7:30am and the streets are bustling with locals…many are elderly Chinese (often with their grandchildren)….they’re in their element, out and about, primed for business (and socialising)! There’s an awful lot of yelling (which for a non-morning person, seems a tad extreme) but it’s all par for the course when you step into the whirlpool of commotion that is the morning wet markets, in the middle of north west China! It’s a fascinating kaleidoscope of colour, set up right in the middle of a quiet village street, which come afternoons, will resume its place as a peaceful haven of tranquility. But for now, it seems, everything and anything is up for grabs…. Cooking up a barbie? This is where you get your fresh meat, looking, well extremely fresh, perched on the back of a truck for your perusal… Note: Large axe at the ready, sitting on a tree stump - (obviously the perfect chopping board)! Just across from the meat truck, fresh crisp bread (that make the perfect pizza bases) is being baked in a giant kiln at a rapid pace… A trike loaded with fresh flowers sets off for the day. Further into the flurry of heaving bodies -- noodles are being frantically weighed and chopped on the back of bikes; truckloads of Tofu stand at the ready and people are hastily exchanging their hard earned cash for tonight's dinner. Eggs of every shape and colour overflow from baskets on the footpath and vegetables in every shade of green are laid out along the ground, ripe for the picking. Fresh fish (and I mean so fresh they are alive) flap in buckets until you make your selection. (Don’t mind the 'Wai guo ren' (foreigner) stifling her shriek as she spies the fish being retrieved and hastily hit over the head ready for purchase.) It’s clearly a feast for the eyes and at times an assault on ones senses…. Just to the side of the markets is a large park. Wednesday morning and it’s brimming with life. Every single nook and cranny is occupied. It occurs to me that no one does mornings like China’s senior citizens! Pockets of the park are punctuated with groups of women dancing in unison…. Lone men sit playing their favourite instrument. There’s no busking, this is simply playing for pleasure. Others stand under the shade of a tree practicing Tai Chi. Stationary exercise machines are being given an emphatic work out and strange sports that clearly involve a high degree of skill are underway with gusto! Men huddle together playing Mahjong; a choir is gathered under a small pagoda singing to their heart’s content. Just nearby rows of ping pong tables are witnessing some lively games. Others, content to go it alone. And then this…. a traditional sword dance! Good Morning Xi’an! This is China. … [Read more...]
Aliens welcome: I Survived a Year in China!
They call us aliens. Yes, it’s true. On our permanent work visa that allows us to live here as a pseudo Chinese for a year, it states very clearly “Alien!” For all intents and purposes, I often feel like I have indeed been plucked from my former life, whisked past Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and plonked down on another planet, far off in the galaxy. (Cue: mini 3-wheeler truck rolling past with a pink umbrella spouting from the engine.) 12 months in, here I am! I’m sitting here looking at that bloody Pagoda! All seven concrete tiers of the ridiculously ancient, mystical monument towers over me from every angle, a constant reminder, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!” It will always be symbolic of my time here in China…it’s the first thing I saw when I arrived and if I stand outside in the very same spot (it was raining like it is today) I can easily take myself back to that moment in time…. the pit in my stomach that felt like it was so heavy it might actually bring me to my knees. Where are we, what have we done? The smiles hiding the sheer angst bubbling under the surface….the tears ready to spill without warning. It’s an intense feeling of utter alienation from everything and everyone swirling around us in a fog of foreignness. The loneliness engulfs you like a thick blanket…..(oh wait, was that smog?!) I’d lived in Hong Kong for four years, but this was an acute (and surprising) case of culture shock. I thought I had prepared myself, well….but in hindsight nothing can prepare you for the onslaught of crotchless pants, earnest street spitting and footpaths that double as roads! I jest…but in reality, my inability to crack a smile for the first few weeks was a pretty poignant sign, I was in a place far flung from any my imagination had dared to go. I will never forget the day we drove through town, all sitting in the back seat, peering out the window as we wove in and out of bedlam traffic, speeding past a world of wild, unchartered territory. Amongst the mayhem, I saw a western-looking woman walking her toddler dressed in a princess costume….all I wanted to do was wind down my window and throw my business card through the crowds at her…shouting: "Hey, I’m here!" Sheer desperation for a fellow expat in a sea of foreign faces! 