Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!!!
Chinese New Year is the most important traditional Chinese holiday. It is often called the Lunar New Year since the festival begins on the first day of the first lunar month and ends on the 15th day in the Chinese calendar. The Chinese New Year falls on different dates on the Gregorian calendar every year, this year in the year of the Earth Ox, New Years Day was Jan 26,2009.

According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian or "Year" in Chinese. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. One time, people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again.

You can equate the Chinese New Year to our Christmas. The period around Chinese New Year is also the time of the largest human migration, when migrant workers in China, as well as overseas Chinese around the world travel home to have reunion dinners with their families on Chinese New Year's eve. Red envelopes containing money are usually given, small gifts (usually of food or sweets) are also exchanged between friends or relatives during Chinese New Year. Gifts are usually brought when visiting friends or relatives at their homes.


Our celebration started with Will's factory New Year's party last week. The party took place in a huge restaurant, this restaurant had several floors with many private rooms, a regular dining area and a big room for buffet dinner where we were located. Although the Chinese are for the most part very shy people, they had no problem getting up on the stage. We were treated to the employees of the factory preforming an exercise dance, a comic skit, karaoke singing, and playing many games. All management gave speeches (including Will), where they thanked the workers for their hard work and wished them a prosperous New Year's. Then it was time for dinner, a Chinese buffet dinner in China is nothing like we are use to in North America!!! There is no chicken balls, egg rolls, or chop suey, for the most part we had no idea what most of the items were. Some were quite obvious like the chicken feet, fish head soup, roasted squid on a stick, etc, but there was some things that I found eatable like steamed rice, chicken wings, and black pepper beef.


Last night was New Year's Eve and we were completely amazed by the shear amount of fireworks. It was like nothing I have ever seen before, the majority of the festivities started the moment it got dark. Every where you looked in the sky there was a beautiful huge displays of dazzling exploding colour. The fireworks that the Chinese use would be completely illegal in Canada - no burning school house here. The average Chinese could go into any corner store and buy fireworks that would rival Canada Day on Parliament Hill. We were told that the fireworks would continue throughout the evening and they were not kidding, there was no end in sight. The action seemed to slow down around 11pm and we headed of to bed. All of a sudden there was a sound that literally shook the house as the clock stuck 12am and thousands of Chinese on every street across the city apparently saved their best fireworks for last. It was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed and I have never been been so happy to be living in China.

Teaching English in China

I'm back!!! I am sorry that I have not updated my blog lately but for the last month we were back in Canada for Christmas and the 2 previous months I was working as a English teacher and had trouble finding spare time. Teaching English was something that I thought I could do to keep myself busy once we moved to China. Shortly after arriving we saw an ad posted outside the Starbucks that we frequent looking for ESL teacher - no experience required. The school was actually located in the same building as the Starbucks so I headed inside to inquire about the position. Within the week I had been offered the position working 2 days a week, 3-4 hours a day, making 100 yuan an hour( about $14).

My "orientation" took about 10 mins. as they showed me around the school, assigned me a desk, and pointed out the binders with the lessons in it. I was then told that they would see me on Tuesday and make sure to prepare a topic for the English corner class - what??? Am I able to watch a class so I know what I am doing and what the heck is an English corner? I was told that it was very easy and that all I needed to do was show up 10 mins before my shift and review the lesson plans but if I wanted I could come and observe another teacher. The English corner is an hour long open class that is about a topic of the teachers choosing but must get the class talking.

I was nervous for my first day as I have always been in retail management and had no real teaching experience but after watching the other teacher I was confident that I could do a good job, my biggest concern was the English corner class. I had decided to talk about Canada since it was something that I was very familiar with I figured I should be able to get an hour out of it. My first couple of classes went fairly well but I found that I was done the lesson before the hour was up. The problem was that the lessons were designed for large groups of students and my classes only had 1 or 2 students therefore you had to improvise quite a bit when the lesson called for group discussions or partner work. Next came my English corner class, there was about 15 students and they were very nice and welcomed me . Unfortunately about 40 mins. in I ran out of things to talk about in Canada - I never was very good at history and geography!!!

