Why hello there! Due to Ellis having a busy week hosting me,
her new Chinese friend Chadele, I have given her some respite from writing her
blog and offered to write it for her.
I shall start with my journey. From Birmingham
to Paris to Shanghai
to Wuhan and a total of 23 hours
door to door travel. It’s fair to say I was pretty shattered by the time I
arrived to the what appeared to be ‘ghetto’ in which Ellis lives.
With this being my first long haul flight, I didn’t know
what to expect but being given extra legroom for two thirds of my journey was
definitely an added bonus. However, China Eastern airline let themselves down.
As I was approaching the final 15 minutes of ‘Mamma Mia’, on pops a message
telling me it was now time for a thai chi experience! No thank you.
Anyway, so after waiting for a taxi at the airport, the
driver tried to fit my suitcase in the boot, but with no such look, my suitcase
got to ride alongside the driver in the front.
Ellis’ dad Tudds had warned me about the lack of ‘edible’
food in China
and so I was somewhat concerned about what to expect. My concerns were soon
forgotten as I tucked into the Chinese delicacy ‘Jaozi’ (dumplings) with some
hot sauce! YUM!
Luckily, Ellis had the Tuesday off work and so after waking
up we headed on off for my first real experience of China .
Now when told to bring jumpers and raincoats because the weather was awful, you
can imagine my delight when we opened the curtains to 30 degree sunshine!
Fantastic! We walked for a little while before stopping to enjoy more food,
this time ‘bouzi’ (a steamed and stuffed bread). We hopped on the subway and
headed to ‘art street’ to browse some quaint little shops and ended up having a
couple of polaroids (I think the lady wanted us to do an entire photo shoot).
This made us very hungry so we decided to go to ‘breakfast alley’ where you can
sample the delights of Chinese food. Ellis had wanted to try the squid for a
while so we plucked up the courage to get a stick of it each. Now we weren’t
expecting the squid to be so spicy! It literally made my mouth burn and tingle,
but nothing a little melon juice couldn’t fix. After this fiasco, we boarded a
ferry and crossed the Yangtze river to Hankou where we
had another bout of shopping before catching the subway back to Ellis’ area
where we made a pit stop on our way home for Mr Mai’s infamous apple pie. It
was delicious. After realising that Ellis had left her keys in her apartment (well
done Ellis) and getting Mr Pung (love his name) to let us back in, we got
showered and at 7pm went out for a meal with Ellis’ neighbours Dean and
Patrick. The food was fab, a mixture of dishes from pork to egg with onion! A
real treat.
We went to bed fairly early Tuesday night as the alarm was
set for 6.30am so that we were ready
to leave for the university at 7.10. After a cup of tea we walked the 30 minutes
to the building where Ellis teaches. A listening test and an Easter
presentation later the students were set the task of composing some
questions for the westerner – me. Here are some of the examples I was
expecting:
1. Where do you live?
2. How old are you?
3. Do you like China .
Instead...
1. Do you think Chinese people are strange?
2. How many times have you been in love?
3. What do you think to the news in China ?
After stumbling through some answers to some of the
strangest questions we let the students go and made our way to Baotong
Temple
We reached
the bottom and went for the most authentic Chinese food known to man – McDonald’s.
We popped into Mumumso, another cutesy shop before going to the train station
to pick up our tickets for Beijing !!
To answer the students queston ‘do you think us Chinese are strange’ No, not
strange, but rude, very. We were waiting in a queue for about 15 minutes before
we got to the front. This man tried to push his way in front of us but to his
dismay, me and Ellis were having none of it. The Chinese man was fairly taken
aback by the Laowi’s standing up for themselves but proceeded to mock us anyway.
We then got the subway back to Ellis’ area and popped into the supermarket to
fetch some snacks for the train to Beijing .
Weirdest experience of my life. Bags of chicken feet, dried chicken carcasses,
you name it. Also, who builds a ramp for trolleys to go up to the second floor
but an escalator down? In what world is it easier to push up a ramp than down?!
As a linguist, I have found learning random Chinese words so much fun. Ting bu
dong being my favourite expression. I spent some time learning the numbers 1-10
with Ellis whilst eating an authentic Chinese takeaway and watching Matilda
before heading to bed.
Thursday started off quite miserable with heavy rain and
made both of us not want to leave the house. But, I wasn’t wasting time whilst
halfway across the world so we got ready, by which time it had all but stopped
raining, and made our way to a cute stationary shop, before meeting a bunch of
Ellis’ friends for lunch.
The restaurant we went to is home to the nicest fried
pork in the world. Fact. We had ice cream and then Ellis, Paul and I went to
cultural street – a mixture of little shops full of quaint notebooks and pens
etc which is my idea of heaven. On the way home we popped into Mr Mai’s for
another portion of the apple pie and an iced vanilla cappuccino where me and
Paul played a random game of trivial pursuit before heading to get a Chinese
burger which was delicious. Now, I love kids, I do. So when Ellis told me I
could join her whilst she went tutoring, I was dead excited. It was mental.
These children were on speed.
The positive is that I know I made the right
choice to go into secondary teaching! By the end of it, I was joining in with
the songs and the stories. Me and Ellis ended the night with a long catch up
talk before an earlyish night as we had to go to the Uni again Friday morning.
This time I was prepared. Question time.
I wasn’t prepared.
1. My friends want me to ask you which boy you think is the
most good looking in the class. The bell went. I was literally saved by the
bell. I left the class slightly red faced and walked to get some fried baozi
and rice balls with a milk tea to drink. We clambered into a taxi that took us
to the Hubei Provincial
Museum Wuhan .
We scoured the menu and decided on 3 dishes. Chow mian with bacon, beef brisket
with potatoes and fried swan with mange tout. Yes, you read that correctly.
Fried swan. Sorry queeny, we know they are your beloved swans but it was
delicious.
We were very offended when they offered us knives and forks, I’d
already had to admit defeat with picking up the potatoes with my chop sticks
and had resorted to a toothpick. I managed to get a quick phone call in with my
boyfriend and then we had to get ready for our BNO (big night out). Zero Motivation.
We were putting it off and putting it off before finally making the decision to
stay home and watch films instead. Thank god we did. 1 hour later and the
craziest electrical storm broke out. I have never experienced anything like it.
At a few points we thought the windows were going to smash. Streets were
flooded. The thunder was loud and the lightening was a constant. It took us 3
hours to watch a film because we kept pausing it to watch the storm or ring our friends etc.
Anyway, it is Saturday afternoon now and me and Ellis
ventured out into the rain to pick up some reganmian (a noodle dish) for
breakfast (apparently noodles for breakfast is normal here). We have packed for
Beijing tomorrow and have had a
fairly chilled morning. We are going to meet Brooke in about an hour for a
coffee and some dinner.
So far, my experience of China
has been fantastic and I am so pleased I have come. Ellis will update you next
week on how Beijing and my last day
in Wuhan went.
See you back in the UK !
Adele (Chadele)
