Things are brightening up - my boss arrived and finally there's movement in the matter of getting me an office and maybe even an apartment. Although I might have to stick it out in the hotel for another week or two. Laundry is becoming an issue (everyone told me I should just buy new clothes here, but so far I haven't seen anything I would like to buy - I'm really not a fan of pink with glitter and laces or hearts and teddy bears or nonsense English words on a shirt, or if it is wearable it's some ridiculously expensive brand that would probably cost me less in North America; no sighting of a fabric store/tailor yet). But I have found out about a place on campus, where they wash a basket load full of clothes (standardized size) for 7yuan. Better then the hotel option, where every single article of clothing is around 10yuan.
Time to say something about the campus, isn't it? It's actually pretty nice, especially the northern half (the campus is divided by a road and a very communist looking gate in the middle). The southern half is pretty much only dorms and the cafeteria, the northern half is full of old, romantic buildings and neat little parks. Most of the parks are landscape architected, but there are also some lawns that would be perfect for practising Kung Fu on them... if it wasn't for the "keep off the grass" signs. Damn. Well, maybe I could pretend I have no idea what they're saying, as they're all in Chinese. As soon as I have my own place I will get a bike, which will make parks much more accessible. There are quite a few not too far away. Hopefully I'll post pictures soon, I finally managed to buy a USB cable for my camera, having left mine at home, how clever. I need to take some more pictures of the dorms though, they are quite - ehm - impressive. Obviously (from the laundry that's hanging in the windows), the dorms are single-gender only and don't come with much comfort. I have often seen people with wet hair (sometimes in their pyjamas), carrying a basket (they all have the same, there is apparently only one place here that sells them) with towel and toiletries across campus; so apparently they don't have showers in their building. Also, I've been told that 7 undergrads or 4 grads share a room, which only has enough space for the required number of bunkbeds and maybe one or two desks (that's why you see students sitting in empty class room to study and do homework). Another funny observation - at lunch and dinner time there are armies of thermoses assembling in front of the cafeteria, waiting to be refilled with hot water and carried back to the dorm. I once stayed in a hotel in Beijing, where they also delivered a thermos with hot water to your door every morning. But nowadays, these fancy places have electric kettles.
Work is interesting. At least I feel useful. I have a list of four of five grants to apply for, I've turned into THE money maker for the group :) One of them is called "Foreign Expert Grant" - don't I feel special now? :) It's about serious money, at least by Chinese standards. It's really impressive how far 5000yuan/month can get you if you don't need to travel out of the country or have to buy delicacies like cheese and chocolate. A plane ticket Nanjing - Beijing, for example, is about 600-1000yuan, the luxury sleeper car train is 700yuan (divide that all by 6 to get Canadian or roughly American dollars). Decent imported chocolate, on the other hand, costs 35yuan/100g. Belgian beer (Chimay) is 40yuan for one tiny bottle (but I won't complain, it's nice to know that I can get it!) and, funny aside, among the German beers they have Koestritzer Schwarzbier :) Maybe this is my chance to try it! Speaking of German food, I paid a visit to the famous German bakery, recommended by so many people (they actually made it a selling point of their job offer!) with the very German name "skyways bakery." I didn't try their bread, but - low and behold - they have German style cheesecake (Quarkkuchen) and sour cherries! They also sell cold cuts (not made there but plastic packaged) and there was a sign "fresh mozarella every Friday! Fresh cottage cheese every Saturday." Well, if I ever start craving Western food (apart from coffee and chocolate), I now know where to get my fix of liverwurst and the likes.
My boss has already sent me to three conferences, all still this year and in Shanghai. So I'm leaving next Wednesday for a for four day trip, hopefully by the time I get back there's news about my apartment (which will be totally empty anyways, thank goodness there's IKEA here). But until then I'm busy with preparing my first class and writing another grant proposal.
