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!

The Joys and Pains of Moving In

Luck was most certainly with me on my flight from Vancouver to Shanghai, because there were many empty seats on this flight, and I was able to move from my original, cramped space, to a few empty seats, where I gleefully claimed an entire row as my own personal territory.

A high accurate representation of what I looked like on the flight.

After my wonderful plane flight, I found myself at Shanghai's Pudong Airport, where a driver was waiting to pick me up and drive me directly to the foreign student dormitories. There's a pretty humorous anecdote here: Once I had reached the arrivals section of the airport, I could not find anyone with a sign holding my name! Rather than stand around like a deer in the headlights, I walked up to some folks at the information desk, and ordered them to call my contact number for Suzhou University - which was conveniently written on my university acceptance letters - and told the folks to tell my contact to phone my driver to order him to come to the information desk where I was waiting! After 10 minutes of annoyed waiting, the driver showed up with a dumbfounded look on his face, profusely apologizing to me. It turns out he had a sign with my name on it, but he had forgotten to hold it up!

I'm the fellow on the left, and the airport employees/driver are the fellow on the right

Having successfully with that little debacle like a proverbial "bull in a China shop" (pun intended), my driver took me to my car - a nice-looking Volkswagen - and drove me without incident to my dormitory building in Suzhou.

My driver and the car I was driven in - taken in Pudong Airport's parking lot

Once I arrived at the university, my driver was nice enough to help me up with my luggage to my dormitory room, which is located on the fifth floor!

The entrance to my building - notice the lack of an elevator

The daunting view as we arduously trekked up the stairs

When I got to my room, I was greeted by my roommate, a Mexican fellow name Miguel, who has only just started to learn Chinese.

 Pictured: Miguel at his computer in our dorm room

I was worried, at first, that I'd have to attempt to converse with Miguel in my pitifully butchered - and mostly forgotten - high-school Spanish. As luck would have it, Miguel speaks fairly decent English, so we speak with one another in a strange form of English with some chunks of Spanish and Chinese vocabulary thrown in to fill the gaps.

Like this, but not a stupid Adam Sandler romantic comedy

Today, I managed to register and complete my placement tests for my classes to determine what level of Chinese language I should be put in. I was rather worried about this because the Chinese characters I wrote on these particular tests were the first ones I'd written in several months, and regardless of the fact that I've been reading some Chinese-language books and watching some Chinese movies, I felt my practical skills in the language were absurdly rusty at best. Despite my expectations to be tossed into a mid-level class, the testers decided to place me in the most advanced language class in the university. 

It turns out my efforts to read Harry Potter in Chinese weren't frivolous after all

After being told of my placement test results, the folks in the office subsequently told me that I'd probably be put into a different dormitory room next week- one where I didn't have a roommate - because the administration likes to put students of the same level together with one another - and seemingly give special treatment to the upper level students. I was very much pleased with this since my current dorm room is more than a little filthy. I'll post some pictures of my bathroom to illustrate. 

It's hard to see, but there's gunk and mold everywhere - and pictures cannot even describe the ungodly smell

The last thing I'll talk about before finishing are the Chinese students themselves. I didn't realize until I came here to the university that all Chinese university students must, in their first year, undergo some basic military training, so there are literally thousands of young Chinese men and women marching around in blue army uniforms, standing in formation, and chanting slogans that, from a distance, sound very similar to the Bane chant from The Dark Knight Rises! In fact, I woke up this morning listening to their dulcet tones.

Pictured - China's finest defending the nation from the evil imperialist forces of capitalism (ie. the Japanese, Russians, and Americans)

With that, dear reader, I will leave you (hopefully) eagerly awaiting my next blog post. Here's some good music to get you in the spirit of defending the nation from the evil imperialist forces: 

Introduction and Welcome

Welcome, dear reader!

I have decided to document my stay in Suzhou, in Jiangsu Province, on this blog as a way to pass the time while there, to give myself an outlet for reflection, and offering the opportunity share my experience with anyone who is at all interested.

Let me give myself a short introduction: My name is Mark, and I am currently working on a Master of Arts degree in the Pacific and Asian Studies Department at the University of Victoria. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree (with distinction), also from the University of Victoria, where I majored in History and Minored in Chinese Studies. I am interested in lots of nerdy academic things, from politics to economics to literature, and take great joy on reading about a large variety of subjects. My goal, once I have finished my master's thesis and earned my master's degree, is to continue onto Doctoral research with the intention of earning a PhD and then either working at a university or possibly finding work with the Canadian government at either the federal or provincial level.

