All Good Things... A Farewell

Dear Reader,

I have decided to go back to Canada a good deal earlier than I had originally anticipated in order to finish off my Master's thesis, and so this shall be my very last blog post. It has been a very unique few months to say the least here at Suzhou University (SuDa), but I feel my time would be better used back in Canada working towards the completion of my degree. For this final blog post, I will list some things that I will miss - and not miss- about my life here in Suzhou, China.

What I Won't Miss:

A Lack of Manners

Not even picking up after his dog...

It's the Chinese way to have very little in the way of a filter between what you think and what you say, at least when it comes to foreigners. Many Chinese will quite happily call you a stupid, fat, foreigner - or worse - right to your face, and refer to you as such in front of their co-workers and friends because they automatically assume that foreigners cannot speak any Chinese whatsoever. While it can be very rewarding to cut into them using Mandarin, the temporary satisfaction does not make up for the fact that it just keeps on happening, and happening, and happening.

Something funny about the Chinese is how they often love commenting on the exact same things about people. In my case, this is generally about the fact that I am still wearing shorts in the winter. According to them, the winters in Suzhou are very, very cold, but I don't feel it at all.

Autumn

Winter

I've probably had the exact same conversation about my not being cold at least seventy times over the past two months, to the point where I had the entire conversation memorized right down to the Chinese facial expressions!

What is worse, however, is the noise, not caused so much by the Chinese, but rather by the other foreign students on campus.

There are many Koreans studying here at SuDa. So many, in fact, that most of the signs for foreigners around campus have Korean more often than English:

If you couldn't read either  Chinese characters or  Korean (underlined in blue), you were screwed  using the laundry!

There is this song called "Gangnam Style," which happens to be extremely popular right now, being the most watched video in Youtube history. If you haven't seen it, here's the music video:

Many of these Korean students love to party nearly every night of the week, and they always connect their iPods and laptops with their music libraries (which is mostly Gangnam Style and various remixes of it) to high-end speakers, which they then crank up to their maximum volume and base settings to the point where literally everybody in the dorm building can hear it. 

The din of their constant partying, of course, makes genuine studying a statistical impossibility. To make matters worse, despite the constants complaints from many of other dormitory residents, our ayi (阿姨，dorm carecakers) and our university administration have refused to do anything about to matter. And speaking of ayis...

"Free" Accommodation

According to the information that was given to me about my scholarship - these rules also apply to every other foreigner who has a scholarship in China - our rooms are supposed to be absolutely free, with us not having to pay for anything. However, my so-called free accommodation here at SuDa is far from it, as we students are forcibly charged for our electricity and our internet usage. If we do not pay our 'bill', our electricity gets turned off, period. The university even had the gall to make use coin-operated washing machines.

Coin-operated washing machines in a country where getting coins is absurdly difficult. Thanks, SuDa!

The university also charges little user fees here and there for things like official forms - which are also supposed to be free - and medical examinations - which are supposed to be covered and not paid by us or our scholarship money. I'll be very happy to leave this corrupt little racket behind.

At least the ayi had a nice smile when you paid her!

Classes

The Chinese language school for foreigners

SuDa has acceptable Chinese classes for foreigners if you are interested in learning the very basics of the language, or wish to learn "business Chinese." I already have good grasp of the basics - having studied the language since I was 18 - and have no interest in learning 'business' vocabulary. My interests are more academic, and the particulars of the Chinese language that I wish to learn - that is, the more classical aspects of the language - are not available here at SuDa. It also didn't help matters that the teachers I was stuck with were not interested in discussing any more esoteric or academic topics in Chinese, and were rather adamant about sticking to the dull-as-ditchwater textbooks.

Health Standards

Growing up in the sterile and extremely clean environment of a first-world nation, I doubt I'll ever be able to accept what the Chinese accept as 'clean.' Take this bathroom, for example:

The spitting is another matter. In traditional Chinese society, it is seen as disgusting to swallow your own saliva, so everybody from the youngest child to the oldest person spits. That by itself is off-putting by itself, but the Chinese tend to go about spitting in a very ritualistic way by loudly hocking their saliva up before actually spitting. It is especially lovely when you hear this sound behind you, because you have to wonder if any of that saliva is about to end up on your clothing or in your hair! Humorously, this is a habit the Chinese government has been trying to get rid of for years, so I'm obviously not alone in my disgust:

One thing I never mentioned in any of posts before is just how nasty Chinese viruses and bacteria can be. I've had to struggle almost the entire time I've been here with constantly getting sick. If it wasn't some nasty cold, it was a fever; if it wasn't a nasty cough, it was a it was a sore throat. Not being constantly sick is something I'll be very grateful for.