Sorry, no exciting news about food today. I had another cold, which kinda spoilt my appetite, so I mostly ate in the cafeteria. Today we went out for lunch because it was one of the student's birthdays, but instead of choosing a fancy restaurant (the professor was paying!) he chose a simple Wonton place. The wontons were pretty good (thin dough) and came in a tasty soup with some veggies or noodles. But the prof was almost disappointed that she got to spend less than 10yuan/person. She would have liked to go to the hotpot restaurant just south of the campus, which, incidentally, is a branch of "Little Sheep" that also has branches in North America. Some day I have to find out if the food is really the same.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Shopping Extravaganza
I guess I was asking for it - I went to the most touristy part of Nanjing today, which is around Confucius temple, more south of the center. But man, it is really pretty there. Nanjing really is a river town, and not so much because of the Yangzi (which I haven't even seen so far, it borders the city in the very north), but more because of the little streams and canals lining the city. It seems, Qinhuai river, which lies on the western outlines of the ancient city wall, was always more the center of commerce and (according to a book my Chinese teacher gave me as a farewell gift) also prostitution - one couldn't live without the other ;) Reproductions of those "pleasure boats" are now for hire and can take you on a day tour of Qinhuai river. The dock at the Confucius temple didn't seem very busy though, most people were just strolling. And even though the streets were crowded, the souvenir stores were rather empty and of course I was a prime target. I have such a weak spot for Chinese kitsch, like scrolls with Chinese characters. I can't wait till I have my own apartment and can stuff it up to the ceiling full of kitsch! :) I'm still very shy about haggling, and it wasn't made better by the fact that when I inquired about such a scroll, I was told 480yuan. The Chinese who asked just 5 minutes later was told 360yuan. Now, that's deflation! Maybe I should have waited around longer. I think I'll keep the real haggling until my Chinese is a bit more fluent and I know how to properly act offended :)
My other foreigner sighting today consisted of another German (they are really populating the city!) who seemed to be taking his girlfriend and prospective mother-in-law out for a coffee to Häagen Dazs. It was kind of funny how his girlfriend was speaking German with him and Chinese with her mother, but the man and the mother couldn't communicate at all. Ehm , well, how I happened to be there... funny story. I was totally prepared to just sneer at it, as I always do with Western chains like McDonald's and KFC (the latter even seeming more popular than the former), but then a little red sign with four white letters caught my eye and my feet just magically wandered into the place. There was nothing I could do to resist an Illy coffee! It was really pretty good. And once I was there, of course I had to try their ice cream, didn't I? Apart from being horrendously overpriced (well, I guess it would have cost the same in the West), it just didn't win me over. After a summer of homemade ice cream, that shouldn't have come as a surprise (how about it, Elsa - macadamia nut ice cream? :)) Needless to say I spent more money on the coffee and ice cream than I had spent for lunch, even though today I went to a restaurant off-campus. I'm getting kind of tired of the canteen and I can't get used to their crazy times - I have to have lunch before noon and dinner before 6pm, otherwise they're sold out.
For the first time I'm really not sure what I ate for lunch. I'm guessing potato. Yes, I know, you'd think I'd recognize a potato. Well, at first I thought radish, but it didn't taste like radish at all. There were thin slices (about the cross section of a big potato) in a hint of batter, deep fried for only a few seconds, so they were basically still white, and then the whole thing was downed in a very sweet sauce - I'm guessing mostly honey and dried flowers. It was really quite amazing, the sauce had a distinct flowery taste. And it was very fresh, so the deep-fried batter was not soaked through but still crispy under the sauce. My other dish was very tender pork with lots of fresh mushrooms. I was sad I couldn't finish them all. So, after today's lunch and coffee extravaganza, dinner is from the supermarket - Suntory Beer (running for title of "worst beer ever" - buah) and sticky rice (wrapped in banana or lotus leaves). Yep, that supermarket has pretty much everything. Maybe I should get one of their turtles and raise it as a pet :) Speaking of which - I saw a store today selling live dogs... just kidding. It was actually a pet store... or was it? ;)
My other foreigner sighting today consisted of another German (they are really populating the city!) who seemed to be taking his girlfriend and prospective mother-in-law out for a coffee to Häagen Dazs. It was kind of funny how his girlfriend was speaking German with him and Chinese with her mother, but the man and the mother couldn't communicate at all. Ehm , well, how I happened to be there... funny story. I was totally prepared to just sneer at it, as I always do with Western chains like McDonald's and KFC (the latter even seeming more popular than the former), but then a little red sign with four white letters caught my eye and my feet just magically wandered into the place. There was nothing I could do to resist an Illy coffee! It was really pretty good. And once I was there, of course I had to try their ice cream, didn't I? Apart from being horrendously overpriced (well, I guess it would have cost the same in the West), it just didn't win me over. After a summer of homemade ice cream, that shouldn't have come as a surprise (how about it, Elsa - macadamia nut ice cream? :)) Needless to say I spent more money on the coffee and ice cream than I had spent for lunch, even though today I went to a restaurant off-campus. I'm getting kind of tired of the canteen and I can't get used to their crazy times - I have to have lunch before noon and dinner before 6pm, otherwise they're sold out.
