So…its been just over a week since I’ve come to Wuhan and I’ve really been having the time of my life! There’s not much more that I can ask for, and nothing really to complain about. Sure there’s tons of mosquitoes that bite you at night, but that really only lasted the first day because after that I bought a electric fly swatter that electrocutes whatever hits it! It’s the most fun that I’ve had since …well, coming to China! lol So yea, lets see where to start?

 

I guess I can talk about the people that I’ve met. A lot of them don’t seem like the Chinese people that I’ve come to know in Beijing. All the people that I’ve met are extremely friendly and are always willing to lend a hand with something. Let me first introduce the company driver, Mr. Ba. He’s a lanky sorta guy and his driving is actually quite controlled for a Chinese driver. So everytime I sit in the car with him I’m always learning new words. Surely, half the time I can’t understand what he’s saying, but he always tries to figure out the words. He knows a bit of English and a bit of Cantonese, so I think that it is quite enough to be able to have a knowledgeable conversation.

 

I met up with a former Uwindsor student, Sean, who is currently doing his Masters in Wuhan University. He turned out to be a really cool guy who I could easily relate to and had quite a fun time with him. On this trip, he showed me that you can actually take a ferry across the Yangtze river for only 1 Yuan! That’s less than 20 cents! He also showed me the riverside and I couldn’t help but notice the interesting kites that were lofting in the air. One was a penguin, another was the Bat signal, and finally, Spiderman! Apparently, the riverside is THE romantic place to take your girlfriend. Honestly, I thought that the riverside in Windsor looked much nicer. Yes, the Yangtze has the whole history and significance of being the longest river in the world, but it was hard to appreciate it when it was frothy brown and lumps of dirt floating along the river was a common site. Not to mention that there was weeds and lots of rocks along the river. Nevertheless, I’ve yet to see the river at night, when people tell me it’s the best time to see it.

 

 

Most of my colleages speak English and some also are fluent in French. What else is that for the past few days my boss/colleage has been staying with me in my apartment. Although, for the first few days at work, I didn’t know that he was my boss! I guess you could consider him as more of a team leader though. He is also fluent in French, which you can’t really say the same about me. This past weekend, he introduced me to his Niece, Chuan Chuan, who is studying at the Huazhong University in Wuhan. She was really cool and sorta acted as my tour guide. I went down the Yangtze river and also checked out the Yellow crane tower…Wuhan’s famous place and tourist requirement. She brought me around to a bunch of cool places around Wuhan and showed me how to take a few of the buses around town. Oh yea, she speaks good enough English that I understand everything she says. Before I forget, there is one thing I must mention…the girls in Wuhan.

 

After talking to Sean about a bunch of stuff, we came across the subject of girls and why we’re both single at the moment. His reason…they’re just too high maintenance! And I actually tend to agree. Let me explain why. During my few outings, I’ve always noticed the people, and especially all the young couples…because there are so many of them! First of all, the girl is usually very whiney and the guy very forgiving. The girl asks, the guy buys. They’re job is usually just to look pretty and act girly. In return, they get most anything they ask for. Case in point: Sean told me of his foreign classmate in Wuhan who had a Chinese girlfriend. After only a few months of dating, the girl wanted to get married! It would make perfect sense to the Mainland Chinese girl of course. Get married to a foreigner, get rich, and get out of the country! Note to self: do not get a high maintenance girlfriend. I must mention that all the girls I’ve met so far are not quite like that. Chuan Chuan actually reminds me of a Japanese girl and always gives me ‘the look’ if I try to pay for something. Certainly not the usual mainland Chinese girl that I’ve come to observe. She also has been teaching me a few words of Chinese slang. Not to mention the one word that everyone has taught me: Mei nu, which means ‘beautiful girl’. It’s also the common word to use when getting a female waiter’s attention, which brings me to another group of people in a certain restaurant.

 

Because of the way my apartment is situated, if I don’t eat with my colleagues, I have to eat at one of four restaurants. One of them is run by a group of cool people. The owner speaks almost no English, one guy who is always very eager to talk to me in Chinese (no English) and one girl who always gets me water (also no English) Its quite fun because they’re all so nice and they always sit down at my table to have a chat even though it usually a one way conversation. However, I have now learned how to order some simple dishes. Tofu, vegetables, pork, beef, and fish are all part of my ordering vocabulary. A combination of those usually gets me a tasty dish. I can’t forget the rice either!

