After having gone to the belts to collect my luggage, I walk out and have to pass passport control and my luggage gets scanned once again. There one member of staff has a sort look at my Greek passport and says in very broken English: You country close banks. hihihi.. Jeez! News have reached the edge of the world. Then I walk through customs and out of the hall. On the other side I look out for someone with a paper and my name on it, but I can’t see my name anywhere, only names of other people, companies and hotels. Then I hear someone call my name. I turn and see a Chinese wave at me, repeating my name. I approach him and he introduces himself and says that the school has sent him to collect me. We walk a few yards and the school’s principal appears. A short 30 year old Canadian, who welcomes me warm heartedly. Then we walk to the car park where the driver with one of the school’s vans awaits us. It is late afternoon, it is warm and still light. The trip to the accommodation is very beautiful. We pass some hills, some bridges, areas of green, etc. Half an hour later we arrive and the driver drives into the underground car park of a housing complex. We drive a bit through the car park to find the entrance of my building and then go up to the fourth floor, which in reality is the third floor. There’s no ground floor in China. What is ground floor for us, is the first floor for the Chinese. I share a flat, spread over two floors, with a young Canadian colleague. Our flat consists of a kitchen, a small bedroom, a large living room and a balcony on the downstairs floor, and two bedrooms, a bathroom and a study on the upper floor. Quite spacious and there is a massive window in the living room.
The young Canadian colleague and I get introduced, I get a tour around the flat, leave my luggage in my room and we leave to dinner and shopping. There are various eating places within walking distance and a large supermarket, that offers clothing and housing appliances.
My first ever meal in China is in a restaurant called Country Style Cooking. It’s a Chinese fast food place What you get is neither burgers nor chips, but rice with meat and veggies and some western dishes like steak. A meal including a (free refill) drink and small cabbage salad, is about two pounds sterling. I heard stories from various people who claimed that they had meals for a USD, but couldn’t quite believe it. Well, that was many years ago, but things haven’t changed that much since.
Despite LFO singing in the song Summer Girls ‘Chinese food makes me sick’, my first ever meal in China is delicious and spicy. And it is completely different from the Chinese food we know from home. This here is real and local. It’s not adjusted to the western taste and palate. It’s genuine. LFO have perhaps never tried real Chinese food.
Then we pay the supermarket a visit and I’m astonished by the variety of food. Most of it I have no clue what it is. Unlike Saudi where every product has an Arabic and an English side, here it’s all in Chinese. No matter how you turn a product around, it’s still in Chinese and you still don’t know what it is. I can’t even say ‘it’s all Greek to me’, because I know Greek.
When we are about to exit the shopping centre, we see that it’s raining heavily. So we go to KFC and sit around for a while hoping for the rain to stop. Half an hour later it’s still raining cats and dogs, so we decide to return to the shop and buy some umbrellas. Instead of umbrellas, we find raincoats. Cheap in price and quality, but enough to get us home. Well, not really. We still get wet.
I have exactly half an hour to shower and get ready, then my principal knocks on the door and we’re good to go. Where? To somebody’s birthday party downtown. But first my housemate needs to withdraw money, so we cross some streets and reach the China Construction bank. There I am told again that my foreign cards are useless in this country.
Then we flag down a taxi and get in. The driver doesn’t really know where we want to go, so we try various map apps and show him the street we want to go and give him directions. After a half an hour trip we arrive in the centre and start looking for the street and once we find it, we start looking for the bar. After asking several people, we still don’t know where it is. So we ask the driver to stop and get out. We look a bit around and discover the bar ‘Obsession’ directly opposite us. It is hard to find, because it is an underground bar and the entrance is between two other locations. Plus, the sign is hidden by some branches. We go down the stairs and meet a dozen or so westerners. It’s a girl’s birthday. There a people from various countries, like Italy, Ukraine, Algeria, Germany, Argentina, France, the UK, etc. My housemate and I go to the bar and read the drinks menu. I discover some beers from Munich. We order some Erdinger Weissbier and then my housemate sees a few bottles of Jägermeister on the shelf opposite. We order some and it comes in two glasses made of ice. I suddenly feel set back in the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi in the north of Sweden, in the polar circle. The Ice Hotel is built every winter when the first snow falls and melts away in May. Therefore every year it looks differently from the year before. Besides the various rooms and suites, there is a vodka bar, entirely made of ice and even the glasses are made of ice.
It is unusual to find cold drinks in China. I have been told and I will later discover, that even the places westerners go to, offer warm drinks.