For the first time I'm really not sure what I ate for lunch. I'm guessing potato. Yes, I know, you'd think I'd recognize a potato. Well, at first I thought radish, but it didn't taste like radish at all. There were thin slices (about the cross section of a big potato) in a hint of batter, deep fried for only a few seconds, so they were basically still white, and then the whole thing was downed in a very sweet sauce - I'm guessing mostly honey and dried flowers. It was really quite amazing, the sauce had a distinct flowery taste. And it was very fresh, so the deep-fried batter was not soaked through but still crispy under the sauce. My other dish was very tender pork with lots of fresh mushrooms. I was sad I couldn't finish them all. So, after today's lunch and coffee extravaganza, dinner is from the supermarket - Suntory Beer (running for title of "worst beer ever" - buah) and sticky rice (wrapped in banana or lotus leaves). Yep, that supermarket has pretty much everything. Maybe I should get one of their turtles and raise it as a pet :) Speaking of which - I saw a store today selling live dogs... just kidding. It was actually a pet store... or was it? ;)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The horse nuzzled my shoulder
... someone felt compelled to inform me today in big letters screaming from his chest. Either that's some cultural reference totally lost on me, or someone is having a lot of fun selling these kids shirts with random English stuff on it. Or what's up with "Three plus one equals five"? Is ignorance really the message you want to send when you walk around a university campus? Or maybe this is some very subtle way of criticizing the Chinese educational system? Speaking of which, when planning my class (I'm going to teach "Geometry and Topology for Physicists" again), I was told not to schedule it for Tueday or Thursday after lunch, because that's when the mandatory classes "The socialism of physics" and "Scientific method and Marxism" or something along those lines are held. Just in case you were wondering how "socialist" China still is. LingFei was kind of laughing when he translated that for me. I don't want to bring up another GDR-analogy, but those of you who grew up there probably catch my meaning.
Today's duck story is totally fake. I mean, there was fake duck - in the Buddhist temple where I had lunch. The picture on the menu (a funny aside - the menu covers were in Russian!) didn't look all that compelling (it resembled the cold duck meat appetizer, which I wasn't in the mood for), so I went for the fake eel instead. It was pretty good. Didn't taste fishy at all, but I liked what they had done with the texture. There were little rolls of tofu skin and mushrooms (the latter making this tasty), wrapped with crispy seaweed, which gave a pretty good imitation of the crispy fried skin of an eel. And the tofu-skin-mushroom mixture had an interesting fibered texture, pretty close to fish meat, not so close to fatty eel maybe. But I have no complaints. Ok, one maybe - the sauce was a bit generic. Can't even tell you what it was. A bit like fish fragrant (ginger, garlic), but with something red and sweet in it. But the really great thing about this lunch was the location. The restaurant is on top of the hill on which Jiming temple sits and the view was just spectacular. Over the City Walls (on which I wandered around for half an hour or so without encountering any other person - it's a quiet oasis of overgrown stones from the Ming dynasty, built 1366-1386, two thirds of its originally 33km still standing, which makes it the longest city wall ever built worldwide, at least according to Lonely Planet) onto Xuanwu Lake (which is also a big park, or rather the islands in it are). Jiming temple (鸡鸣寺 = rooster crowing temple) is the biggest active Buddhist temple in Nanjing and there were quite a few worshippers there today. Surprisingly (at least to me) most of them were young people. The temple has about six different halls with big golden Buddha or other Deity statues in them. Most buildings in their current form seem to be from 1984 and many of the statues were donated by Thailand. There is also an impressive gift shop, which shows you what the junk you get in Chinatown as souvenirs should look like :) There was some nice jewellery and impressive amber and jade carvings. I didn't ask for prices, but I somehow got the feeling at least the gemstones were genuine (and I guess the monks (into whose housing courtyard I accidentally wandered - oops - thankfully nobody saw me) spend their days carving those gemstones while tourists invade their holy halls?). I can't tell if it's a place for rip-off. I saw some tourists buying stuff, but they were all Chinese tourists! Today was another Caucasian free day, even though I ended my walking tour in a Costa Coffee shop, paying 25yuan (=$4) for a "ka bu qi nuo" (sorry, I don't remember which characters they used, I'll copy them down next time). They are so nice there. Even before I can tell them I want "一小杯 yi xiao bei" (a small cup), they ask me "for here or to go?" I really have to find out what a teapuccino is - but it's a pricey experiment. Do I really wan to spend 30yuan on it? Maybe the Mangofresco sounds more promising...
