Settling in
So, I’ve successfully made it to China. Well, about a month ago I successfully made it to China. It doesn’t feel like I’ve spent that long here but at the same time my group and I have done so much in this first month. Firstly, actually getting to Tianjin (天津) was as much an adventure as living here. I’d never been on a plane for longer than around 6 hours so the 13 hour plane journey was definitely out of my comfort zone — although we had a massive range of films at our fingertips to watch on the mini TVs in front of us, which was amazing. It also helped I quite enjoyed the food, and we got a complimentary blanket.
Once we arrived at Peking Airport, I was blown away by the size of it — it’s huge. It sounds strange but it didn’t quite feel like we were in China until we got outside the airport, because inside the airport there were so many foreigners that we didn’t feel like we stood out. Once we got outside, though, this definitely changed. Chinese people were taking so many pictures of us and staring without any shame at all — it was, and still is, a lot to get used to because in Scotland staring is considered rude.
People taking pictures of us has become a norm to me now. It’s not done to make fun of us or to be creepy, it’s genuine curiosity. Tianjin（天津）isn’t like Beijing (北京）where there are a lot of westerners around on holiday and studying so the locals are more used to them. In Tianjin I can count on one hand the amount of white people I’ve seen. We are genuinely so different and almost alien-like to them because for many, they’ve only seen such pale skin on the cover of a magazine. We get a lot of pictures taken of us, but I think I’ve gotten used to my taste of the celebrity lifestyle.
This does mean that we get young and old Chinese people approaching us out of curiosity. The people who approach us and are our age are so eager to improve their English that they’ll become friends with us without even knowing anything about us. The older people are in love with our pale skin — the average complexion in China is a golden brown but fair skin is their ideal skin tone and most of us scholars are quite pale. This makes it so much easier to make friends over here, as I’ve already done several times. We have all been out to restaurants and cafes near us with our new Chinese friends who have shown us the best of what Tianjin’s food has to offer.
A couple of days ago, I went out for some food with one of my friends Mā Xī, who’s English name is Bunny, and we went to this restaurant called Grandma’s Home. It’s a weird name but the food was amazing and very cheap. All the food cost us 80元—or around £8. I can’t imagine that happening in Scotland. The food here is very cheap and, for the most part, very tasty. One thing I haven’t come across is fried rice, imagine! Noodles, yes. Fried rice of any kind, no. Their ideas of treats are so different to ours and usually involve some sort of red bean paste. It sounds like something you wouldn’t expect to be sweet or delicious but when I tell you it’s both and more, I’m not exaggerating.
With the passing of the Chinese Moon Festival, on the 24th of September, we got to try out a treat they call Mooncakes （月饼）. They are very traditional and are absolutely delicious. They have all different kinds, savoury and sweet, and they sell them around this time.
For the Chinese Moon Festival, we got the opportunity to go to a celebration and wear the traditional Chinese dress, which was so much fun and such a laugh. We also got to teach some unfortunate volunteers how to ceilidh dance, which ended up being a bit of a mess but I like to think that some of the best ceilidhs are messy.
It’s been an insane month so far, and we’ve met so many different people from all across the world thanks to our location and our university campus. We live in Tianjin’s Hexi district, which is one of the main areas of the city and it’s bustling with students thanks to the universities surrounding it —Nankai University, Tianjin’s Medical University and our own, Tianjin Normal University. In our building alone, we’ve been out for dinner with people from Uzbekistan and played Uno with people from Thailand.
We’ve met people from France, Brazil, Denmark, Australia — and I don’t see this changing very soon. Foreigners like us are few, but not far. All in all, my month in Tianjin has been amazing, and I’m very excited for the next months to come!
Zaijian 再见， speak to you then, Kate xx