You'd be surprised how fast I depleted my medical supplies

With all of my griping out of the way, let's start mentioning the things I'll miss!

Things I'll miss:

Food

Despite one or two issues, I will honestly miss most of the food here in Suzhou. It is cheap, delicious, and nutritious, so what more could one ask for? At the university - as well as just off campus - the places are all heavily subsidized by the government, thus making the food exceptionally cheap, even for Chinese standards. I generally spend no more than 50-70-RMB (about $10-15 Canadian) per week on food, and it is very filling.

I especially love the vendors and hole-in-the-wall restaurants all over the place that sell a wonderful variety of Chinese goodies, such as egg-filled wraps (鸡蛋灌饼)...

...Chinese "burgers" ( 肉夹馍)...

... dumplings (包子)...

...Chinese meat-kebabs (肉串)...

... and, of course, malatang (麻辣烫).

Unless you have actually eaten Chinese food in China, you have never truly eaten. The stuff everybody in Canada and the US eats at Chinese restaurants - and I can speak from experience here - is a watered-down, flavorless bastardization of the real deal, generally because the Chinese assume we are a bunch of sissies who cannot eat their 'real' food. Thus, I'm going to genuinely miss having access to all this great food.

At least China's most popular restaurant will still be available in Canada!

Transportation

Transportation in China is both easily accessible and cheap, even if you only have a very basic grasp of the language. Taxis are available everywhere for reasonable prices, and can take you anywhere extremely fast.

If they think you can speak Chinese, taxi drivers will also provide you with a rather humorous conversation partner!

If you're feeling too stingy for a taxi, the bus and metro systems in the cities are also top-notch, with stations for both found all over Suzhou. I think it's hilarious I am more familiar with the bus system here in Suzhou than I am in my own home town!

Xiangmen (相门) bus station, which I became very familiar with

Finally, I cannot finish this section without waxing poetic about the Chinese train system, which is by far the best and most efficient train system I have ever seen - and I've traveled across continental Europe by train!

Taken 2006

The tickets for the Chinese trains are reasonably priced, the trains themselves are all well taken care of, and go extremely fast to get to you to your destination, often going several hundred kilometers per hour. I was  told that - back in the China of the 1980s - it used to take at least eight hours for a train to get from Shanghai to Nanjing. Now, it can be done in less than two!

Canada has a rail system as well, but it is both expensive and slow, and simply nowhere near a great as China's railways.

Teaching

I never though in my wildest dreams that I would not only end up teaching kindergartners  but enjoy doing it as well. When I was a teenager, I always loathed the idea of even having to babysit other kids, wanting nothing more than to give them a good kick to shut them up.

I most certainly didn't feel that when teaching these kids, however. I was able to play a lot of really fun games, direct a classroom, and figure out just how hard teachers have to work to keep order in their classrooms.

Of course there was the occasional annoying and rowdy child, but I honestly enjoyed every single day that I taught these kids English, and I will really miss them.

The money was great too!

Friends

What can I say, other than I'll terribly miss the friends I've made while here.

While it is a veritable United Nations of people here, I ended up befriending more Latinos - and Latinas - than any other group of people. I can probably thank my roommate Miguel for this, who ended up being as great a roommate as I could have ever hoped for. Also, even though I can speak some Spanish, it aggravated me to no end that I didn't study more Spanish after I graduated high school.

Miguel (Mexico) and Alan (Argentina) would have probably preferred my knowing more Spanish as well!

While I didn't become friends with any Chinese students, I did end up befriending the guards that take care of the main entrance to SuDa's eastern campus, to the point where we knew one another by name. It was always a real treat bantering with them about their lives and their very long days.

I'll also miss the fellow kindergarten teachers that I befriended, Nela, from Mexcio, who got me the teaching job in the first place...

...Christy, from Ireland, who was one of my co-workers...

The red-haired fellow, not our waiter who also wanted to be in the photo

...and Michael, a really strange young man from Texas who loved endlessly talking about conspiracy theories...

Artistic interpretation

I had a lot of fun conversing with all of them about their experiences both teaching and living in China, and experiencing China from a radically different way than just a mere student.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I'd like to thank all of you for reading my blog posts and learning about my experiences these past few months. It has been a pleasure to share my life in Suzhou in this format with you all. With that, I bid you all adieu from the Venice of the East!

Shanghai, Day 2

Since Shanghai is so easily accessible, I decided to go once again to see some more of the attractions this metropolis has to offer. After my short train ride, I caught a cab and was on my way to the Jade Buddha Temple (玉佛寺), which is famous for a statue of a Buddha carved out of pure jade.

There are lots of other great-looking statues showing various deities and spirits throughout the temple's many rooms and buildings.