 

In the morning, I always eat at this one store who sells Wuhan’s famous hot-dry noodle. The first few times I went I only knew how to say one type of noodle, so that’s all I ordered. Then, I learned a few more types of noodles. However, I learned that one noodle was EXTREMELY SPICY, so now I know…

 

The apartment… It really is a nice place, but the mattress is more like a board of wood in terms of hardness. I much prefer sleeping on the couch. My water supply is okay, except that I would never drink out of the tap. I’ve come to learn a technique when using the tap for brushing my teeth or washing my hands. For two seconds after I turn it on, the water comes out brown. After that, it becomes clear. Now, this isn’t a single occurrence. It happens day in, day out. Not to mention the toilet which has needed my engineering skills more often than I would like, It has a kitchen which I am currently fumigating and a washing machine that ties your clothes in knots. It never gets tiring!

 

Finally, I think I am going to finish up with the weather. I’ve told a lot of my friends and have read that the weather is usually around the high 30s to low 40s. Probably at the peak of summer it is, but certainly not now! At the beginning of this entry, I was actually sitting outside typing this up, only to retreat indoors because of the mosquitoes. Its certainly very humid and if it rain and your pants get wet, they stay damp for the rest of the day. Its very tolerable and its not quite bad enough to make me retreat indoors at the first sight of an air conditioner!

 

So yea, that is a brief summary of my experiences so far…to be continued next time!

 

Now…on to the most eye-opening part of my night. Let me start off by saying that in China foreign students (sean is only in Wuhan for a year) make friends with mostly foreign students, and when foreign university students are away from home, they like to have fun in their own ways. One Austrian guy that I met was an extremely boisterous guy and talked Sean into going with all his friends to a bar. If you saw him, he was the sort of guy that you would have to knock out in order to say no. So yea…off to a Chinese bar we went. While sean was getting ready to go he just casually asked me, “How good are you with drinks?” I was like, “Well, seeing how I’m not exactly at the legal drinking age in Canada, I don’t really know.” Sean looked up at me and gave me the you-can’t-be-serious look. He thought I was at least 20. It was gonna be one interesting night…

 

First off was the illegal cab that we took down to the party street. For the longest time I thought he was one of their friends, only to realize he wasn’t when everyone else paid him money and got out of the car without him. Secondly, he was a crazier driver than legal cab drivers! Okay, so once we got out, they promptly headed into the “Bar” But it wasn’t a bar, it was a club (not a strip club! Just a Chinese dancing-loud music-and-laser lights club). Before entering, I saw quite a few interesting things. There was already one extremely drunk guy squirming around on the floor with other Chinese guys standing around him holding beers and in the front, there was a metal detector. I think it would actually be more appropriate if I called it a police pleaser. There were no bouncers, no cover charge, and people just freely walked in and out.

 

Well, I can’t really compare these clubs with ones in Canada because I’ve never been to one, but I can certainly tell you about Chinese clubs. The first thing that hits you is the smell of cigarettes. It is actually a law here that prohibits smoking indoors. But this is China, and there are also laws that forbid pirating software. The second thing that hits you is the crowd of people inside. There’s just so many people that you feel packed in like a can of sardines. So the whole group that I was with sorta pushed and nudged their way around, only to find there was no space, so they went to another section of the club to push themselves around even more. Somehow, they actually found a table and started to have their fun. Except that most of the time, I couldn’t see how they were having fun. Half of them just sat around the table staring blankly into the smokey air and the other half just started bouncing to the music. Oh yea, did I mention that foreigners drink a lot? The drink they had was a simple whiskey mixed with Chinese tea. Don’t ask me how it tasted because I never had any. I wasn’t exactly keen on finding out for the first time how many drinks it would take me to get drunk. Not to mention being in a Chinese club with a whole bunch of crazy people that I don’t know!

 

 Once we got a space to rest, I could start to observe the Chinese way of clubbing. Half the people there seemed to be extremely bored. Of course, there were always the people that were having fun downing alcohol and the other group that were having fun picking up girls…especially the foreigners. So lets see…if they weren’t having fun picking up girls or downing alcohol, what were they there for? It could be the music, but I find Chinese techno to be even worse than the American stuff that I already classify as noise. Yea, there’s a beat…but that’s about it. It could also be the laser lights which I actually found pretty cool.

 

So after they got bored of this side of the club, they headed over to the other side where they had live singers and equally loud music. This side was a slightly different experience because they had this one Chinese guy singing “Backtreet’s Back” which I must commend, was actually quite well done. Of course, my group of people had already ordered more alcohol and was just doing what they do. I must also comment on the dancing here. I’ve been to quite a few high school dances in my time and the dancing in these clubs was slightly less raunchy than what I’ve seen before. Actually, most of them were just sitting around their tables having a drink and bopping to the music. I thought the most disturbing thing was seeing a chubby white guy dancing with some Chinese girl in a rather…um…disturbing way.