Today's duck story is totally fake. I mean, there was fake duck - in the Buddhist temple where I had lunch. The picture on the menu (a funny aside - the menu covers were in Russian!) didn't look all that compelling (it resembled the cold duck meat appetizer, which I wasn't in the mood for), so I went for the fake eel instead. It was pretty good. Didn't taste fishy at all, but I liked what they had done with the texture. There were little rolls of tofu skin and mushrooms (the latter making this tasty), wrapped with crispy seaweed, which gave a pretty good imitation of the crispy fried skin of an eel. And the tofu-skin-mushroom mixture had an interesting fibered texture, pretty close to fish meat, not so close to fatty eel maybe. But I have no complaints. Ok, one maybe - the sauce was a bit generic. Can't even tell you what it was. A bit like fish fragrant (ginger, garlic), but with something red and sweet in it. But the really great thing about this lunch was the location. The restaurant is on top of the hill on which Jiming temple sits and the view was just spectacular. Over the City Walls (on which I wandered around for half an hour or so without encountering any other person - it's a quiet oasis of overgrown stones from the Ming dynasty, built 1366-1386, two thirds of its originally 33km still standing, which makes it the longest city wall ever built worldwide, at least according to Lonely Planet) onto Xuanwu Lake (which is also a big park, or rather the islands in it are). Jiming temple (鸡鸣寺 = rooster crowing temple) is the biggest active Buddhist temple in Nanjing and there were quite a few worshippers there today. Surprisingly (at least to me) most of them were young people. The temple has about six different halls with big golden Buddha or other Deity statues in them. Most buildings in their current form seem to be from 1984 and many of the statues were donated by Thailand. There is also an impressive gift shop, which shows you what the junk you get in Chinatown as souvenirs should look like :) There was some nice jewellery and impressive amber and jade carvings. I didn't ask for prices, but I somehow got the feeling at least the gemstones were genuine (and I guess the monks (into whose housing courtyard I accidentally wandered - oops - thankfully nobody saw me) spend their days carving those gemstones while tourists invade their holy halls?). I can't tell if it's a place for rip-off. I saw some tourists buying stuff, but they were all Chinese tourists! Today was another Caucasian free day, even though I ended my walking tour in a Costa Coffee shop, paying 25yuan (=$4) for a "ka bu qi nuo" (sorry, I don't remember which characters they used, I'll copy them down next time). They are so nice there. Even before I can tell them I want "一小杯 yi xiao bei" (a small cup), they ask me "for here or to go?" I really have to find out what a teapuccino is - but it's a pricey experiment. Do I really wan to spend 30yuan on it? Maybe the Mangofresco sounds more promising...
