Here I am! And here you are, dearest reader. Thank you for embarking with me on this journey of a one year adventure in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province in China. I know, most of you have long suspected it, and I guess now is the time to admit it - my sole reason for coming here is my unwaivering obsession with ducks! Roast ducks, fried ducks, deep-fried ducks (oh yes! you can actually fit a whole duck in a wok), duck tongues, duck feet, duck liver, duck dumplings, duck buns, duck soup, steamed duck, cold duck salad, spicy duck, fragrant duck, BBQ duck... the list seems near endless. And what better place to embark on the quest for the perfect duck than Nanjing, where a local saying goes "Every part of a duck or goose is a treasure?"
Ok, you are probably interested in more practical matters. How was your trip? How was the culture shock? How is the food? Do you have a place to live yet? Meh. Rough. Mediocre. Not yet. Alright, alright... details. I flew into Shanghai instead of directly to Nanjing in order to save quite a chunk of money, not expecting that spending a night there and taking the train the next day could actually be a challenge. The university had reserved a hotel for me, which was "only 10 minutes" away from the main train station (which I reached by bus without difficulty, but could unfortunately not take the German-engineered superconducting train). Well, maybe a 10minute jog, but with my two heavy suitcases, at 30 degrees, saturated humidity and 30hour trip exhaustion it was no fun. The most disturbing part was actually that everyone kept harassing me to go to their hotel or take their taxi. I couldn't even ask for directions! I managed to get to a quiet street corner and hailed a cab that - yay! - didn't try to rip me off. My only foreigner rip-off so far happened the next day, when the cab dropped me at the train station and two shady guys ran off with my luggage. They dragged me to a little kiosk and told me that i couldn't take my suitcases onto the train myself, they had to do it for me. I kept shaking my head and telling them I'll do it myself but they didn't waver. So, fine, whatever, I thought and started to haggle. They wanted 60yuan ($10)! Under repeated "太贵了 tai gui le" (that's too expensive) on my behalf, we went down to 20yuan. I guess I should have kept going lower. Anyways, the guy who then hauled my luggage to the entrance of the train station (not actually onto the train, mind you!) seemed to smile somewhat embarrassed and apologetically - we both knew I was being ripped off, and he knew that I knew he knew :)
Boarding a train in China is also a lot of fun. Although the train Shangai-Nanjing is ultra-modern (even by European standards, it totally outshines the ridiculous North-American trains), it only took 2 1/2 hours for the 300km. People still try to take pretty much everything on the train (apart from life goat and chicken maybe), so it was crowded up to the ceiling. But thankfully I had a reserved seat and once I had actually gotten my monstrous suitcases stored away (I had to resort to an encouraging "你帮帮吧 ni bangbang ba!" (you could help a little) to stop people from just staring at my feeble attempts of heaving 30kg over my head) and settled down into my comfy seat (can you spell legroom?), I started to relax. And once I arrived in Nanjing, I was taken under the wings of LingFei, a student at Nanjing university. Poor guy. His supervisor hired me, so the unthankful task of babysitting the foreigner was dumped on him. He's really pampered me. I don't have to worry about any paperwork. He drags me across campus, I just have to smile and nod, say my little "ni hao, xiexie, zaijian" (hello, thank you, goodbye) and everything falls magically into place.
Well... almost everything. Of course, China wouldn't just let me in that easily without a few tests of endurance. The first and roughest one - cockroaches. And I mean COCKROACHES! Ok, ok, they weren't actually that big and life in the US has prepared me to their existence somewhat, but man... that place was infested! It was sort of a guesthouse, a very nice room actually, spacious, with a fridge and microwave (yeah, like I would cook anything with those bugs around!) and an amazing view. It was on the 16th floor, overlooking the Nanjing skyline (or one of them). You really wouldn't think Nanjing is one of the smaller cities in China - according to different sources somewhere between 5Mio and 7Mio inhabitants. They tried to console me that they would come and spray against the bugs, but if I have learned one thing from the battle in the US it's to recognize a place that's beyond extermination. To cut the long story short - I could move out of there after only two nights.
Now they put me up in a really nice hotel on campus while I wait for my on-campus apartment to become available. At first I was told (well, this always means "Lingfei was told and he told me") the waiting list is two months long, but someone in the department seems to have played the " 外国人 waiguo ren" (foreigner) card for me, and now they say it'll take two weeks.
Well, and I guess a trip to Asia wouldn't be complete without - who can guess? - food poisoning! The sad thing is that I had never any problem on my travels before and thought I had one of the most robust stomachs in the world. Turns out I don't. Rather I have a stomach that can reject food and water for two days straight. I don't even know what caused it. I ate in the campus cafeteria and boiled my water. Well, to be on the safe side, I now switched to bottled water entirely. Every day I drag several litres of it from the supermarket into my hotel room. I think they already recognize me there :) I just wish I could figure out why I can't buy three big water bottles at once. I have to pay for each of them separately. What a mystery... It also is a mystery, why there is a guy at the supermarket exit stamping your receipt. He certainly isn't looking if the contents of your bags resembles what's on the receipt. A leftover from socialist labour programs? Hire two to do the job of one?
Speaking of the supermarket (which really sells pretty much everything, from western brand cosmetics, beer (even Chimay!), chocolate - all at Western prices - to life fish, frogs and turtles (no kidding! and no, that was not the pet store section)), what impressed me positively was that you don't get plastic bags for free. Most people actually bring their own shopping bags. Also, next to every garbage bin on the street there is also a recycling bin. Hello, North America? Waking up soon? I think environmental problems are much more on people's mind here than we in the west expect. Ok, admittedly, I am exposed to CCTV International here in my hotel room and have no way of judging (yet) if its contents coincides with the Chinese channels.
I think China's self-image deserves a separate post all on its own, so let me just end for today with a funny observation - la derniere crie a la Chine? Whitening cream! But not for teeth or nails, no, for skin! Where women in the west try to be as tanned as possible, here it's back to the old "white is beautiful." Most girls also walk around with parasols. Now, if this an expression of "only country pumpkins are exposed to the sun" or an attempt to look more Western, I have no idea.
