The travels of Justin

Today marks a great milestone: today is exactly one month since I arrived in China! To mark this auspicious occassion I thought I’d try to sleep in, hang out with friends and rush to class at the last minute, and blog the mundane for my loyal fan (hi mom!).

English Corner

Yesterday was actually a bit tramatic, but not really for me. One of my closest friends here, another foreigner, was woken up with a phone call that her father had passed away. She called me over to her place and I did what I could to help her pack under such terrible conditions. I’m glad to know she’s with her family now and taking care of what is really important. Karen, a professor at TUT who helps us and is a good friend to us, had invited Ryan and I for some salsa dancing last night, but I just couldn’t handle dancing after such a day.

When I returned to my dorm, I met with some friends—one British and two Chinese—and we went to the craziest market I’ve ever seen. It was so packed with people, it was unbelievable! I didn’t buy much, but I love watching everyone interacting and checking out the goods for sale. I found a hat that says: “Happiness is Male”; I’ll upload the photo when I have time to retrieve it from my camera phone. This might be a good time to mention the invaluable nature of having a camera phone. Most of the best photos are so unexpected that the camera phone is the only way to catch some of them.

Since my last post where I first noticed myself wandering across the streets effortlessly, I’ve really noticed how much I enjoy being here and how it really feels like home—even in the temporary sense. When I moved to Kamloops for school, I left behind the city of Vancouver which I know and love so much. As I started really settling into Kamloops, here I am living in a new place albeit a bit more dramically different than moving to a city four hours away from my hometown. At least five years ago I set my sights on spending some signifigant time in China and here I am doing it and loving every minute. Everyone we know seems to have some story of culture shock and fustration, but it just hasn’t kicked in for me, but I can certainly understand. Many people just have never seen a foreigner before in their lives, so the stares can really bug people. It hasn’t really irritated me yet, but I suppose being here is (in some small way) like being a famous rock star in a western country. If you can learn to accept it and handle it with grace, it’ll make your stay in China wonderful; after all, we really are exotic.

An Israeli sold me his bike since he’s leaving China, so I took my first ride today. Within two minutes—literally—someone in a passing car took a photo of me on my bike… and that was on campus! The friend with me translated what he said so I knew that he did actually take a photo. Biking is dangerous for foreigners, because the rules of the road are nothing like we’re used to. Most people I know would call it crazy, but the beautiful thing is that the traffic ebbs and flows and things work just fine. I feel very comfortable riding my bike, but if you haven’t travelled much, you might not want to try riding right away—it’s not for the timid.

One week ago, Sunday the 18^th was Mid-Autumn festival. Last year I recall seeing posters around the TRU campus for Lunar festival, but didn’t manage to attend. Professor Lee, the dean of the International College of Business and Technology here at TUT gave Ryan and I each a very beautiful gift of mooncakes—the traditional food for mid-autumn festival, much like turkey to Thanksgiving. We thoroughly enjoyed the first mooncakes we’d ever recieved, or eaten.

On the actual day of Mid-Autumn festival, Ryan, Ken, Cindy, Verena, and I were invited to Karen’s place for a dumpling party. Traditionally, Chinese families would return home to be with their family on this day, so we celebrated together. Karen and Cindy, the resident experts, taught us all how to make dumplings from scratch which was a very memorable experience. Karen is such a wonderful host and has been such an invaluable partner in our adventure in China, and arranging this party really meant a lot to me. I’ve posted my photos from the evening so you can see how well we learned how to pinch the wrappers such that the end result actually looks like something reasonably worth eating. And man, those were delicious!

Well, it’s time to get back to my dorm and get some sleep. There’s a fantastically nice gentleman who sleeps in the entrance to the foreign students dorm and helps us and provides security. On nights like this when I work late off campus, or visit with friends, I end up waking him up as I return to the dorm. We have another week of classes, and then the first week of October, from the 1^st to the 7^th, we have no classes as part of the national holiday. Ryan and I have yet to make plans, but I’ve already learned there isn’t a single seat on any plane or train to Hong Kong for that entire week, so I know where I won’t be going. Ha ha. Now I know the importance of planning ahead for major holiday’s, and I’ll have a plan for the 5-week Spring Festival and Chinese New Year in February.

All I can say for sure is that this has already been one incredible month, and things are only just getting started.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 7:51 am and is filed under Life and living, Tianjin, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.