of the foreign students that there would be an exclusive event to celebrate the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China at the Tianjin Grand Theatre. A couple of my friends went down to sign up as soon as we heard about it, and it was lucky we did, as we took the last seven places held by the university at the event.

We were all asked to wear national dress so a couple of us Scots decided to sport kilts which got us some attention, to say the least. But of course we showed our Scottish pride and took a couple of trips to 7-11 in full dress.

When the day finally arrived we were all really excited to see what the event had in store for us, and we took a minibus to the Tianjin Grand Theatre with the other international students going. On the bus, we were given our very official looking invitations, and this just made us even more excited to see what would actually be taking place. We arrived at the venue, and after passing through security and some more odd looks, we entered into the hall.

The hall was decorated top to bottom in red and gold decorations and tables covered in snacks and drinks were everywhere. There were huge TV cameras everywhere with massive microphones. We were led to our table (complete with name tags including our Chinese and English names) and waited for the event to start. Some people came over and handed us each some warm, damp towels (which turned out to be a lifesaaver as you'll see…)

As the final guests and officials arrived, we were hushed and the host began the event. It was all in Chinese, and it was really interesting to hear how much more I could understand that I expected, though the transcript we were handed at the beginning definitely helped. We were asked to rise for the Chinese national anthem, and of course with my luck, my body decided it was the perfect time to get a heavy nosebleed.

This is where the damp towel came to the rescue. I held it to my nose as we listened to the national anthem and felt the patriotic atmosphere get stronger in the room. My poor towel was dyed a nice colour of red (and so were a couple of my friends), but luckily it died down as the main part of the event - the speech by the mayor - began.

The speech was very interesting and included a lot of history about Tianjin and the People’s Republic of China, and after the mayor was finished talking, he went around every table to shake hands and meet everyone. As we waited for him to arrive, we got to tuck into the snacks presented in front of us, and we had a nice conversation with the other international students attending the event. When the mayor finally got to our table, he was extremely friendly and immediately recognised our Scottish attire, and we had a brief talk about Scotland. We were complimented on our national dress, and were given a glass of wine each and toasted with the mayor. He continued his way around the tables and we continued our meal before the event ended. Upon leaving, Li Peng, who accompanied us to the event, informed us that he saw several Chinese celebrities (actors and sports personalities). It’s incredible that we were invited to an event with people like this, and it was truly an unforgettable experience.

迷路在北京（Lost in Beijing）

This is a story I’ve told so many times since it happened, but it is by far the most interesting thing to happen to me so far.

We were given notice of the October holidays one week prior so we hadn’t planned anything big. Seven friends and I decided we’d take a look on AirBNB for a cheap place to go for the week. We found this beautiful place in the countryside in Beijing and we all agreed to book it. Due to the uni’s regulations on holidays, we had to go to school on the Saturday of that week, but it was a good laugh and the excitement from the holiday coming up was a great topic of conversation in speaking class. In intensive reading class, we were given the option to watch Mulan, and as the film was playing we decided to just book the holiday. But to our horror, the nice place we found had been booked for our dates. So in a panic we found another nice looking place in Beijing and booked it straight away. That night, we packed our bags and prepared for the journey to Beijing the next morning.

We woke up excited and left with plenty of time to spare. We took the subway to Tianjin South station and had the experience of taking the bullet train to Beijing. Watching a train go by at 300km/h was absolutely crazy and getting on was a really cool experience. For the cheap price, it was a rather luxurious train. There was more legroom than I’ve ever had on a Scottish train, and the 40 minute journey flew by.

