Things No One Tells You About Moving to China

or rather, what everyone tries to express but there are no appropriate words/no way you on the comfortable side of the world would believe.

1. IKEA will become home away from home
3 times in two weeks.  There's a safety in yellow lettering and follow-this-sign floor plans

2. You will experience culture shock
Even if you've travelled.  Especially if you've travelled because you'll be lulled into a false sense of security.  This is China--roads are big and wide, electric bikes come zipping around corners silently clipping you head on, LED lighting has a new meaning.

3. The commies are not coming to get you
Really, Chinese people are just like people everywhere else in the world.  Busy, getting on with their days, compassionate and willing to pantomime to be understood when you don't speak their language.

4. People will assume you speak Mandarin
Because why wouldn't you?  Because you're in their country, bitch.  Because linguistic xenophobia got checked at the border.

5.  The people, oh the people
They're everywhere. Everywhere I tell you.  In the millions and billions.  Unless you're in an expat area don't expect things like personal space to be respected.  Personal space, what's that?

6. Pollution
Believe this rumour.  On a good day, the sky is a white-flecked yellow.  I think my corneas might burn the next time I witness direct sunlight.

7. The coffee
Ohmygoodnessno.  $12 for a jar of instant coffee, more for beans.  And God knows how you buy a coffee grinder.  The stuff in the staff room--I must be chewing raw grounds.  Toxic comes to mind.  Thankfully, there's more Starbucks per square mile here than anywhere else in the world (minus Toronto and NYC).  In fact, I can see one out my window.

8. The food
Ohmygoodnessyes.  Vegetables (flecked with meat)--aubergine, beans, dumplings.  How has the rest of the world got this so wrong?

 

9.  It will become normal
I'm still working on this one but it's happening.  I can feel it.

Grocery Shopping

This is the Carrefour soy sauce aisle:

50 metres of unadulterated choice.  Only you can't read anything so you laugh until you cry and then walk away empty-handed.  And then you go back.  

Because you refuse to be beaten by a condiment. 

1.5 hours later, victory is mine.  I mean, victory is shallow because all the vegetables I bagged in the fresh food section got taken away and put behind the cashier's till.  In an elaborate guessing game, I learned that one must weigh one's produce and print the sticker IN the fresh food section.  All this from an eye wiggle and hand movement.  On the upside, frozen and fresh dumplings are super cheap.  And super delicious: 

 

But the thing in the bowl on the left…meh.  When a woman behind the counter stuck her whole hand into a plastic bag and then into the vat of pre-prepared whatever, I should've known.  Maybe it's the image of the hand reaching in but I suspect it was some kind of undercooked bamboo/lotus root/plant extract that was then seasoned with the fire of a hundred chillies. 

And when I'm having an off day and I want a taste of home (because the taste of home has become bad tex-mex versions of my former grandparental nation), the shop at the bottom of my compound sells these beauties: 

You can never go wrong with red wine.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

In a city of 24-million you’d think the last thing at a premium would be people.  But a governmental one-child policy and a culture, like most, that has a legacy of valuing men above women have hit China hard.  This means that thousands of Shanghainese men (and some women) have come up short in the love department.

Take heart though, the thousands of adult children have thousands of sets of parents who are willing to take matters into their own hands.  They do this at the weekendly ‘marriage market’, a People’s Park-side affair where families don umbrellas that double as want-ad notice boards and the hot commodity is a spouse for their child. 

Signs are dotted in Mandarin with the occasional number: Chinese character (CC), CC, CC 1981.  CC, CC, CC, 68, CC, CC, 1.78m, CC, ¥3000, CC, CC, CC.  We soon discerned that birthdate, height, year and income were all fair play.  Pictures were rarely included—clearly love is blind. 

And Chinese mothers and fathers gambled hard, carrying lists with names and phone numbers, giving the hard sell when other parents stopped by to glean information.  Others used it as a social occasion, a reason to get out of the house on a Saturday afternoon. 

