Chengdu, 2014-09-02 01:48:27 +0800
Day 9 in China
I spent the day after tomorrow mostly lying in bed, sleeping in and coming back to health, but yesterday (Sunday) was much more interesting. For most of the day I was hanging out with a multi-national group consisting of one girl from England, one from Slovakia, and one guy from the Netherlands, whose name is so uncommon that he doesn’t even mind pronouncing it wrongly. In the end, it looks like I came to China to learn Chinese, but I ended up thinking in English, socializing in English, and writing a blog in English. It could still count as foreign language practice, of course, but at some point I also hope to find some Chinese friends that I can actually understand not just on the level of words, but also mentality. I’m still not accustomed to two things: the way they determine who pays the bill at restaurants; and their personal space, which seems similar to that of the Spanish-speaking or Arab cultures.

On Sunday morning, one of the Chinese guys I met in People’s Park last Thursday called me and said he was coming to my dorms to visit me. I was actually still asleep, but I could just say OK. After some time, two Chinese guys came and I introduced them to the English and Slovak girls. For the Chinese, most Western women are flawless heavenly beauties, so with whatever broken English they could come up with, they tried to get to know more about the biutifur girls, and were totally disappointed when they learned that they both had boyfriends. They were also very curious to see our dorms, and they found them great. We went for something along the lines of a breakfast at a small restaurant close to the Small North Gate (小北门 Xiao3 Bei3 Men2; it’s actually so small you have to shrink*** to walk through it,) and the one of the guys went and paid the bill even before the other Chinese guy could notice it. Then they forced me to let them buy me drinks (but I actually managed to give the shop assistant a 20-rmb bill before they found change in their wallets.)

When you climb the stairs up to the last floor of the dorms, you’ll find a door that leads to a spacious terrace with a view so typical for China: skyscrapers, skyscrapers, skyscrapers everywhere. During the day it can seem a bit overwhelming, but at night it seems to be a great place to drink beer outdoors. (In China, drinking alcohol outdoors is not forbidden, in some cities you can even drink baijiu¹ in public transportation.

2014-09-03 00:32:18 +0800
Day 10 in China
More and more people are coming. Koreans seem to be the most numerous*** nationality, followed by Americans. I feel the urge to improve my Korean, which is limited to just a few basic sentences, like “What is this? This is a chair.” and “My hovercraft is full of eels”. Today, while wandering around, I met three more girls from Poland, most of them called Zuza, one pretty Nepali***, and even Russians, who came here for their Master programs and were told to live at the other campus, 华西 Hua2xi1. I was particularly looking forward to meet one of the Poles, because she gave me a very positive review of my blog. She turned out to be as tall as me (not that I’m very tall, but you don’t see many girls above 160-something here in Chengdu,) and vegetarian, and she’s only just graduated from high school. Many others came, too, probably because the orientation and placement test is going to take place tomorrow. Everyone has to walk the same way: getting an account in ICBC, registration at the Overseas Student Office, buying everyday things, and so on. Those who don’t feel confident enough with their spoken Chinese may have a tough time, since in most places in Chengdu, no one can speak good English. Soon I will also have to go through all the paperwork connected with getting a residence permit, and I heard it can take long hours and costs 400 kuai.

I went to a place called The Spot, because one Chinese friend invited me to a Valentine’s Day party—which was a bit surprising, even if you take into account the fact that the Chinese Singles’ Day is also the Independence Day in Poland. It then turned out that it was just because it was the birthday of a German called Valentin, which I also met at the airport. The Spot is located close to the South Gate of the Sichuan University, and it was so foreign that the waiter didn’t even speak Chinese. Another waiter looked so Slavic I thought she could be Polish, and she of course turned out to be Russian, but grown up in the vicinity of Jerusalem. In general, it’s a pretty pleasant place (they even have a Western toilet, something you don’t get to see very often in Chengdu,) but the super high prices don’t make it a good place to just go and get drunk, even if you get 20% discount with the VIP card. Long Island Iced Tea (called 长岛冰茶 chang2dao3 bing1cha2 in Chinese) costs 68 kuai there, and in Wow on Thursdays it’s just 10 kuai. That could make a difference.

We went to Ikea for the second time today, this time in a group of four. I didn’t buy anything this time, but I went to Decathlon (迪卡侬 Di2ka3nong2) and bought a foam mat for sitting on the roof. There were even 175-gram frisbees for around 39 kuai, which seemed tempting, but I’ll probably wait with buying one until I get some money from the uni. I still don’t have a meditation cushion, which is a pain-in-the-neck (or, more specifically, pain-in-the-back-and-legs,) and I was so busy recently, living the fake-rich overseas student lifestyle, that I even forgot to enquire on the Web if I can get one somewhere in Asia or if I should rather make one myself (should I ever manage to get buckwheat shells in a country where you cannot even get proper wheat flour,) or import one from Europe. I also convinced R., the English friend, to buy a picnic blanket, and it even came in handy when we ate mangoes and apples on the corridor floor.

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Footnotes

1. 白酒 bai2jiu3 — a sort of Chinese hard liquor whose three main characteristics are: ridiculously low price—you can get a 2 liter bottle and still be able to afford a several beers in a bar, lethal amounts of alcohol—the standard is around 45%, 55% is also common, but it can go as high as 70%, and awful taste, so terrible it can make you throw up even if the alcohol doesn’t. ↩