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Bad joke
A man with a duck on his head walks into a doctor's office and the duck says... ok, maybe today's duck theme is a bit far fetched. But I did - you might have guessed it - pay a visit to a doctor's office. Did I mention how terribly efficient the Chinese are? Have you ever tried to go and see a doctor without an appointment (at 2:30 in the afternoon) in, say, Germany, the US or Canada? Well, once I had my temperature taken by a nurse at the entrance (swine flue prevention, I assume), purchased a patient booklet and wrote my (Chinese) name on a registration card, there was no wait whatsoever to see *one of* the doctors (actually, she was reading a newspaper and had absolutely nothing better to do than wait for a patient). Needless to say that without LingFei I would not have been able to describe the doctor the circumstances of the light fever I've been having since Monday. Oh, right, and I have a little cough, which won me another ticket for a chest x-ray. At this rate I'll have lung cancer by the time I come back. I tried to argue that I just had a chest x-ray taken less than a week ago and she said "well, you weren't sick then, were you?" (free translation). But first I had to go back downstairs to the cashier and pay for the x-ray and blood test (apparently a sterile needle costs 0.3yuan=5cents; this puts my mind at ease about the woman I saw squatting on the lab floor scrubbing test tubes with a brush in soapy water), then take my receipt to the appropriate room (again, no wait worth mentioning and I got the results within two minutes), take this back upstairs to the doctor, tell her what antibiotic I'm allergic to (she had never heard of it) and get a prescription for a new antibiotic (which is in the same class as the one I am allergic to - oops) as well as some "Chinese medicine." You can tell the Chinese medicine from western medicine by the packaging - Chinese medicine is in green and gold, looking very natural, herbal, zen and whatnot, western medicine comes in a sterile white package :) And the Chinese medicine reliefs weird symptoms, you never knew you could have (LingFei was a bit hesitant with the translation, something about liver fat and a bloody tongue? He said "well, it's Chinese medicine" as in "you're not supposed to understand that"). All in all I paid 60yuan(=$10) for the doctor and the medication and was done in 90minutes. I'll get reimbursed for most of that once I'm properly registered with the university payroll. Now, this was the university health center, so I guess you'd expect them to be efficient. No idea what a regular doctor's office is like, and I certainly don't want to find out what a hospital is like. This clinic already reminded me of traumatic childhood experiences (ok, fine, one) in a GDR hospital. Don't expect to be pampered into forgetting you're sick. No, it has to smell like disinfectant and be really gloomy. People are efficient, not friendly. And the smell of the bathrooms... holy shit! Er... no pun intended.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
First encounters
Sticking with the theme of this blog - I really can't promise I'll manage to do that with every entry - I had duck dumplings today (tasty) and the Nanjing famous "duck blood soup" (weird). Now, that's not actually a soup based on the red liquid, but the congealed blood is cut into slices and goes together with some rice noodles in a soup stock, beef in my case. The whole thing was topped off with a chili sauce, that they squeezed out of a plastic tube - my least favourite part. It wasn't too spicy, but a bit sour (a bit like tabasco, I suppose). Well, considering I ate this in the campus cafeteria, I shouldn't be too surprised it wasn't gourmet food. But I think my plan of just pointing to everything with the character 鸭 (duck) on the menu will pay off in the long run.
My foreigner count (i.e. sightings of other caucasians) was really low ever since leaving Shanghai (I'm confident I was the only "white" person who stepped off that train), but suddenly jumped because I came across a group of a dozen Germans (of all people). They seemed to be visiting the campus with a guide - prospective language students maybe? And when I went to the office for foreigners, I saw a whole pile of applications (for resident permits), all with German passports! They are everywhere! :) People in the university are definitely used to foreigners, nobody stares (ok, I don't exactly stick out, as I'm black-haired again at the moment and not exactly tall). And even off-campus I only encountered one old and obviously confused guy who seemed intrigued by my different-ness and kept following me around a store. In general, there are two different reactions when I try to go out shopping or eating - either people are very eager to help the foreigner (I am often enthusiastically greeted with "good morning" - at all times of the day) or they ignore me in the hope I will go away. I think the latter behaviour is an attempt to "save face", because that person feels embarrassed that he or she doesn't speak English. They usually become very friendly when I tell them in my poor Chinese what I want (or simply point). Often I am showered in a lengthy explanation of what I ordered there, to which I can only smile, nod and say "好阿 hao a" (that's ok). I bet the lady at lunch was trying to warn me about the duck blood :) Unfortunately, my Chinese is now at a point where I can formulate questions (and practise them for a minute in my head), which makes people believe I actually understand Chinese! So, from the answer that follows I often catch next to nothing. Oh well. Not too long ago that's how I felt about my French :) So, there's hope! Ok, limited hope maybe...
