China 2014

Main differences between China culture and British culture:

- You have to wear slippers indoors in people's houses. To the extent that on my first day, I walked from my room to the bathroom having forgotten to put my slippers on and both the mum and dad ran at me with slippers before I could step any further!

- Chopsticks! I love this one, I might even start using them at home.

- Mealtimes are generally a little bowl of rice each then a variety of different dishes in the middle of the table that everyone just goes at with their chopsticks. 

- Manners, they don't seem to be a thing. For example it is fine to put your bowl at your mouth and shovel the food in or face in bowl and slurp the noodles. Honestly, it's hard to eat with chopsticks without doing it so I may have picked up some bad habits.

- Spitting. This I will never ever get used to. It makes me want to physically throw up every time I hear someone around me hawking up any gunk left in their throats to go gob it onto the floor/bus/shopping mall/train/any kind of surface anywhere. I know it's not rude and completely normal here for men, women and children, but I can't help giving a look of disgust every time someone does it near me. I feel sick writing about it. 

- Prices! Everything is so cheap. For example you can buy a bottle of spirits for 7.50 yuan, the equivalent of 75p and get a 2 hour train from Shanghai to Hangzhou for about £8. Less than the amount I have to pay for a half hour train ride from Huddersfield to Manchester.

- Traffic. It's not the worst that I've seen by far but what I noticed most was the use of their horns. They use them just to warn other drivers that they are approaching and don't stop until they're past the car. Seemed kind of pointless to me but once we were on our bikes we seemed to get into the spirit of it and ring our bells a good hundred metres before we reached another cyclist. 

- Bike lanes. They have a wide bike lane at the side of any road as there are so many scooters and bikes in general. They even have their own time to go when it comes to red lights and junctions. However, at crossroads, their time to go clashes with one row of traffic. Fortunately whenever I came to this, I was following my Chinese friend Lynn so she showed me how to do it; head on through the traffic giving a finger to the car if it looks like they don't want to stop.

Pre-Course Travels

I had an absolutely amazing and 'culturally rich' first 10 days in which I was able to see what both Shanghai and Hangzhou had to offer. My plans for where I was staying in Shanghai all changed during my wait in the airport. The original plan was to couchsurf with a girl who had a spare room (to those who don't know, couchsurfing is where you do a cultural exchange with someone that lives where you are travelling and invites you to stay with them on a spare couch/bed). She messaged me whilst in the airport saying that due to it being a Chinese holiday, she would'nt be in Shanghai, although she would leave the key for me with her friend. This kind of defeated the point of a cultural exchange and although it was free accommodation I didn't think staying on my own in the middle of nowhere would really be in my best interests. Luckily I had been chatting to another Chinese girl, Janice, who was in Shanghai sightseeing so we had arranged to do some touristy stuff together. She skyped me in the airport so I told her my new plans to stay in a hostel. The next change was after arriving in Shanghai. I was in a taxi about 5 minutes away from the hostel and she rang me to say that she had found a place for me to stay, so I handed the phone over to the taxi driver and after a lot of crazy fast Chinese going on, we drove another 20 minutes to where she was staying. Luckily she was waiting outside when we arrived and was as lovely as she seemed on Skype so any nerves that I had were gone. She explained that she had asked her uncle if he knew of anyone who wanted an English girl to stay for a few days and her aunt's colleague from work said yes as they had an 18yr old daughter studying English and a spare room. Not that they spoke any English though which made for some very awkward silences and terrible attempts at Chinese conversation. Still, it was amazing to be able to experience real family life in China and just generally see the differences between how they live and how we live.

As I was doing some sightseeing with Janice I also got to meet a group of her Chinese friends and spent a day completely immersed in Chinese language and culture with Janice pretty much being my own personal tour guide. My other 4 days I went to: a Japanese art exhibition that was only stopping in China for 2 days which was pretty cool, a cool little water town called Qibao, an artsy little village called Tian Zi Fang, got very lost on the Shanghai subway, the Bund and some other cool places. Unfortunately as I was staying with locals, I didn't know about the touristy Shanghai market where you can get all the cheap fake stuff! Next time...