 

That was that. I got back around 2 in the morning with Sean and one other dude. The rest stayed on, I’m guessing until the sun rose again. So what can I conclude? Firstly, Its probably my first and last time I visit a club in China and I still don’t understand how they can call that fun. You can’t talk because the music is too loud, its stuffy with cigarette smoke and there’s just waaay too many people. The music isn’t even that great either! Yes, there’s a bunch of cute girls, but these girls are probably the most high maintenance girls you’ll come across. There is certainly one thing that I can conclude with. When foreigners go to pick up girls in clubs, its a win-win situation, in the very short term. The foreigner wants a cute Chinese girl, and the Chinese girl wants a guy with money. Once they hook up, the Chinese girl gets money, the foreigner gets the girl. But now, the Chinese girl wants more money, and the foreigner starts to lose money and then it all goes downhill from there.

 

 

The afternoon after the clubbing was spent touring the two universities in Wuhan. The most striking thing about these universities is how big they are. One of the universities felt like a camping ground because it was filled with trees and small roads seemingly leading to nowhere. The buildings are also quite old, but I never went inside them. From what I hear, they have no heating in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer!

 

The universities around here have really nice locations. Many of them are on the edge of a lake and have many bodies of water scattered throughout the campus. The universities themselves also seem like self contained cities. Usually, about half of the campus is dedicated to housing both the students and the professors, and the professors families. A quarter is probably used with sports facilities and the other quarter is where the teaching actually takes place. Of course, it varies between universities but that was something similar I found about the layout. These universities are extremely scenic places to be except that it’s a very long walk to get to classes. They even have little electric buses to get the students from place to place. There’s also a tons of open space for the students to do whatever they want. I guess the only downside to studying here is that you have to study! Well, that more or less concludes my adventures for the week…time to take a break!

 

Well, I’ve been here for almost two weeks and it seems rather amazing how many things I’ve seen so far. This past weekend was quite an eye-opener. On Friday night after work, I walked around the Lu Xiang area to look around. The way this place is oriented is basically one large roundabout with a ‘tent-esque’ thing in the middle. I suppose its for people to hang out and do whatever they please. Be it to dance, to sit or just to hang out. Well, its not only the middle that people hang out, but all around the roundabout. The roundabout has four main streets connecting to it and hence has four separated areas. In each area, there are either little shops, shoppings malls, or both. One thing that they all have in common though is the stuff that goes on outside the buildings. There’s people dancing, singing, karaoke’ing, sitting, watching, and just enjoying their time outside. I must iterate that the dancing isn’t just one or two couples dancing, but it’s a prolly a couple hundred…line dancing or exercising in parallel I suppose.

 

Given the large amounts of people, I was actually quite surprised at the lack of street stalls in those areas. But of course, they’re everywhere else. As I kept walking around, it was quite evident that people didn’t have a whim about what other people thought of them and they were they just for themselves. A very interesting sight for sure!

 

Let me introduce you to a few of the regular street sellers. I’m gonna name one guy the meat man. He’s got a foam box of skewered meat (looks either like lamb or pork) and a moveable coal fired stove. He sticks out in my mind because he doesn’t exactly look Chinese and he always advertises his food with a rolling Rrrr at the end of his sentence. It’s quite catchy actually, but I’m not sure if its Wuhan dialect or Mandarin.

 

The second guy I will call the chicken man. The Chicken man sits just a few meters away from the the meat man an sells little wind-up chicks. He’s got a little bag of new chicks on his left side and three demonstration chicks chattering away in front of him. He’s also got a little technique. At any given time, you can always see him winding up one chick. Once he’s finished winding up one, he puts that down and starts winding up the next. Its like a perpetual cycle of chicken winding. After watching him for a bit, I came to the conclusion that a) he’s got one heck of a job, and b) he’s got a Hitler-style mustache.

 

So why did I manage to observe so much about these two guys? Well, as I was walking around I stopped by the KFC to grab a bite. Actually, this particular KFC purchase was another interesting experience. There was lots of people in the line (which was more like an entrance to a free concert) and I did not want the cashier to have to pull out the English menu because I would probably get a whole bunch of stares. So, my plan was to just say ‘2’ in Chinese, point to the combo on the board and listen intently for the things she asks. Once she asks a question, I would repeat one of the things she said. Somehow, it worked out exactly the way I wanted! I got myself fries instead of the usual corn salad and got my meal in a take-out bag (which I wanted because there was no space inside the KFC). So…to answer my question of how I observed so much about these guys, I walked outside to find a spot to sit, and sat between these two sellers while eating my KFC

