As I quickly approach the one-hundredth day since I packed my bags and ferried myself off to China for the year, I have decided to begin blogging, because who moves abroad for a year and doesn’t start a blog, right?
100 days in China has been interesting – I have had some of the highest and lowest days of my life. When I was told that I would probably experience culture shock I dismissed it, I’d lived abroad and away from my family before, how hard could it be? Hard. Very hard. I’ve experienced some of my lowest lows and highest highs here, and every day presents me with a new challenge. Cliche I know, but true. Even something as simple as brushing your teeth posed a challenge to me when I first arrived. The tap water is unsafe to drink here so I used bottled water for that task for a few weeks – unwilling to find out if I really would get a bad stomach from such a small intake of water (update – I now use the tap water twice a day to brush my teeth and so far I haven’t died). However, I have also experienced some truly amazing things – I mean how many people are lucky enough to say they have climbed The Great Wall of China?
(Here she is, the woman herself pre-climb – not knowing how much she is about to sweat when going up thousands of steps in 40-degree heat)
I will be writing more about the food in some upcoming blog posts, but for now, let me address the title of this. Yes, I ate a jellyfish… unknowingly. I quickly learnt that the first rule about eating in China is not to ask about the food. I hang around with a lot of vegetarians and asking for a meal without meat (méiyou ròu) is always greeted with a confused stare. I don’t think the concept of being a vegetarian for reasons that aren’t religious has taken off in China yet. But anyway, due to my lack of mandarin and not wanting to offend, I never really ask what I’m eating, it almost always tastes delicious, so why bother? In my primary school, they had been serving seaweed mixed with a kind of translucent chewy substance for a few weeks and I was really enjoying it. I assumed it was some kind of vegetable, only because the fruit and veg are like nothing I have ever experienced here (it will be weird going back home to broccoli and my dad’s carrot and turnip with a Sunday roast). It was not until one of the Chinese English teachers sat with me one Friday lunchtime that I learnt my error. She looked at me, obviously quite amused, and said, “Do you like that?” I replied, yes, of course (at this point I was halfway through my portion of seaweed and translucent goodness). “Do you eat jellyfish in England?” she asked. I’m sure you can picture the expression my face took as I clicked onto what the translucent mystery food was. However saying that I’ll probably keep eating it whilst I’m here, it tastes quite nice and as the saying goes, when in Rome. I can promise that I won’t be heading to the beach and catching a few to fry up myself when I’m home though.
(A classic school lunch for me, a whole fish, some unidentifiable meat, rice and a bit of pumpkin.)
I’m trying not to take my experience here for granted. Yes, I have hard days, but I need to keep reminding myself that so does everyone else. Would I really be having a better time if I was still in England? I don’t think so. I’m hoping that this blog will motivate me to continue to go out and experience as much as I can in the short time I’m here. As lovely as Starbucks is, it’s not the most Chinese place I could be right now – not when I live in a city that is 4 times bigger than London.
(With a skyline that is almost as nice as Liverpool’s, it’s pretty hard not to love Shanghai.)
So that was a wiz stop tour of the things floating around in my head, which I hopefully managed to jot down somewhat coherently. I’m excited to see what this year throws at me!
Keeping Up with the Auton 