Nadine's Blog

China- a summary

It’s been quite a long time since I updated my blog and I’m sorry for keeping you waiting but in the end of my time in china everything that was new and exciting in the beginning went to be normal and wasn’t out of the ordinary anymore.

Now that I have left china I’m thinking back at the great time I had that I wouldn’t want to miss because although the time is over now the memories and friends I made will stay with me for a lifetime and although all the struggles and annoyances I sometimes had to face it was an awesome year.

I’ll give a summary of the things that happened to me since my last entry since it’s been a long time ago and a lot has happened since. I got some visits from home and they somehow opened my eyes again for what I was already used to and which was part of my everyday life without me even thinking about it anymore. For example the constant spiting in the restaurants, on the train rides (and unfortunately it doesn’t just stay with the spiting because I had a 16hours train ride on a hard seat which is bad enough but the guy opposite from myself was throwing up every five minutes and nobody did anything and it didn’t even occur to the guy to go to the bathroom even once so that people eventually threw their garbage on top of the puke which didn’t really help but that’s part of China and was quite the experience which I hope I’ll never have again) and on the streets of course, the sometimes dangerous taxi rides since nobody is driving according to the rules, it’s actually more of a Darwinism, only the strongest will survive, the haggle to get everything (clothes, tours, taxi rides…) for the same price as Chinese people since almost everybody tries to rip of foreigners ( some restaurants have English menus on which the prices are doubled or even more than they are on the Chinese card, hen you ask for the price they will tell you a ridiculous overprices price just because you are a foreigner- e.g. when I went on my Yangtze river cruise with Anny we both ask for the prices for some souvenirs but since she’s an oversea Chinese they gave her the Chinese price but gave me ten times the price and when we told them how rude their behavior was they just smiled and said that they thought that I didn’t understand Chinese which can’t count as an excuse at all! But that’s how it is most of he times). I didn’t realize how much I was already used to this before I met people hat just came to china and pointed it out to me. I mean these things are really annoying and I got mad a couple of times about almost getting ripped of but I accepted that fact ad it was nothing special to me anymore. (Which somehow is quite sad but if I hadn’t been used to this I probably would have had a really hard year).

Well, during that year I did a lot of traveling and I saw the most amazing things ever. Going to Tibet following the pilgrims to the holy temples and palaces which I did together with my dad when he came visiting, climbing through the mountains in Kunming and almost getting killed by towards us coming cows and goats (the path was really small and just one wrong step between life and falling into the gorge and the wild river and the sure death), relaxing on a bamboo raft on a beautiful river in which reflected the mountains on the side of it in Lijiang (once we lost our boat driver because he wasn’t fast enough jumping on the raft again after pushing Min and I down the rocks), going to the beach in Xiamen and enjoying the beautiful island on the opposite side of Xiamen, seeing beautiful Buddhist caves in Datong with my Japanese friend Shanming, spending New year in Shanghai with Hannah, Max and Min…

I could go on and on about this but no words could describe all the great things that I saw and experiences while traveling through this awesome country.

But going traveling aren’t the only precious memories that I will take home with me.

Having all the great parties at Min’s and my apartment (which in the end got so wild that even the neighbors complained) where I met the people that became really great friends and sort of a family away from family to me. All the Cubans who taught me or tried to teach me how to dance Salsa, who cooked great Cuban meals for almost every party that was going on and who I already miss so much, Felix and Miguel that never gave up to teach me more salsa steps and that always encouraged me to never give up and Alex who was always fun talking to and a real good drinking partner (I think he gave me my first real Mexican tequila, thanks for that)!

And I will never forget the nights at scarlet which were always fun as we danced all night long to salsa music and house (the last especially mi hermana Leysi and me) and drank tequila and loads of beer only to get the great street food (most of the times 串儿s) or a breakfast at the 24h McDonalds on Baidilu. These nights were awesome and I sometimes couldn’t wait for it to be weekend just to go back to scarlet although we occasionally went during the week as well, for the numerous birthdays at which we always had to wait for the Cubans who were late most of the times (hehe;))!