The glass of Jäger we get is quite large and filled up to the brim. I want to drink it slowly and enjoy it, but my housemate insists on downing it. I do him the favour and order a second one to enjoy in peace. In the meantime a band has appeared on stage and many people hit the dance floor. So do we. There I get to know all westerners one by one and have a good time.
When I go back to my beer I meet two Italians. Perfect! I can practice my language skills! Then my principal has this idea of sitting behind the drums and play a bit.
When all decide to leave and go to a club, my principal raises from behind the drum kit and realises that he’s lost his wallet. While most people leave for two different clubs, the waiters and some of us search the bar for the wallet. A small eternity later, my principal finds it in the cubicle he visited a while ago. It fell off his back pocket and was lying in the dark.
We finally leave and walk to a club called Muse 2. There’s also a Muse 1, somewhere in the centre. When we walk in, I am immediately taken by the beats, the people and the whole atmosphere. I get an adrenaline rush and a smile from ear to ear. I should feel tired after such a long trip with almost no sleep, but I’m fully awake and full of energy. The club is quite small and it doesn’t have a proper dance floor. People dance everywhere in the club. I suddenly remember what my Chinese students from Hull had told me about Clubs in China. They said that only working people go there and no students like in the western world. Unlike in the UK where many people dance, in China only a few dance. That's what I see here. The club has a small bar with stools around it, many sofas with tables and a few high tables with stools around the bar. There’s a VIP area too. There are two DJ areas opposite to each other. On the one stage is a western DJane and directly opposite her are three Chinese male DJs. The DJane dances and moves wildly to the beats and the DJs speak and sing along the tracks. I can’t resist and start dancing. Some other people dance with me and suddenly a whole crowd has gathered around us. Mobile phones are raised and photos taken. Some Chinese either take photo of me/us dancing or hug us and take selfies. I’m in an extremely good mood, despite the very long trip and not having had a proper sleep for two days. Then some people walk on stage around the DJane and above two sitting areas and take me with them. There we jump up and down to the beats and I can see how the audience is taking photographs of us and point at us with their fingers.
Later when I need to go to the loo, I ask for the way and I’m told it’s next to the DJ stage directly opposite. Well, as I wasn’t told left or right, I take the left stairs and walk into the kitchen. A waiter signals that it’s the stairs on the right. Quite a traffic in the loo. Women look and smile at me, men just look at me and one says: Welcome to China! The washing area is between the men’s and the women’s and therefore common, and there is personnel who give you paper towels and soap.
On my way back to the stage where the other westerners dance, I pass the VIP area and see tables full of champaign, whiskeys and other liquids. Plus, there’s a waiter filling up the glasses when they are empty. Now I understand why students don’t go out in China. They simply can’t afford it. I look around me and see that the people are very cool and most are business like smartly dressed. Unlike in most western and Middle East countries where smoking is banned, here it is allowed and most people smoke. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to smoke in a club and not outside. As I stroll through the club, a Chinese young man bumps into me, says something in his language, smiles and offers me a cigarette. I learnt from my students that it is rude not to accept it. Even though I don’t smoke, I accept it. He lights it up for me, I take a pull, almost choke, smile and say thank you and give it afterwards to my housemate to finish it.
We continue to dance wildly and have some more beers and leave the club past 5am. Outside it is still warm and the pavements are now full of street kitchens. Despite the tasteful smell and me not having eaten for many hours, I don’t feel hungry. We hail a taxi and my principal tells the driver where we want to go. Unlike the first one, this one knows more or less where we want to go. Half an hour later we arrive home. My housemate goes straight to bed, but I’m overwhelmed by all this and can’t sleep. I answer a few messages and emails and try then to sleep. It takes a long time until Morpheus pays me a visit.
My first ever dinner in China.
Germans will find this one funny. SPD stands for Socialist Party of Germany. In China it's a bank.
Muse 2.
See? No ground floor. No odd numbers.
My flat. Hall with living room.
Kitchen
Living room with cheesy Chinese curtain.
Tiny bedroom downstairs, used as a storage room.
(Kinky) stairway to heaven
Landing
Bathroom
With frosted glass doors
My bedroom. With cheesy Chinese curtain.
My flatmate's (master) bedroom
Study with cheesy Chinese curtains.
If you would like to read more by me, here are my novel and my diary from Ar'ar, in the northern Saudi desert. Both available on Amazon as soft and hard copy.