After my first week I inquired about when I would be getting my Chinese work permit, but I was told that since I was only looking for part time they would not provide me with a work Visa - this was a big problem!!! Although the chances of being caught without a permit teaching English were small to none I could not take the chance of possibly being deported. They informed me that it was not necessary but I insisted and said I would have to resign if they did not apply for the permit. A few days later they told me that they would get the permit for me but I would have to pay half and work 3 days instead of 2 and fill in when someone called in sick - deal.

I was enjoying the position but was finding that I was working more that I had originally wanted. They were calling me almost daily to fill in for shifts, and often scheduled me for 4 days instead of the agreed upon 3 and the hours for each day went from 3 to 4 to 5. I was also spending 2-3 hours every day preparing for the English corner class on top of going into work an hour early to prepare for my classes. It was really getting to be to much, so I decided to quit before they finished with the work permit.

So, with all that being said, I now have lots of time to write in my blog:)

Our New Home

Good day everyone. We are finally settled into our new home in Changzhou, China - sort of. What an ordeal, moving is stressful to start with but add in the fact that you are on the other side of the world far away from friends and family and barely speak a word of Chinese and its enough to make you go crazy!!! The house had been empty for many months and the musty smell was horrific and even though we had cleaners come in before we arrived we still spent 2 weeks cleaning the house to bring it to our standards. I hate to generalize but from what we have seen so far I can say that the Chinese are not the cleanest people on earth. The family who lived here before us had a full time live in maid - I have no idea what she did all day, her room was actually one of the worst rooms other than the kitchen. It took Will and I two full days just to clean all the grease out of the kitchen, it was repulsive.
We stayed at the hotel for the first week while we went to the house every day to clean, fortunately it was the Mid-Autumn Festival and Will had the entire week off. The Mid-Autumn Festival is second only to the Chinese New Year in significance. It is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is usually around mid or late September in the Gregorian calendar. On this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together.
Once the holiday was over and Will went back to work I stayed home to clean and to deal with the hundreds of problems that kept popping up. First was the fact that the A/C was not working properly and you need it here even in Sept/Oct. Our satellite TV that the owners promised us with English channels had only 1 channel and it was all movie soundtrack videos!!! The hot water tank was not working, Internet had not been installed, windows that wouldn't close, a broken security system , mold growing on walls, broken glass on the kitchen cabinets, jacuzzi tub with no motor, and a broken headboard just to name a few. Olivia, the assistant to the VP at Will's office has been helping us with getting all of these issued fixed, but with the Chinese nothing is simple. Everything involves extreme negotiations and can take several days to get sorted. Even after the contractor has arrived most of the time they don't have the tools or parts needed(since 80% of these workers drive scooters) and they have to leave several times to go back to the store or office - very annoying. Olivia tried to be at the house when someone was coming over but sometimes she could not make it, leaving me to try use my charades skills and sign language. When that didn't work I would call Olivia but if she did not answer I was out of luck.
Which brings me to another point, why the heck do the Chinese not have voicemail? This is not an option that it possible here, they suggest the use of text messaging instead, like I have time for that. Anyways, we seem to have the biggest issues taken care of but it has been a learning experience to say the least. I have been keeping busy doing little things that take longer around here. I have to do laundry every day because the washing machine is so small and even thought it is a washing/dryer, it doesn't really dry it just steams so all items need to be hung to dry and often ironed. I also have to grocery shop every second day, first because the fridges are tiny so I can only buy a few things at a time, secondly because Will still has to get his Chinese drivers licence so I have to walk/taxi and can only carry so much, and third because they don't use a lot of preservatives so thinks like bread and milk only last a couple of days.
You don't realize how good we have it in Canada until you experience something like this. I know that I sound like I am complaining a lot but I am happy that we decided to take on this challenge and I am sure things will get easier as time goes by. I am excited about my new teaching job that I start on Monday, its only a few days a week but it will get me out of the house and hopefully I will learn a lot from my students. We still have not received our container with all of our goods from Canada but it should be here next week and I look forward to a big bowl of Kraft Dinner as long as it doesn't get confiscated.