 

Next up, was my meeting with Sean. He said that he was gonna be celebrating one of his friends birthdays, so he invited me. I thought it was a good idea, so I decided to tag along. But first, let me talk about my little trick on sean. Since I was in China, I thought that hey, we all look alike right? Lets see if he recognizes me! As he was walking away from the bus stop to meet me I started walking towards him. As I got closer, he looked at me, and I looked at him. He was about to say something, but I kept a straight face and just kept staring at him. I think he was slightly startled and then he just kept walking on. I was about to turn around, but I thought to just keep walking for an extra second. Then, as I turned around, I just caught him turning away from me after taking a second glance. Hah! Success! Ah yes…only in China can you make someone second guess their own recognition skills.

When in China, there is certainly one thing that you can’t miss.

 

The people.

 

 But that’s because there’s just so many of them! Now let me paint a picture. I’m coming home at night waiting to get on a bus. I actually waited quite a long while for this particular bus and when it finally did arrive, I honestly had no idea how I could get on. The people were stuffed in all the way to the side of the doors! Luckily for me, one person got off, which allowed me just enough space to get on. So once I got on the bus, I had to shove a bit closer to people just to allow the door to close behind me. I was going to stuff my money in the usual money slot, but someone’s hand was covering it. Naturally, I tried moving her hand aside only to hear some Chinese person yelling…in my direction apparently. So I look behind and what do I see? A person way in the middle of the bus taking money. Now it may seem normal, but this person was in plain clothes and the only way you could tell she was the conductor was the wad of cash in her hand. I passed the money to her through a chain of hands and then got a receipt back.

 

I was standing at the bottom of the stairwell right next to the door. When the door opened for the next stop, I just happened to be the door stop! So as I nudged out of the way, the door swung open and somehow pinned my foot right on the stairs. I was like…oh jeez. lol. I was stuck in this awkward position for what seemed like a few minutes (which was more like a few seconds) until the door closed again. After that, I made it a point to squeeze into the higher level. If you get on a bus in China, try to get above the stairwell!

 

As I was standing there, I had to hold on to something. The front window didn’t have anything and hand holds and all other spots were taken. I could’ve held on to the next person, but that would’ve been awkward. I also could’ve held on to the pole that the door rotated on, but if I forgot to let go when the bus stopped, my hand wouldn’t be so happy…So guess what I had to hold on to? A thumb screw that they used to close a little cubby hole above the door.

 

Oh yea, I forgot to mention the driver. He was just a normal guy but the thing that made him different was his looks. He looked like Jim Carey from ‘The Mask,’ with the mask on! It made me chuckle…But yea, this bus is one of them that you have to flag down to get on and tell the driver to get off. Nearing my stop, I promptly told the driver I needed off. He didn’t respond, so I took it as a yes. Luckily for me, some little Chinese guy also needed to get off at the stop and said whatever he needed to say for the bus to stop.

 

What I still don’t understnad is how in the world someone at the back of the bus could’ve gotten off! When I say packed in like sardines…I mean it! Not just any sardine can, but one that’s been packed in then vacuum bagged as well! To conclude…I can tell you that if you wanna hold onto something. Try holding on to something other than a thumb screw. Once I got off, I felt something on my hand. I looked down at it only to notice it was covered in some weird grease…eewww. Anyways, that’s all that my computer battery is allowing me to write. One last note…if your cell rings, its much easier to silence it by rubbing your pocket against something hard and try pressing the buttons than reaching down to pull it out!

 

One of my most memorable days is almost over… the celebration of my 19th birthday in Wuhan! I honestly never thought it could turn out quite like it did, but it was probably one of the most memorable birthdays that I’ve had.

My day started off meeting up with Chuan Chuan (I’m gonna call her by her English name now, Jane) and her introducing me to three of her friends. To start off, we met one of the guys and his girlfriend and then headed off to an arcade, fully unexpected mind you. I think we spent about 100 yuan worth of tokens, but it was worth every penny.

We first tried this one shooting game in which four people could play at once. It was quite fun, but the only problem is that the gun didn’t really aim right and therefore I couldn’t do so well…

Then we moved on to a game in which there are four steering wheels situated in a circle and the name of the game is to move your little car on the screen and push the other cars off the screen. One cool thing about this is that when you push the steering wheel up, your little car extends its front bumper and effectively pushes other cars off the cliff. Somehow, I ended up winning most of the rounds!