After leaving Shanghai, I took the train south to Hangzhou where I was doing the course at the university. I decided to spend a few days here beforehand to explore and see what it had to offer, thinking that we wouldn't have much time during the course (I was wrong). I'll admit it wasn't that much of a culturally enriching few days as I met an English guy, Alex, a Dutch guy Stefan and Francis, a guy doing the course with me, so we decided to check out the nightlife a few too many nights in a row. We did have some good excursions though. Bike rides around West Lake, a light show in the evening on the lake and an accidental hike. Accidental as we just walked past a really steep path and decided to see where it led to - it led to a 3hr hikers trail through the wilderness.

Study China Course - Zhejiang University 

For those who don't know about the course, it was advertised as a 3-week course of 40hrs Mandarin study, 18hrs of an academic subject (Contemporary Media in China) and excursions to local places of interest. I can't say that's exactly what it's been though. I came thinking that I would really be able to improve my Chinese if it's such an intense course but I've only learnt a few things from the classes. First reason being that for the first week I was put into a semi-beginners class which covered numbers and how to use them in dates etc. then I got moved to the level class that I should have been in from my mark in the initial test when we arrived. This was pretty good. There were no other study china people in the class though so I was in a class with all the permanent international students. It was such a mixed class which was great. 6 Koreans, Colombian, a couple of Americans, Spanish, Italian, Australian, Thai, German and me, the only Brit. Unfortunately though, they had their midterm exam the next week so they were mainly revising and it meant that there were no classes 3rd week, so after only a week in that class I got moved again. This time into a class with all the other people on Study China that had been in classes with internationals. I was wondering how it was going to work because we all had completely different levels of Chinese, but they decided to give us lectures on culture, music etc instead. Things that I would much rather go out and learn by myself, definitely not in a classroom setting. So much for learning Mandarin. Most of what I learnt came from the street. Like how to say "Where is the nearest metro station?", and "how do I get back to 'insert place here'?". Fair to say I've gotten myself lost a fair few times and had some interesting attempts at trying to understand people giving me Chinese directions.

All in all though if I take out the Chinese learning part of being there, the rest of the month was really good. Everyone on the course was amazing and we really managed to make the most of the 3 weeks with regards to seeing the city, going on excursions and seeing the nightlife. There's too much to describe the best bits but my main highlights were:

- Song Dynasty Show - An amazing show in the theatre about the history of China. Not that we could understand any of it due to it being in Chinese but the dancing and acting were ridiculously good. The stage even disappeared at one point to leave a lake, then it started lightly raining indoors. You don't get that in the West End!

- Family Visit - We spent one saturday with a local family so that we could experience real Chinese culture. It was such a good day. We had two families which had grouped up that took me, Monique, Chirag and Rupreet to Xixi wetlands and for an amazing lunch. The kids in the families spoke some English which was good and we just got by with some sign language and laughing with the parents. It seemed to work well enough.

- West Lake Bike Ride - One afternoon after classes a group of about 15 of us rented some bikes and went for a ride around the famous west lake. It's absolutely gorgeous and was definately one of my favourite days there.

- Mo'Gan Mountain - An organised excursion with all 90 on the course. Luckily it was really nice weather and just generally a really pretty place. I even went for a little paddle in the waterfall without falling in so all in all a successful day.

- Ling Yin Temple - Not that we actually went into the temple as it cost 40 yuan to get into the scenic park then another 40 to go into the temple (£8 altogether...ouch). But even without the temple the scenic area was absolutely gorgeous and was my absolute favourite day in China. Spent with an amazing group of girls, amazing weather and so much greenery. It wasn't even completely spoiled by the 2 hours that we spent trying to get home as no taxi's would stop for us and the buses were so full there was no space for anyone else.

- Every night out - There's nothing like only spending 75p for your pre-drinks then being given free drinks for the rest of the night. Over the whole time in China we were given: four bottles of Absolut Vodka, two bottles of Smirnoff vodka, a bottle of Whisky, two bottles of Champagne and an uncountable amount of normal drinks. That plus crazy Chinese clubs lead to many a great night,

Got to say though, I was quite relieved when it came to coming back to England. China definately isn't near the top of my list of favourite countries I've visited but you never know, I have to spend 6 months there in my third year of university so maybe I'll change my mind then.

Until next year China!