One funny thing I noticed about the other foreigners (apart from that group of Germans) - they all seem very eager to ignore me (so, ok, I am the one who's staring at the "white devils"). If I might venture a guess, I think we'd all like to believe we are the first, the rare exception, to go out and seek the "real China." We'd like to pretend the others don't exist. Let alone do we want to associate with them and fall into the trap of only hanging out with other Europeans or Americans. Sounds all like a noble and romantic idea, but frankly, if the university here wasn't prepared for foreigners, if the students didn't speak such good English, and if the authorities hadn't already implemented procedures for foreigners to set up residence here... I don't know how long all that burocracy would have taken. I would have to study Chinese for at least two more years before I'd be able to understand and fill out all the forms that were placed in front of me. So, yeah, I hate you other 外国人 waiguoren (foreigners), too, but deep down I'm grateful for those who paved the road.
Oh, and on a totally unrelated note - I solved the secret of the individually paid water bottles. They're on sale! 2.20yuan instead of 2.80. And I supposed to prevent people from stockpiling, there's a limit of one bottle per purchase. If I wanted two, I'd have to pay the full price for the second. So, the nice cashiers always get impatient, but still charge me for every one individually, so I can save 6mao (10cents). Maybe I should be nice and avoid the rush hour for my shopping. Today I got some promising looking fruit at the supermarket and guess what, it's all locally grown ;)
My foreigner count (i.e. sightings of other caucasians) was really low ever since leaving Shanghai (I'm confident I was the only "white" person who stepped off that train), but suddenly jumped because I came across a group of a dozen Germans (of all people). They seemed to be visiting the campus with a guide - prospective language students maybe? And when I went to the office for foreigners, I saw a whole pile of applications (for resident permits), all with German passports! They are everywhere! :) People in the university are definitely used to foreigners, nobody stares (ok, I don't exactly stick out, as I'm black-haired again at the moment and not exactly tall). And even off-campus I only encountered one old and obviously confused guy who seemed intrigued by my different-ness and kept following me around a store. In general, there are two different reactions when I try to go out shopping or eating - either people are very eager to help the foreigner (I am often enthusiastically greeted with "good morning" - at all times of the day) or they ignore me in the hope I will go away. I think the latter behaviour is an attempt to "save face", because that person feels embarrassed that he or she doesn't speak English. They usually become very friendly when I tell them in my poor Chinese what I want (or simply point). Often I am showered in a lengthy explanation of what I ordered there, to which I can only smile, nod and say "好阿 hao a" (that's ok). I bet the lady at lunch was trying to warn me about the duck blood :) Unfortunately, my Chinese is now at a point where I can formulate questions (and practise them for a minute in my head), which makes people believe I actually understand Chinese! So, from the answer that follows I often catch next to nothing. Oh well. Not too long ago that's how I felt about my French :) So, there's hope! Ok, limited hope maybe...
One funny thing I noticed about the other foreigners (apart from that group of Germans) - they all seem very eager to ignore me (so, ok, I am the one who's staring at the "white devils"). If I might venture a guess, I think we'd all like to believe we are the first, the rare exception, to go out and seek the "real China." We'd like to pretend the others don't exist. Let alone do we want to associate with them and fall into the trap of only hanging out with other Europeans or Americans. Sounds all like a noble and romantic idea, but frankly, if the university here wasn't prepared for foreigners, if the students didn't speak such good English, and if the authorities hadn't already implemented procedures for foreigners to set up residence here... I don't know how long all that burocracy would have taken. I would have to study Chinese for at least two more years before I'd be able to understand and fill out all the forms that were placed in front of me. So, yeah, I hate you other 外国人 waiguoren (foreigners), too, but deep down I'm grateful for those who paved the road.
Oh, and on a totally unrelated note - I solved the secret of the individually paid water bottles. They're on sale! 2.20yuan instead of 2.80. And I supposed to prevent people from stockpiling, there's a limit of one bottle per purchase. If I wanted two, I'd have to pay the full price for the second. So, the nice cashiers always get impatient, but still charge me for every one individually, so I can save 6mao (10cents). Maybe I should be nice and avoid the rush hour for my shopping. Today I got some promising looking fruit at the supermarket and guess what, it's all locally grown ;)
Monday, August 31, 2009
欢迎！Welcome!
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.
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.
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