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 1

With a lot of money and a need to travel, I decided to tour the last big city in the Yangzi delta region that I wanted to see, Shanghai (上海), a city that holds the distinction of not only being the most populous city in China, but is also the most populous city in the entire world. It is China's financial capital, as well as a center for popular culture and technological innovation. It also happens to be filled with tons of interesting places to visit, and thus I took the twenty-minute train from Suzhou Station (苏州站) to Shanghai Railway Station (上海站), which was both fast and cheap, costing less than 20RMB (about $4) for return tickets!

The first stop was to a place most tourists have never even heard of, Lu Xun Memorial Park (鲁迅纪念馆/ 鲁迅公园), which happens to be the burial place for the Chinese writer, Lu Xun (鲁迅, 1881-1936). 

Lu Xun is considered the father of modern Chinese literature, as he wrote short stories that attacked what Lu Xun perceived to be the backwards, cannibalistic nature of old Chinese society. His writings were highly acclaimed by the Chinese Communists - Mao Zedong himself being a lifelong admirer - and are still taught in Chinese schools to this day.

The park was very pretty, and absolutely filled with people, though none of them were there to visit Lu Xun's tomb. Rather, the park was being used as an actual park, with people going for walks, playing sports, writing poetry on the ground, and singing old Communist songs from the 1950s!

There were a lot of old Communists in the park. One old man, in fact, came up to me and attempted to converse with me in Russian!

Lu Xun's mausoleum was very nice, and I found it surprisingly refreshing that Lu Xun's resting place was not yet another touristy tomb, overflowing with tourists begging to have their picture taken - like I was! 

A short walk away, near a man gutting chickens on the street, was Lu Xun's former residence, where I also went for a tour. Inside the house, we were not allowed to take photos - closely monitored by both the required tour guide and a security guard who followed closely behind us - but the inside wasn't that interesting anyways.

Finger licking good?

After my short tour, I hopped a cab to my first major tourist destination, Shanghai Museum (上海博物馆). 

The Shanghai Museum is considered - and promoted as - the best museum in all of China, as it contains 11 permanent galleries showcasing the very best of China's long and distinguished cultural heritage, as well as a constantly-shifting series of specialized galleries. Admission to the museum is free, but the museum only allows in 5000 visitors per day, so I was happy to get there as early as I did.

Once past the security check, I headed for the sculptures exhibit, which was filled with interesting statues dating back thousands of years to pre-dynastic China.

The bronze gallery was very nice as well, filled with many delightful bronze bells, jars, and containers:

My next two stops were the most interesting for me, the calligraphy gallery and the painting gallery, which were jointly holding a special exhibit on masterpieces that are owned by a variety of American museums. The standard exhibits by themselves, however, were spectacular to behold.

In the painting gallery, I was yelled at by a guard because we were seemingly not allowed to take photographs of the special exhibits. This didn't stop me from taking more pictures, but I made sure to check for guards whenever I took more.

The other galleries in the museum, which included a jade gallery, a porcelain gallery, and a Chinese furniture gallery, were also very interesting, but did not interest me anywhere near as much as the first four galleries had.

Leaving the museum, I found myself on People's Square (人民广场), on which is Shanghai's municipal hall, and is only a short walk away to the most well-known parts of the city.

After a short walk, I found my way to Shanghai's touristy commercial center, Nanjing Street (南京路). Several years ago, the actual street was removed and turned into a pedestrian-only walkway, which ironically didn't make navigating it that much easier thanks to the sheer volume of pedestrians!

'Century Square' on Nanjing Street

'Nanjing Street Pedestrian Walkway'

Before leaving Nanjing Street, I made a stop off at the Peace Hotel (和平饭店), which was the most elegant and luxurious hotel in Shanghai from the 1920s until the late 1940s. 

While the hotel fell into disrepair after the Communists took over in 1949, it was extensively renovated over a three-year period from 2007 to 2010, restoring its beauty, and preserving a wonderful piece of Shanghai's heritage.

Stepping out the door to the peace hotel, I found myself staring out at the Bund (外滩). The Bund was formerly Shanghai's financial capital, and was the area where foreign empires built their best and most beautiful buildings. Most of these buildings are still used today as banks and business buildings, and are very well upkept.

Along the other side of the Huangpu River (黄浦江) in Pudong district (浦东), you can see the 'new Bund', made up of an impressive collection of modern skyscrapers. The juxtaposing images of the old and new Bund are breathtaking to say the least.

After walking along the Bund for a while, I caught a cab to the Jin Mao Tower (金茂大厦), the second-tallest building in the picture above. The tower seemingly had the best views of Shanghai, and for a substantially cheaper rate than what was offered at the far more famous - and shorter - tower, the "Oriental Pearl TV Tower" (东方明珠电视塔). 

The towers didn't look any less impressive close-up. In fact, they looked even more intimidating.

At the Jin Mao Tower, in order to get up to the viewing area, you have to go to the lowest floor of the building, which was surprisingly difficult to find since there aren't any signs with directions on the first floor in either Chinese or English.

After getting several sets of conflicting directions from some unhelpful staff, I managed to find my way to the bottom of the building, and - after paying for a ticket - was put in an elevator up to the building's viewing floor.

The viewing area was quite nice, though I found the unclean glass a pain when taking any halfway decent photos. Also, it was rather hard to see very far into the distance when Shanghai's skyline was so covered in smog. Despite these gripes, the Jin Mao tower provided a very good bird's eye view of Shanghai.

After seeing my fill of Shanghai from the Jin Mao Tower, I caught another cab back to the train station back to Suzhou. However, there were many more things that I wanted to see in Shanghai, so I resolved to come back several days later, which I shall cover in my next blog post!

Until next time!