Probably unsurprisingly, not a young Chinese person was to be found.  Word on the street is they’re not too keen that their parents are soliciting their futures.  And very few ‘matches’ make it past a first date, if that.  I can’t say I blame them—if I ended up with someone my parents picked, I’d be living in the house next door.  No disrespect to them but I doubt Michigan could provide me with nearly as much amusement as China is right now. 

Just around the corner

Sing it, China.  

Chinese Experiences in Surreal

Well, I've made it.  All DHL dramas were put to rest after a shirty call to the local office and, after bidding a tearful farewell to my friends, my flat, Paul,  I boarded a plane early Sunday morning.   I'm not sure if there's an emotion that adequately describes the shit-scared feeling one has when they've packed up their life to move to a communist country that speaks a tonal language consisting of over 50,000 characters.  It's a feeling that simmers and cultivates itself into an almost bacterial rage as one flies thousands of miles over land and inland sea.  And then your plane touches down and a strange, almost manic calm falls.  There's no turning back now.

Undramatically, the airport was an airport.  Arrive, queue, show your passport to an official who doesn't speak your language.  Pick up your bags, go through agriculture, find someone waiting for you on the other side.  And Dulwich was waiting there smiling, reassuring me that I shouldn't just turn back and board the next flight to London.

With the 32-degree air hitting us, the morning became a whirlwind of picking up other people, meeting smiling HR staff waiting at my new flat, doing inventory, learning how the air conditioning works.  I was welcomed with a gigantic fruit basket, a bottle of red wine, a card and a bevy of paperwork about 'Shanghai Sherpa', a motorbike delivery service that will collect food, wine, beer from your favourite restaurant, takeaway or shop and bring it straight to your front door.  I've yet to use it but I'll keep you posted.

My flat is palatial, or as palatial as a one-bedroom place can be.  I feel like i'm living in one of those summer Florida holiday complexes--I have a bigger than king-size bed, a balcony, a nifty toilet function that heats the seat, oscillates to the front and rear and dries. The flat lacks a proper stove (one burner) or an oven (desktop oven delivered today).  And after three days here, i'm finally unpacked, just about.

My days have been filled with a brilliantly organised schedule of orientation events.  Drinks or dinner every evening, school HR briefing today and my personal favourite: The Chinese Medical Appointment followed by IKEA.

Looking back, IKEA was a consolation prize for the morning's session in stripping whatever personal dignity we'd arrived with.

The medical appointment started when 20 of us piled onto a bus to drive 40-minutes across town to reach a state-of-the-art medical centre.  We arrived. We waited for 30 minutes.  And then 12 members of impersonal Chinese medical staff shuffled us through being weighed, stripping down to shorts and a robe, having our blood pressure taken, our boobs jiggled two-feet away from peers whose surnames we'd yet to ascertain, hugging the chest x-ray machine whilst being shouted to 'RELAX, HOLD BREATH, RELAX!', being suction cupped and clamped to an EKG machine, ultrasounded for signs of liver/kidney disease and then sticked, poked and drawn blood from by the sternest woman in China.  All of this for all of us took 30 minutes, max.

It was a lesson in farce; I doubt I'll ever see anything like it ever again.

And then IKEA, the home for Chinese people to pull up a chair, bed or display room and conk out with the entire family for hours.  The kids section played the part of creche with Chinese grandparents manning the fort and everywhere you turned, people had their shoes off curled up like mannequins on display.  Two hours later, I left with enough candles, plants and frames to cover the flat.

Other quirks…Carrefour, the local Supermarket, capitalisation needed, stocks a section of 'Live Animals' next to the meat and fish counter.  You choose between giant bullfrogs, eels and turtles.  There's a cooking oil aisle 50 meters long; the rice aisle is even longer. And if you try to shop for homewares, cleaning supplies or even feminine hygiene products, a small Chinese lady (sometimes several Chinese ladies) will approach you to give you lots of options.  She doesn't speak English.  You don't speak Mandarin.  A glorious pantomime ensues.  Glorious.

Day Three.  This is going to be one hell of an adventure.