Nerd credentials: My favorite magazine is Foreign Affairs

The first thing you may be asking yourself is, "Mark, why exactly are you going to Suzhou?" An excellent question! I will be spending the next ten months of my life doing master's thesis research and (hopefully) bettering my Mandarin Chinese skill, as well as becoming much more adept at comprehending classical Chinese (known as wenyan 文言).  Ideally, I would like to complete the entire rough draft of my master's thesis by the time my sojourn in China has finished next July, but that plan is mercurial to say the least. I will be doing all of this in Suzhou's largest university, "Soochow University" (苏州大学, abbreviated as Suda 苏大), with all of my expenses paid for, thanks to my earning a very large scholarship though the "Canada-China Scholar Exchange Program" or CCSEP for short.

Behold Soochow University's Binglin Library, which looks like it would be right at home in a Star Trek movie

Something entertaining for you, my dear reader, to keep in mind is that I am not exactly sure what sort of program the fine administration of the university has decided to shoehorn me into. There are several options available that I am aware of, from the standard "Chinese language-cultural courses for foreigners" to slightly more specialized master's student classes. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about what program I am being placed into, but I am optimistic that whatever the program is that it will be useful for furthering my goals.

Since you probably know little to nothing about Suzhou, let me give you some fun facts about the city, and why I believe I was chosen by the China Scholarship Council to go there. Suzhou is located in the south of China's Jiangsu Province, and is about an hour's train ride away from Shanghai.

Suzhou is so small, it rarely appears on big maps of China

In Chinese terms, Suzhou is a small city with a population of approximately 8 million people,1 and is well known in China for its natural beauty and magnificently upkept gardens, and is thus a very popular tourist destination. There is an ancient saying in China that goes "As there is paradise in Heaven, so there are Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth" (上有天堂，下有苏杭). If you are from my hometown of Victoria, this may all sound vaguely familiar to you, which it should, because Victoria and Suzhou are sister cities, both being well-known tourist destinations that have a lot of natural beauty.

Above: Suzou's Humble Administrator's Garden (拙政园), and Victoria's Butchart Gardens

That is not, however, the only reason that I think I was sent to Suzhou. Suzhou also has a long literary and cultural history, being at the center of many brand new trends in Chinese literature. Of particular importance to me is that it was the birthplace of a Ming Dynastye (1366-1644) literati named Jin Shengtan (金圣叹, 1610-1661), who made some important changes to a novel called "Tales of the Marshlands," or Shuihu Zhuan (水浒传),cutting out large portions of the novel and changing large sections of both the story and characterization, as well as inserting his own commentary throughout the novel as a means of teaching young literati how to become more critical in their reading skills. Jin Shengtan's commentary on the Shuihu Zhuan happens to be the primary subject of my thesis, and so I hope to find something useful related to Jin Shengtan while I reside in his hometown.

A portrait of Jin Shengtan, though it was painted long after Jin died

Regarding the subject matter of this blog, I don't intend for it to be solely about what happens to me in Suzhou. Being that I'm a big political junkie - especially when it comes to my favorite past time of reading about American and Canadian politics - I will also post my thoughts on and reactions to various events in the news both in China and abroad. Additionally, I'll also post about more academic subject matter that relates to my thesis, so to anybody who does not enjoy/understand "academicese," I sincerely apologize in advance.

The typical reaction most people have when reading academic writing

I probably won't be able to post anything for the first few days of my reaching Suzhou, but I plan on keeping a schedule of 2-3 posts per week once I am settled in my dormitory room. Until then, please feel free to leave any comments/questions below, and enjoy the semi-relevant song below (listen to the lyrics):

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<sup>1. The official number is between 4-5 million, but the Chinese government never accounts for the literally millions of migrant workers that illegally come from the countryside to find employment↩
2. I also decided to use the same naming structure for this blog, in taking the Chinese term for "tales" (zhuan 传, pronounced like "Joo-ahn" for those who cannot read pinyin) and affixed it to the end of Suzhou. ↩</sup>