12 months in and hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing! I have found my expat tribe, all plonked on the planet of Xi’an from every corner of the earth (a regular sanity check); not to mention some fascinating locals, who’re teaching me a thing or two about the phenomenon that is China. I no longer notice the intense staring at the “Laowai” with the blonde hair and strange facial features, who towers above most locals. (Yes, that’s me, I am officially tall at five feet 3.) My small person doesn’t try to wrap herself in my dress, hiding from the zealous strangers desperate to snap a picture of her pale skin and blonde locks. For the most part, she tolerates the constant clicking and we have mastered the ability to shut out the crowds slowly (but surely) closing in on us, if we dare to stop in one place for too long. (The mantra is “Keep moving!") We know enough Chinese to mutter “Enough, thanks, she’s tired” if we need to. Sometimes we even play up to the farce that is being ‘papped’ and pose with all our might in fits of giggles. Hollywood, so close but so far. We know to keep to the side of the footpath and always have one ear listening out for the distant beeps of cars/bikes/Tuk Tuks creeping up behind us….. Now, when I am in any other city that doesn’t ‘beep,’ it seems eerily quiet. We are also proudly adept at crossing the road… no longer finding ourselves stranded on one side, waiting for an eternity until all cars are seemingly absent. (This will never happen.) We know that no matter how good we think we’ve ordered something in our best Chinese, it will almost always be misinterpreted. And that’s ok. If we are lost (in translation), we can somehow muddle through enough Chinese to get to where we want to go without enduring a mild panic attack. (That said, a phone battery dying whilst out of the bubble is still a small catastrophe!) The sobering reality has dawned on me, I will forever be learning Chinese. I will never master the Chinese language in one year, let alone two or possibly even ten. It is a life-long education. (Currently, I spend a lot of the time guessing what people are saying from the one Chinese word I manage to get...my life is a world of charades.) A ride from A to B no longer induces heart palpitations or needs to be taken with wide eyes firmly shut. We can appreciate the scenery before us. I am now used to random people attempting to enter my house with a loud “Nihao” or appearing on my balcony at any time of the day or night, often with a sneaky peek at the Laowai in the gold fish bowl. The noise of loud, rumbling fire crackers cascading through the morning air is now heard without so much as a raised eyebrow; as is the tune ‘It’s a Small World’ signalling the road cleaners are out in force to spray away the desert dust. Those mysterious drones overhead I was convinced were spying on me are just kites…..(no, really)! Skim milk is an anomaly. Ask for it to practice your Chinese, but you will mostly be met with a smiling ‘Mei You!’ (Have not.) Speaking of dairy, yoghurt is a drink. Period. Must use straw at all times. The internet or lack of STILL exasperates me to the point of turning me into a crazy woman on the verge of becoming seriously unhinged, as does the constant turning on of a VPN to have access to anything remotely useful, but I figure it’s not forever, and I breathe! I’m acutely aware that everything I do, say, eat, has an alternative meaning to it in China. Tradition runs deep and is not to be messed with, like ever. If I am sick I have either worn too little or too much in the way of clothing. I will be offered coke with ginger to fix my ailment and if this fails, next stop is an IV drip, in hospital. Umbrellas are the accessory du jour, come rain, hail or shine. There is an umbrella for each season…. and never the twain shall meet. In fact a “sun umbrella” is made of reflective material to ward off the heat. White skin is king and the sun must be avoided at any cost! Even though I display clear signs of tanned sun damaged, Aussie skin, I am somehow hailed as the fair-maiden with desirable silky white skin. Note: No matter how hot it is, taking your shirt off (if you’re a man) is a no no! Rolling it up just underneath your arm pits is an accepted fashion statement. (Six pack not required!) The ubiquitous 'squat toilet' no longer sends me into state of mild panic....running for home. I can take it on with an "I am woman, hear me roar!" attitude...(who am I kidding)! There is nothing fast about Xi’an. It is the complete (end of the earth) opposite to Hong Kong’s 24 hour frenetic city on steroids pace. It's a long (noisy) wait for most things. A sense of humour isn’t a recommendation, it’s a prerequisite. So to this day, every day I am entrenched in a steep learning curve; a journey through the fascinating motherland that is China — an unparalleled universe that thankfully accepts aliens like us, in all our foreign glory! Like ET, I often want to phone home. But...we survived! A new country, a new culture, a freezing winter, heavy pollution, a scorching summer, a new school, a new job, a new hotel, a new life. One hell of an adventure. I’m glad this is not ‘my forever.’ But I'm happy it's for now. 12 months in….. this is China Proud to share this post with Seychelle Mama's #MyExpatFamily … [Read more...]
China – Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Backwards.
We all have those days don't we, where everything we attempt to do is just plain difficult! The Gods are not smiling on us…..we usually just put it down to one of those days….and hopefully, move on. Tomorrow is after all, another day! At the moment as we try to settle into a new country, namely big bad China - those days, typically tend to be more frequent than not. (Don't mention the power cuts!!) The hotelier, Miss A and I have at times felt like we are living out a scene from the Griswolds… (If you don't know the term....the movie National Lampoon's Vacation is aptly a comedy series about the misadventures of the Griswold family, whose, quote: "attempts to enjoy vacations and holidays are plagued with continual disasters and strangely ridiculous predicaments.") Say no more! In a nutshell, everything we attempted required an almighty dollop of patience with a splash of humour on top! "I'll have a Sprite thanks. Actually make that two lemonades for us." Waitress returns ten minutes later, "So do you want one Sprite and one lemonade?" "Isn't that the same thing?" "No it's not." And breathe….. Clearly our confronting and extremely inconvenient lack of Chinese is mostly to blame for the shenanigans that ensue, but there's also a cultural divide that means ways of doing things aren't necessarily aligned amongst all parties. (Note how I say that in the politest way possible!) To top it off, Internet is intermittent at the best of times. VPN's drop in and out….phone service is patchy…with plans seemingly chewing through data at a rate of knots. Banking can be a painstaking affair in any country, but here in China, we managed to find ourselves both credit card-less and cashless for a (thankfully) brief period of time. Our Hong Kong credit cards it seems are not geared to work online (something about 'activation' is eventually revealed) and banks back in our home countries have gone into lockdown mode, blocking our cards after suspected suspicious activity in a foreign land. While I appreciate their quick action - attempting to book a flight online for the 15th time (what? of course I'm not trying to escape!) with dodgy internet and cards that are stalled at every turn, can turn even the most patient man I know into a frazzled, bug eyed cot case!! For a few days our eft-pos cards refuse to work in the ATM's and it's difficult to decipher the problem laid out before us in Chinese… and well… getting a Chinese bank account, of course, is no simple task for a foreigner. Obviously the lap top the hotelier uses for his day job is not happy with so much frenzied activity because it has a meltdown and promptly packs it in. Of course getting it fixed is like asking asking for the winning lotto ticket numbers, as is getting a straight answer! With the hotelier diligently downstairs working, I get a phone call in the hotel room - a man we can call 'MR I.T' says he is here to fix the laptop. I reply that Mr Walkden is working in his office. "No he's not, the door is closed," he says. Me: Ahhh OK, well I guess he could be anywhere in the hotel, I'm sorry I don't know. The dialogue continues something like this. Mr I.T: Can I come back later to fix the laptop? (Brief experience tells me if I let him go now, we may never lay eyes on him again) Me: Can you call him to see where he might be right now? Mr I.T: No. Me: Okaaaay, Where are you? Mr I.T: Outside room 5306. Me: (half dressed) realize Mr I.T is at my front door. Hastily throw on some clothes and greet him, reiterate, no the laptop isn't here and nor is Mr Walkden. Would you like me to call him? Mr I.T: OK. I call the hotelier…who's conveniently just up the hallway, in the executive club having a meeting and tells me to send him that way. Mr I.T nods enthusiastically in agreement….but apparently he doesn't make it there for several hours!? Lap top is eventually fixed that evening, but by the time the hotelier boards a plane the next day, it is no longer operating. And breathe….. So all the while I am negotiating with Mr I.T, we are told the hotelier's visa is ready and he must fly to Hong Kong asap! We also discover we need passport photos for everyone, pronto! Not an easy task it seems. We find out nowhere in Xi'an is able to specifically take this kind of photo, bar some photo booths on the other side of town in the underground train station. (While China is home to the globe's biggest 'new travellers' - in reality, only a small portion of the 1.3 billion population actually holds a passport.) So we are advised we must get to a photographer's studio at once! We meet downstairs and are bundled into hotel car and driven five minutes to a slightly ramshackle area and dropped off at a shopfront door, literally. (Actually, I think we are on the footpath.) Picturing the site of us three 'Gweilos' entering, has me chuckling to myself. We enter the nondescript shop where a lady sits at a computer, with a few aptly framed photos on display. She babbles to us in Chinese and when she realizes we can't speak her lingo, promptly turns around and goes back to work on the computer. (Pesky Gweilos, I