That’s when our nightmare began…

The taxi drivers seemed confused when we gave them the address, but they were willing to try anyway. The eight of us split into two taxis and one followed the the other. The journey took about an hour and we finally arrived…in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Both us and the taxi drivers seemed confused as to where we’d arrived. We checked the maps on our phones and it seemed that we’d gone extremely far from the main city of Beijing. The taxi drivers started telling us that the address we’d given them and the address of the place we were looking for were different, so we called on the villagers in the cornfield for help. In rural China, English speakers are scarce, so Chinese was our only option. It is definitely the most I’ve ever been forced to use Chinese at one time, and it was thrilling, though nerve-racking. The whole village slowly came out to watch us try to figure out our way around the situation, as I don’t imagine many foreigners go there often. We asked a woman on the street if the host’s house was in the vicinity, to which we were given the worst response you could get in a situation where you’re lost - “哪儿？“ (“where?”). One of the group (I won’t name names) had to go pee in the bushes where they were met by a woman who claimed to know where we were talking about, and she told the taxi drivers. We got back into the taxis, said goodbye to the somewhat helpful villagers and were off to where we thought was our host’s house.

How wrong we were…

Another hour or two was spent in the taxi and we noticed we were going towards the mountains, but by this point we were too far into our adventure to turn back. We started going up the mountain in these taxis and, suddenly, the taxis split up. My taxi crossed a dodgy-sounding bridge, while the other taxi continued up the mountain. So I passed my phone to the taxi driver and my friend in the other taxi did the same, and the drivers talked using that. We met back together across the dodgy bridge and drove down the mountain a little bit and stopped at a restaurant. The taxi drivers went in and a couple of the restaurant workers came out. I was designated talker and so tried to explain what was going on to everyone again in Chinese. After a long discussion about our situation and coming to the conclusion that our AirBNB host was probably a scam, and an assumption that one of us was Japanese, the taxi drivers decided it was getting late and decided to head home to Beijing. We payed them and thanked them kindly for their help, and we found ourselves stranded in the mountians with the night starting to take over and the cold starting to get noticable.

The Chinese are very homely and kind people, and insisted we come into the restaurant to eat. They treated us to a glass of hot water each (their miracle cure) and fed us a nice meal of rice (米饭）, steam buns （包子）and chicken head (鸡头）! It was quite the experience eating chicken head, and I must admit the tongue and eyes were much tastier that you’d expect them to be.

We had a fun meal. Our group coping mechanism seemed to be jokes and laughter, so we just made the most of our ridiculous situation. A class of elementary school students learning first aid also came into the restaurant and were convinced we were Americans, and we got some stares from them, but it was hilarious. It turned out that a restaurant worker owned a hotel across the aforementioned dodgy bridge and offered to let us stay there. We had no other choice at this point, so we walked with him up the hill and decided to book some rooms.

We had a problem, though. Most of our money had gone towards the fake host, so we had a limited amount of money, and were charged extra for late check-in. So we could only afford to book two rooms. It was that option or sleeping outside so we took the chance for shelter and booked the rooms we could afford. After a slight issue with the room passcodes, we finally got to enter our rooms for the night.

Then another problem arose. Each room only had two single beds, and there were eight of us. To make matters worse, the rooms were freezing cold and there were millipedes on the walls and centipedes on the floor. We tried to make it work and tried to fill the convienent "hot tub" in the room. But the water was freezing cold and there were centipedes floating in the water. We tried to make light of the situation by watching Pirates of the Carribean, but of course, knowing our luck, the wifi cut off. We had the typical deep chats you have in a sleepover-type situation, and before anything worse could happen we decided it was time to go to bed. The bugs were too much for some, and so some of the group were kept up with the fear of millipedes as they saw it moving slowly towards their bed. I had to share with two others in a single bed, and no one had any space to move. It was a hilariousy tragic situation, but in times like that all you can do is laugh. We saw a lizard crawling along our wall, but we were too tired to care. We all managed to get to sleep eventually, but it wasn’t to last long. We were pleasantly awoken to the sound of cockerels screaming at 4am. I couldn’t sleep with the racket, so I got up, went for a walk a wee bit up the mountain to this cool arch, and came back down. I got back into bed, and of course as I was getting to sleep, fireworks started going off at 8am. It didn’t even surprise me that something as ridiculous as that would happen by that point, so we all decided to get up.