Can someone please tell the Chinese that it is rude to stare.

Hey all, sorry that it has taken me so long to update my blog but it has been a crazy few weeks. We have moved into our new home for the next two years and let me tell you it was not easy but that is a story for another day. Today I want to talk about the biggest issue I have over here - the staring!!! This is like nothing you have ever experienced before, trust me. Every where you go people go out of there way to stare at you, they will stop what they are doing, they will point you out to their friends and they even slow down in their car or scooter to get a better look. They are very obvious about it as well, I have tried to stare back, I smile, and I even say hello (in Chinese of course) and all I get is a blank stare. Occasionally the odd person will say hello back but its rare. We find that it is mostly the older generation who tend to be fascinated with us, most of the younger Chinese have grown up watching Western movies and have Western teachers but their parents don't often see foreigners. They are so curious about us and what we are doing that we often have people come over to us in the store and look in our cart to see what we are buying and sometimes they even follow us through the store. In the larger cities like Shanghai you don't get as many stares because they see Westerns more often but the smaller the city, the bigger the stares. We did have a good run in the other day while taking a stroll through our neighhood when we came across a group of young children around 5-8 years old who immediatley ran over to us - they were all yelling " Hello hello, how are you?" to us in English, they were so excited to get to practise their English, it was so cute!!

Shopping in China

The other day we decided that we needed to go shopping for small appliances such as toasters, coffee makers, irons, etc. We went to few shopping centers to look around, the shopping centers here are huge and have more sales associates than customers. Anytime you look at anything you have a sales person come running over to you to assist you. Many spoke English, although broken, in time we were able to understand each other with many hand signals and rephrasing of words. When you decide on something the associate writes you a hand bill that you then take to a cashier, the cashiers are located on each floor but many times only the main cashier can accept credit cards. They do not accept debit here either, most Chinese only deal with cash. Once you locate the cashier and pay for your merchandise you then take the proof of payment back to the sales associate who then gets someone from the warehouse to bring out your item. They then insist to take everything out of the box to show you that it is in good condition and works properly. We noticed that the prices seemed to be the same no matter what mall you went to and prices were similar on name brand as you would find in Canada, there is also no negotiations in the mega malls.
After buying the needed kitchen appliances we wanted to buy a GPS system for China. The first place we went was an electronic market. This market in Shanghai was four floors of mind blowing electronics. We were able to find a GPS system that could speak in English but were concerned that there would be no receipt or guarantee with the unit so we decided to make our way to Best Buy. We found the same unit but it was about 400 yuan more that the price at the market without negotiating, so we threw caution to the wind and went back to the market. Now, Will loves to negotiate and is very good at it, I on the other hand will need some work. He went back and forth between two different vendors until get got the price he wanted and we ended up paying about $70 less than the price at Best Buy. Not bad for a days work!!!

Our new city - Changzhou

We have now made our way to Changzhou, our home for the next two years. Changzhou is located in the province of Jiangsu and has a population of 3.4 million. Changzhou is an important industrial center for textiles, food processing, engineering, and high technology. We are staying in a hotel until the house is ready to move into, no one has lived in the house in months so it will need a good scrubbing first. Also the sea container with all of our goods from Canada can not be released until we have all of the official paperwork so we will need to buy a lot of supplies for us to live there. After arriving yesterday we thought we would go to Metro and check it out, this is a cash and carry store like a Costco. We were surprised and happy to find many brand names and Western style food like sliced bread, cereals, frozen pizza, peanut butter, pasta etc. Although I was saddened by the live fish area which contained not only fish but giant frogs and poor little turtles!!!! I guess I better get use to it but if I see any cats and dogs I am out of here!
Today we had to get up early and have our mandatory physicals for living in China. It was an experience is all I can say. These exams are not what we are use to in North America and it was a little odd. You have to make your way to many different offices where they perform each part of the exam. First was a chest x-ray which was normal enough, then upstairs for the strangest hearing and eye test ever which involved the "doctor" tugging on my ears and starring into my eyes - with no medical equipment what so ever. Next I made my way across the hall to what I think was an EKG, but with the machine being at least 50 years old it was hard to tell and I have to admit I was a little frightened when she put these large clamps on my arm and leg and then put all these tiny suction cups all over my chest. In the next office was probably the weirdest exam, I was told to hold out my hands, make a fist, roll my hands, roll my shoulders, move my neck from side to side, then squat? I then got my blood pressure and heart rate taken by yet another "doctor". The ultra sound was next then back downstairs for the urine sample. They give you a little cup like normal but with no lid and they send you down the hall to the washroom ( I was relieved to see a that there was also western toilet beside the squat pot even if they didn't supply toilet paper - thank goodness for Kleenex and hand sanitizer). When finished you make your way back carefully with a open cup and place it on a tray with all the others - hummm. Last but not least was the blood test - this was pretty standard. The overall experience was harmless but just seemed out dated and some of the exams were a bit useless - but who am I to judge.