know!!) I try a few lame words in Chinese like 'now' and 'photo'? but for some reason whenever I am in a 'situation,' the Chinese I have supposedly learnt, eludes me. I am blank!? Please explain!! Again she replies in Chinese and turns away, ignoring us. The hotelier decides it's time to use the 'bat phone' to call for help. Tina - our 'ever patient personal translator' is on the line and speaks with the lady on the computer and it all seems clear. She will take our photos but she doesn't know what size passport photos are, so this is going to take some organizing. So we hang up and wait….and wait….. and wait. Nothing is happening. Time is ticking.....people are starting to stare through the glass at us and some are taking photos! We call our ever 'patient personal translator' again and this time we get the green light! She's ready to do the photos! We are shuffled into a studio. James goes first and is told (we think) to do his jacket up and straighten his collar (these are clearly not just any old passport photos). She pulls at her ear and I think she's telling me to listen, but eventually work out she wants my earrings off. It's a bit like playing charades, we stifle our giggles. Ava's turn and for the 'ever posing show pony,' sitting still without cracking a smile is proving difficult. The lady is faffing abut with Ava's hair until she's satisfied and gesturing madly at her to keep her hands by sides (this is not a modeling shoot young lady)! Finally, we are done. We pay about US$20 and are whisked out of the shop into our waiting car. I feel like Brangelina again (clearly minus her looks and money...oh and the six kids)! I am then off to the hair dresser where I decide, as well as getting a blow dry I will be doubly brave today and ask to get my nails done. I have practiced the word for 'doing nails'….so they seem to get my gist -- but immediately start to wrap tinfoil around each finger. I know this is the way to remove a certain type of gel (you ladies will know it as 'soft' gel) but alas I have 'hard' gel and never the twain shall meet! I know that it is not going budge with some mere tinfoil, so I try explaining it's hard gel, I even use my trusty chinese app, but appear to be failing miserably. Time to call Tina our 'ever patient personal translator' again - she explains and again it all seems clear, they know it's hard gel but this will certainly work. Ok, you're the boss, I think, so I sit back and relax….a few minutes later the foil is off but the gel nail is not. Hmmm dilemma, now I can see they are really confused… there's a lot of spirited chatter back and forth. All I can do is smile meekly. She attempts to scrape it off and so I make the noise for machine….bzzzzzz…..but they look at me like I am slightly crazy. I point to the nail file and she attempts to file it off. It takes a looong time, but it sort of works. I am sure they are stumped with the weird 'white' lady with her 'white' hair and ironically strange 'white' nails….Who is she and why does she keep coming back!! But they bring me two tiny apple-like looking fruit to try (I later find out are called Nai, or Crab Apples), so I figure maybe they aren't too annoyed with me. Meantime, my new found hairdresser has been learning English and is like an excited puppy dog, sitting next to me while my nails are finished. We both decide in our broken English/Mandarin this relationship could work! I teach him, he teaches me. I decide to really push the boat out and test the waters to see if he can 'colour' my hair. My slightly er darker/grey roots are showing through and it's not going to be pretty. He seems to understand eventually and shows me his colour chart with two types of blonde. Just two. Not a lot of choice but perhaps that's a good thing. I learn the word for foils and show him pictures on Pinterest. Here's where it gets tricky as I want to explain that I don't want my hair too gold, so I find the word for 'gold' and say 'not want' in my best chinese, so he thinks I want 'white' but I say no. I search for the words, caramel and beige but these are lost on him. If I say ash, I will surely get grey hair. Xi'an is greying my hair by the minute so ash colour won't be necessary. He proudly shows me a picture of the only white woman's hair he has colored and says she likes red. Does she ever. It is the brightest, boldest fire engine red I've ever seen! He tells me again he is the best hairdresser in Xian after all, and says "just let me try." But to me that alarmingly sounds like a toddler asking to "just let me try pouring the milk on my cereal." We all know how that ends! I remain noncommittal and decide to do a poll on Facebook that night. Enthusiastic hairdresser and I connect on We Chat (the What's App/Facebook equivalent) and I leave with some 'Zai Jians' and see you next week - it's been an intense maintenance session…I'm not really sure what just happened, but it was reasonably successful, I have my hair done and my nails look reasonable enough for public display. Two steps forward, ten steps backwards. This is China! And breathe....... Proud to share this one over at Seychelle Mama's for My Expat Family. … [Read more...]