The man who’d given us the room at his hotel suddenly came to the door and started knocking - ”欧文，哈喽，欧文“ - and when I went to see what he wanted it turned out the checkout time was 9am. So we had about five minutes to pack up everything and make our way back to the restaurant for a hearty breakfast of bread, boiled eggs and hot water. After breakfast, we decided to make the most of our presence in the mountain (which we had finally found out the name of - 九龙山, Nine Dragons Mountain) and climb it. It was a great day out and we spent a few hours seeing the beautiful scenery and the forest up the mountain before heading back down for lunch. We had lunch and asked for help how to get home. The restaurant and hotel staff were very helpful and gave me tips on how to get the bus, which up to that point I hadn’t done in China yet. I asked at a reception desk at the main park of 九龙山 which buses to take and we were finally sure as to how to get home. The bus journey was grueling, as after the first bus which took about an hour, we had to transfer and take another hour long bus ride to the nearest subway station, but this bus had no free seats, and we didn’t have change. It was like playing Chinese whispers trying to communicate up the aisle of the bus and to the driver, but we got there in the end, and after squeezing into an extremely packed subway, we made it to the train station.

We had a celebratory McDonald’s and went to the shop afterwards to see what there was before our train was due. That’s when we realised that we couldn’t find our group suitcase, but luckily the McDonald’s staff had just taken in into the back when we left without it. We made it on the train and the crazy part of the journey was finally over. We got some stares from the standing passengers on our bullet train back, but it was a laugh seeing how they reacted to our amusement at the train, and my friend Kevin’s blue hair.

We finally made it back to Tianjin and the next few nights we were spent at home, so we treated ourself to a lot of 外卖（takeaways）using a very handy app, 饿了么.

Although it went completely not to plan, that trip to 九龙山 was one of the most interesting and unforgettable experiences of my life, and I can’t imagine it having gone any other way. It’s an interesting story to tell and I even used it in my practice speaking exam as part of the performance section, where I had to perform a play with some friends. It just goes to show how even a completely disastrous trip can still be brilliant. I know now to live in the moment, and not worry about things, as you can still have a good time no matter what is thrown at you.

The Haircut

Although not as interesting as the above stories, three friends and I went for haircuts this month and it was the fanciest haircut I’ve ever recieved. They washed my hair, cut it, dried it and styled it for only 48元, and I got to practice my Chinese haircut vocabulary.

Midterms

Not everything in October was fun, though, as this was the month that midterms began. Chinese exams are extremely tough, and the workload is immense. All the questions are in Chinese and it’s a big change from home, but I managed to make my way though them.

Great Wall Trip

On October 27th, we got to go on a trip to the Great Wall. However, it started with an extremely early 5:30am rise, and the highway was closed due to severe fog. But all the international students made the most of it and we all went out onto the closed road to teach each other playground games from our respective countries. We had a disastous attempt at Strip the Willow with some students and some random Chinese drivers as well, but a rather successful game of Red Rover. What a throwback. When we finally made it to the great wall, we were all treated to a huge bag each of freshly picked apples and we were given a few hours to ourselves on the wall. This section was in Ji county, a different part from last year’s trip, so it was like a whole new experience. I had fun speaking to a bunch of new international students from all over the world, and getting closer to some of my classmates with whom I hadn’t talked much previously.

Halloween

The last thing to happen in October was, of course, Halloween. But what was interesting is that our Korean friends on our floor didn’t know what it was, so we got to explain it to them and show them some traditions, like pumpkin carving (or in our case with the lack of pumpkins in China, watermelon carving) and dooking for apples in the middle of the hall. Our Russian and Ukranian friends also joined in on that and it was a great bonding experience for floor 7.

That’s basically it for interesting stories from October. It was an extremely busy month for me but it was so fun and I hope the rest of my year here continues to be just as exciting and unpredictable.

再见！