First night out in Shanghai

During our first official day in our new country we decided that we must do what most tourists do in Shanghai and that is go to the Bund. The Bund is an area which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River and refers to the buildings and wharves on this section of the road. We took a taxi from our hotel to the closest Subway station and then took the No2 Subway to the Bund area. Although very cheap to travel by taxi the traffic at peak times can make it a very long ride so the subway was much more quick. The subway was very clean and not too crowded, it seemed to be mostly the younger generation who were riding it. All signs and announcements were in both Chinese and English.
We then made our way to the Super Brands Mall which is the largest mall in Pudong and has 10 levels. The stores include well known names such as CK Jeans, Best Buy, H&M, Hilfiger and Esprit not to mention restaurants like Hooters, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, Starbucks, Burger King, McDonalds and the Chinese favorite KFC.
We went to Domani which was an Italian restaurant overlooking the river on the 4th floor. Food was okay, the ceasar salad turned out to be a basic garden salad with ceasar dressing and the pasta was good - but the view was spectacular!! The amount of boats going up and down the river was unbelievable. The tour boats were a lit up and many had huge screens playing advertisements. The working boats and barges were travelling with no lighting what so ever - and this is the middle of the night, how they saw where they were going is beyond me!!
After diner we wanted to go over to the Bund side and were told that the quickest way to get there was to take the Bund tourist tunnel. The Bund Tourist Tunnel claims to use the latest technologies and provide you with information on Chinese people, history, culture, and science. It is more like cheap disco lights with blowing tinsel!!! May be fun for small kids but I found it tacky and lame - not to mention expensive in Chinese terms. A one way ticket was 30 yuan which is abut $4.25.
Once we reached the other side we were swarmed with people trying to sell you everything you can possibly imagine as well as many people begging for money. The Chinese beggars are much different that those you see in let's say downtown Ottawa!!! Most of these people missing limbs and are badly disfigured - it is very sad. We walked along the Bund for a while and took a ton of pics and tried to soak it all in. We then decided to make our way back to the hotel - not as easy as one who think. When we walked to the taxi stand we were immediately swarmed by all the drivers trying to convince you to take their taxi, some of these cars did not seem very legit as they had no sign on the car. Then some drivers didn't want to take you where you want to go, as with everything in China you have to be good at negotiations!!! We finally made our way back to the hotel, the 20 min ride cost us 18 yuan which is about $2.50, what a bargain.
Transportation is very cheap, a bus ticket is 1 yuan which is 14 cents Canadian and the subway is anywhere from 3 to 8 yuan depending on your distance (42 cents to a max of $1.14). You can buy a smart card that you load like a debit card and they can be used for all modes of in-city transportation: bus, subway, light rail, taxi, and ferry.
Food can be very inexpensive to crazy expensive. To go to a local Chinese restaurant a group of 4 people can eat for well under $20CND but here at our Hotel the breakfast buffet is $30 a person!!! If you want to eat like the locals you will save a ton of money but if you want to dine like a Westerner you will pay.