Impressions after 10 days

Well, I've been here for 10 days now, might as well give some impressions of the country as I've seen it so far. I've been stuck at work during the week from 9am til maybe 6:30-7:30, so I haven't had much of a chance to do all that much touristy stuff, and I'm living a fair bit out from the city center as well so I'm not in the heart of things, but shur I'll just give a few impressions anyway, in no particular order.

• Cold! When we were coming in on the plane, the pilot announced that it was -7 degrees outside. I nearly died when I stepped out of the airport! It snowed on my second day here, then it got even colder. I think it got down to maybe -12 or -13 on tues night! It's been a bit warmer since then, but the last of the snow we got on last monday only really melted away on sunday, and all of the rivres around are still frozen over. Reckon it may be hovering around zero or slightly above most days now, but by now I'm used to it. Supposed to get warmer next week, hopefully!


• Good Food. Well, I haven't had all that much to eat that I've actually recognized while I've been here, but then again, pretty much everything that I've had has been damn nice. I've been going out to restaurants a lot (see my next point), but even the canteen in work is maybe about as good as most of the chinese restaurants I've been to in dublin. I'm getting pretty handy with the auld chopsticks as well, I wouldn't be up to doing brain surgery with them or anything, but I'm at the stage where for most things I don't really have to think about what I'm doing with them any more. If I'm stuck, there are some western places around me where I work as well, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, but I'm avoiding them unless I get serious cravings. It's funny though, Pizza Hut back home would be considered a middle-of-the-road cheap-enough food joint, but here it's a classy joint where all the fashionable young people go to hang out and be seen. Apparently there was a 2hr wait to get in there last night, on Valentines night!


• Cheap! I still can't get over how cheap things are! We went out for lunch at work on my first day, 10 people, we all stuffed ourselves, and the bill came to ¥330 - or about €35 - for 10 people! Your average meal might set you back maybe ¥20 0r ¥30 (€3 maybe), a beer in some places is ¥5 (50c), or a really good imported beer might be ¥30. The metro is ¥3 (30c) a ticket, and a taxi from here to the city center might be ¥50 (€5) for a 45min trip. Amazing!


• Language. Well, there's no way in hell I'm going to be anywhere near fluent by the end of the 2 months. If I get enough to be able to go out for a meal and actually order rather than just pointing at the menu I'll be doing OK. So far I can mostly say "ni hau" (hello), "zhe zhe" (thank you), "wo ting budong" (I don't understand) and "dai buche" (I'm sorry). Oh, and "piju" (beer) of course! :-) It's a bit of a hassle though going around and not being able to communicate with maybe 9 out of 10 people you see. No-one appears to speak english in any of the shops around here (which was fun when I went to get my local SIM card), but I can just about get by with the old mime artist bit. The scariest language bit so far has to have been the taxi the other night - I was getting into a car with a stranger who I knew I wouldn't be able to talk to, and was supposed to get him to take me to one particular spot in a city of 5 million people! I'm in two minds as to whether I'm going to go seriously mad on learning the language or not, as I'm only here for 2 months. Reckon I'd just about be making some headway when I have to head home. I'll see.


• No TV! This is related to the last part there about the language, but is serious enough to warrant a paragraph on its own. My TV has 58 channels, but only one is in english! And the one english channel I have is a weak-ass soft propaganda mouthpiece for the govt! "today the central government announced this wonderful new plan". Hell, even CNN would be better than this! My TV is currently plugged out and my laptop is plugged in instead of it, with bittorrent running nearly the whole time pulling down TV shows and films from home (have the first 4 episodes of that new C4 show, "The IT crowd" here)


• Transport. As I mentioned already, everything is damn cheap. The metro isn't as expansive as maybe I'd be used to from Dublin Europe, but I have a station on the light rail just 5mins walk from the house and that gets me into Tian'anmen square or thereabouts in 45min (have to change lines twice). It apparently gets really packed at rush hour, but it's been OK when I'v been on it. Apparently the best two ways of getting around town are by bike (still) and by taxi. Taxis are dirt cheap, and nearly every 2nd or 3rd vehicle on the road is a taxi! You have to be a bit careful, they will try to rip you off (altho even at the rip-off prices they're nothing compared to dublin - at least you still have the shirt on your back when you get out of a taxi over here). as I said though, communication with the drivers is a bit on the minimal side, you're best off to have your destination written down for you by some friendly chinese-speaker. The roads are really wide as well - the ones outside my place are 2 lanes each direction, and wouldn't be as busy as back home. It seems that pedestrians have the right of way nearly the whole time on crossing, although you still have to watch yourself as they have the same "right turn on red" thing here that they have in the US. Still though, I know I'm going to have to be sooo careful when I get home, as the bad habits I'm picking up here for crossing the road will kill me in a day on Dublin streets!


• Cops. Maybe it's because I'm living in an area filled with mostly foreigners, and beside a big university, but there is a cop or a guy in an army uniform standing on nearly every 2nd street corner! they don't look as if they're armed, but if the gardai back home hd this much visible presence on dublin streets the crime rate would be a fraction of what it is.


• Shopping. I've mentioned already about the main shopping street, wanfujing, being way better than anything we have at home, and in general here it seems like they've gone and embraced the whole capitalist thing with both hands and then some. On Wudaokou, the street that backs on to my apartment complex, nearly every 2nd shop is a mobile phone shop, and my local supermarket is just amazing. As well as your normal food and drink I can get stuff like mobile phones, wide-screen TVs, shoes, bedclothes, DVDs, motor oil, exercise equipment (and I mean like treadmills and step machines), washing machines and bras under the one roof (not that I'd be buying bras of course). This is what tesco is trying its damndest to be back home! Granted the fact that in the food section I'm having a hard time getting anything I recognize 'cos I can't read the labels off anything is a bit of a problem, but if I could I'd be sorted!


• Communism. Well, right after that rampant consumerism bit, I have to mention the whole commie thing. Apart from the soldiers everywhere, about the most obvious sign of it I've seen so far is on the web - some sites like the BBC won't work (though Fox News does, go figure), and don't even bother typing in "tiananmen" in google, links just won't load. Even this blog is blocked (altho it's wierd, I can update it via blogger.com, bt can't see it via blogspot.com). Then again, most of the time I'd never be looking up politically dodgy sits anyway, so ti doens't really make much difference to me (apart from not being able to se how my blog looks). Outside of that, the only time I've really noticed it is in a few over-dinner conversations with ppl at work, who were sort of surprised at some of the casual freedoms we have back home, like not needing a visa or a passport to travel around europe, or having more than one child per family. It's not all that obvious, but there are still some little things.

Anyway, enough for one night!