Some of the best times I had in China were in liuyuan, especially in agent Miguel’s room where we always hung out, watching TV shows (LOST, Alias, Doremi, Heroes, Ghost whisperer…), movies, cooked, Min and I slept on mattresses on the floor after some really drunken nights in scarlet or we had our famous move marathons. I don’t remember exactly how many times we tried to do the 24h marathon but although we never accomplished to say awake for 24h it was always a lot of fun with all the snack food (chips with spicy Mexican sauce), great Mexican coffee and loads of take away (Korean, pizza, McDonald’s, Georgean, Chinese food…)

And classes were also a lot of fun since the teachers were great and real fun to be with. Nankai also organized a class trip for all the students once every semester and especially the two-day trip to Beijing last semester was just a blast. We went to less touristy part of the Great Wall (it was my third time climbing the wall) where we were the only visitors that day and spending the night in the luxurious hotel, which had phones in the bathroom

and sometimes radios in the showers, where we had great parties that night with a lot of beer involved ;) (But since my Japanese roommate Shanming made me coffee in the morning before I even got out of the bed I didn’t have a problem getting up at all!

Well I could go on and on about all the fun stuff I experienced through my year but it would take ages and probably scare you away from reading so I just skip to the end of my stay in China.

The last week I had n Tianjin was actually really stressful since I wanted to spend as much time with all of my friends as possible and had to pack and organize things with the apartment and all my stuff (which was a lot!!!)

I went to the Korean sauna a couple of times (which is really interesting since you have to wear clothes and afterwards sleep in these clothes since it is common to spend the night there. I also got a body scrub in which the lady tried to get of my tanned skin color which in china is considered as really ugly, ( in Hainan, after my day at the beach, a girl that saw me in a bookstore offered to take me to her house to give me some whitening cream because of my sun tan!!!!!!!) so that my body as a result was red as a lobster after the treatment but really clean as well ;)), had trouble with my landlord so that I had to meet with him almost everyday (in the end we had to pay a lot more than we expected since we had to pay to paint 3 rooms as a result to our Christmas lights on the wall which we changed to “happy birthday” a couple of months after Christmas and since we didn’t have the receipts for the gas and water we had to pay that all over again), and I had to ship back about 30 more kilos of stuff back to Germany but since the guys from the post office came to my place with the boxes, the scale and everything it was ok.

The funniest and saddest thing about me moving out of my apartment were my neighbors though who first went trough all my garbage and old clothes that I trough out just to take it back to their apartment (so now my neighbors are probably walking around in my old clothes and are using my old towels…).

The saddest thing about leaving Tianjin though was to say goodbye to all of my friends. I really have a hard time saying goodbye anyways so that this was a really hard time since I might not be able to see some of them ever again in my whole life which makes it even

harder.

After leaving Tianjin I went to Guangzhou to see Anny where I spend a couple of nice days one even in Macau which was really beautiful and awesome (we took the free shuttle bus to a casino from immigration so that we wouldn’t have to pay. We did this twice so that it was a cheap way to see the town) before flying to Hainan where my actual relaxing vacation began with lying on the beach and relaxing in the sun. I spent 3 days in the hostel where I was about the only guest so that I had a 6er dorm for myself which would have been nice if they would have turned the ac on (it was about 38 degrees Celsius every night) but they only would turn it on for two or more people so that I just had a little fan which wasn’t much of a help.

One day I went to coconut island which is just about 2 hours away from Haikou(海口). The whole island is covered with coconut trees and it has fantastic beaches. I just couldn't resist to lay down on the beach of a a private, really expansive beach resort. The staff just assumed that I was staying there since I'm a foreigner. (sometimes it's great to be a foreigner in China;)hehe)

I only spend there one day since I couldn't afford the great, luxurous beach resorts. But it was just awesome.

Having to leave China made me sad as well although it sometimes was really annoying and drove me up the wall I really fell in love with this amazing country and its interesting people.

posted by Nadine @ 3:03 AM