The picture below was taken just outside the room where the Jade Buddha is, and - of course - you are not allowed to take pictures of the Buddha itself. Not that that's stopped me from taking photos before, but there were guards around. Plus, the Jade Buddha was really quite a disappointment after seeing the other portions of the temple, being surprisingly small and covered behind hard to photo glass.

The picture below is actually a copy of the Jade Buddha statue, though this one is actually bigger than the real version!

While the Jade Buddha statue is a legitimate temple, it is certainly geared towards the hordes of tourists that flock by, since it has western-style washrooms, loads of shops, and even sells Coca Cola!

The outside of the temple is swarming with beggars that can generally say "Hello, Thank You!" in English, hoping for the tourists going to the temple to give them money.

After touring the Jade Buddha Temple, I caught another cab and made my way over to Shanghai's largest temple, the Long Hua Pagoda (龙华寺). 

The pagoda itself itself is over a thousand years old, but is closed to tourists. The remainder of the temple, however, is open to all. Like the Jade Buddha Temple, there are many interesting statues and carvings of other deities and many places for people to go and pray.

The red sheet of paper reads "Don't touch the Buddha's hand!" Obviously the temple has had some problems.

After seeing the overwhelming number of touristy shops and coca cola dispensers at the Jade Buddha Temple, it was refreshing to see some actual monks that live and work at this temple.

I like that they put the lawn mower right next to the ancient stone tablet.

Classy

 The temple also takes care of its garbage in the most environmentally-friendly way:

Much like the Jade Buddha Temple, the Long Hua Pagoda had many vagrants just outside the entrance, most of which loudly screamed "Hello!" in English in their attempt to beg for change.

After I explored the Long Hua Temple, I got another cab and made my way to Shanghai's 'Old Town' (上海古城), the portion of the city where all of the Chinese used to live when Shanghai was divided into various foreign-controlled concessions.

Of course, the Old Town of today bears no resemblance to the to the squalid conditions that were there all those years ago, as it is now a highly touristy area filled with an unbelievable amount of shops, selling everything from tea sets, to Christmas merchandise, iPads, Tin Tin books, wigs, t-shirts, and every kind of toy imaginable.

All locally made too!

My main reason for going to the Old Town was to see the Huxin Ting Tea House (湖心亭茶楼), which was a very important meeting place for Shanghai's old gentry, which was still the case even after the Communists took over in 1949. The tea house was exceptionally difficult to find, being hidden in a large complex designed around Shanghai's classical garden, Yu Garden (豫园). 

In getting to the tea house, I passed by many western chain restaurants, historically-themed restaurants (primarily revolving around Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s), and was consistently accosted by people attempting to sell me watches, iPhones, and many other useless trinkets.

I quickly found my way to the tea house, which was naturally swarming with tourists.

The inside of the tea house was very nice as well, though I chose not to have a cup of tea there since they had the gall to charge 68RMB for a single minuscule cup of tea. I was more than satisfied with being able to see the tea house and look around the inside.

The tea house also happens to be right next to the entrance to Yu Garden, though I decided against on seeing the garden since I read that it pales in comparison to the best of Suzhou's garden, all of which I have seen. Furthermore, Chinese classical gardens - while very beautiful - tend to look alike, so I had little interest in seeing one more.

I then caught a cab in an attempt to locate the Shanghai Municipal History Museum (上海市历史博物馆), which I read was nearby the Oriental Pearl TV Tower (东方明珠电视塔).

Much to my vexation, however, I was told that the museum was located in the basement of the Pearl TV tower, and would have to buy a ticket to enter the tower's complex first (about 200RMB) before paying for a second ticket to enter the museum (about 50RMB). I wasn't about to pay 250RMB to see a single museum, so I decided instead to take a walk around the area, gazing in awe at all of the enormous sky scrapers around me - and being vaguely reminded of Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis in the process.

After a good walk around the area, I hopped another cab and made my way to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall (上海城市规划展示馆).

The center shows the history of Shanghai's development, and what the city plans to develop in the coming years. The entire exhibition was designed for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and while tourist traffic for the center has certainly died down since the expo, it is still a very interesting visit.

The areas that light up on this enormous model of Shanghai show the areas where even more development is planned in the coming years, which is of course largely along the Huangpu River.

The Shanghai Expo's motto was "Better City, Better Life" (城市，让生活更美好), as you can see in the picture below.

I then made my way to the Shanghai City of Books (上海书城), which is a bookstore that covers an entire city block.

I found a collection of books that were all about helping Chinese students to study abroad in various English language countries, so I checked out the Canadian version of the book, which seemingly helped you speak like a local Canadian.

"Studying abroad in Canada"

I was perturbed not to see my university listed in the "Hot Universities"

Once I was thoroughly booked out, I caught a cab back to the train station to get back to Suzhou/

Until next time!