Then, I decided to try out a good ‘ol racing game; Battle Gear 3. Oh man…this arcade game is amzing!! It’s a racing game but what makes it different is that you’ve got a hand brake to work with. The cars in the game also have a tendency to drift around a corner so you certainly have to use some skill. Not only that, but the force feedback steering is extremely good! If you’ve driven a car before, you’ll know that when turning into a corner, the steering gets harder and if you’re mid-corner and you turn out a bit, it’s really easy. The steering on that arcade machine was just like that, unlike many force feedback steering wheels that you normally try. I’m certainly going back…

Of course, after a whole morning of arcading, we all went out to lunch…a beefsteak restaurant. At first, they were asking me how well I want the meat done. Being me, I was going to ask for medium well but on second though, this was China. I decided against it and made sure I asked for well done. Fortunately, the food was good (albeit small) and I couldn’t really complain about anything. However, when they brought in the food on sizzling hot pates, they required us to hold up our serviettes in front of us before they removed the lid. I kind of wondered if it was really that hot enough…Maybe they got sued by some American! So at the end, Jane brought up the point that it was my birthday. We all said cheers and wished me a happy 19th birthday! Next up…bowling.

However, the bowling alley was entirely filled with university students for some event (I know it was an event because almost all of the people left in one group). So, we used the pool table in the opposite room. Luckily, I know enough pool to get some decent shots in what turned into a ‘Canada vs. China’ match. In the end, I won by one shot ☺ My whole morning and a good part of the afternoon was really quite an enjoyable and memorable experience. Not only because it was my birthday, but this was a group of friends that I really hadn’t known for a very long time. Two of them, I just met today. One of them I met only once before, and Jane, well, I only met twice before.

After I parted company with Jane and co. I met up with Jessica. Hm…I guess I haven’t introduced her yet. She’s the receptionist working at my apartment complex who helped me out with a bunch of stuff around the apartment, from getting water working and the electricity. She knows enough English to be able to talk to me and get 90% of her thoughts across. I’m always able to learn a word or two of Chinese from her and she’s always finding ways to improve her English pronunciation. So anyways, today, I met her in the city and since she knew it was my birthday, she took me to a bakery and bought me a cake! An unexpected but very pleasant surprise So now I had a whole cake and not exactly anywhere to eat it. I wasn’t planning to bring it home and eat it by myself either. No worries though, because my boss had invited me out for dinner.

To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure how things would turn out but hey, there’s a first for everything! The last time I had dinner with my boss was just like any normal dinner. It was with him, the VP of our company, and one of our colleages. I was somewhat expecting a small group like that, but to my astonishment, the only person I knew at the table was my boss and one other colleague. Everyone else had just flown in from different parts of the world.

Two were from Thailand, three from Japan, one from Belgium, two from France, and then there was me and my boss. An extremely multicultural group of people! Our waiter is also another interesting talking point. Her English was quite decent and acted quite differently than usual Chinese waiters (most likely its because we were at a Western Pizza restaurant who’s owner is an American-chinese). She was very structured and made to ask before she did anything. For example, she asked if it was okay to ask one person for their order before another, and if going clockwise around the table was okay rather than counter-clockwise. Then at the end, she went over all the orders and scurried off to put in the order. She was also very cautious about whatever she did. If she took away something from the table she made sure to ask. As the night went on, it was quite interesting because I probably knew the most (second to my boss) Chinese and I can tell you, I don’t know much Chinese. Luckily, the waiter knew more than enough English to order food and all the menus were in English as well. I tried to talk as much Chinese as I could. I’m pretty sure she understood most of what I said, but when I tried to talk Chinese and English to get the size of one of my pizzas changed…well, nothing really materialized. lol. Although, I did manage to complement her, in Chinese, that her English was very good.

The Pizza was sufficiently filling and then it was on to dessert. Since I had a cake with me, I suggested to my boss that I bring out the cake and share it with everyone. At first it was really kind of awkward because every other time I’ve pulled out a cake, it was in the presence of my family and similarly aged friends. But hey, there’s a first in everything! Fortunately, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I celebrated my birthday for the third and last time today. I pulled off the cover, stuck on the candles (yes, we got ‘19’ candles with the cake…thank you Jessica!) and, if you know the drill…they all sang happy birthday! Imagine that… an extremely multicultural group of people that, most of them, I’ve never met before, singing happy birthday. I didn’t exactly think about the age factor because at that moment, age didn’t really matter My Japanese colleage whipped out his camera, started taking pictures and even recorded some video! It certainly was not a night to forget. I distributed the cake and started eating… then I heard something over the intercom. Guess what it was? The Chinese version of “Happy birthday”.

Ah yes, it was a great day, and probably one that won’t be repeated again. Thank you all who made it such an enjoyable day for me. I am now officially 19!