Sunday 29 September 2013

Introductions

I’d fortuitously (or not so much depending on your point of view) managed to time my arrival perfectly so that on the first working day, we would be having a series of meetings. The morning would be the lab meeting for just my professor and his group of about ten students, and the afternoon one is for all the labs in the department. And my, you should have heard the groans when it was announced that the meetings would have to be in English, on account of my presence.
The first student struggled valiantly through his presentation, having mostly correct English, despite his “T6SS” sounding more like “T6XX” and “adjacent” simplified to “adjent”, but still, I very much appreciated the effort. For when he finished his talk, and Prof Ou struggled to even ask one question in English, the entire meeting lapsed into Chinese, from which it was never to recover.
Nevertheless, Prof Ou continued in his duties of providing excellent Chinese hospitality by taking a new student Lu, who has started only a few weeks ago, myself, and of course Yingzhou (since it was now becoming apparent that he was required at nearly all social occasions for translation purposes).

My new labmates Yingzhou and Lu
            We went to a lovely restaurant which they promised served the finest Shanghainese cuisine, and although there was no English menu, I wouldn’t have known what any of these things were, since I’d never seen any of them before. As was customary for Chinese eating etiquette, Pro Ou ordered a range of dishes which we all shared. I didn't quite take a fancy to the first course, which was some vile yellow-skinned chicken served cold and sliced bones and all (a Shanghainese speciality I’m told, which the boys seemed very fond of), but luckily, most of the rest of the dishes were quite palatable and even delicious.
 
There were also these caterpillar-looking things, which made me think that they were about to push my food boundaries a little sooner than I thought, but actually they turned out to be made from pastry, and were filled with a delicious root vegetable filling. Lord only knows how they get that fine concertina effect with the pastry!
There were also these deliciously sweet and cute pumpkin ball fritters, which had genuine pumpkin paste inside:
There was even a savoury dish that reminded me of Christmas pudding, but it was actually a special type of fried pork dumpling:
        And we washed this all down with chrysanthemum tea and watermelon juice! Result!
干杯(Gānbēi ) or “Cheers!”, from Prof Ou

We then went back to the university for the second half of the meetings. This departmental meeting was very busy and it was hard to find a place to sit, which meant that Lu and I ended up sitting on the front row. The meeting started with a whole range of announcements from the lab manager, and some comments from the others, which what I gathered was general housekeeping comments and announcements. However, at some point, everyone seem to look at me, and I was lucky that Lu managed to translate for me that the manager had announced that I was visiting their lab, and that I should stand up to say a few words.

Somewhat taken aback, having nothing prepared and still a little bit disorientated, I didn't really know what to say. Since English seemed to be a struggle for most people, I thought it would only be polite to say something in Chinese, so the first thing I said was “Ni hao”. Either this was really impressive, or they were under the impression that this meant that I could actually speak Chinese, and that they were expecting the rest of my speech to be in Mandarin, because I got a very hearty round of applause just for saying that! It must have been disappointing when I finished the remainder of my speech explaining that I was from the University of Leicester, and that I would be visiting Prof Ou’s lab for three months all in English.

I tried to put a positive spin on things saying that anyone was welcome to come chat to me to practice their English. But so far I have not had any takers on my offer, but the net result of the impromptu speech was that now everyone in the building knows my name, but I know only a handful of theirs! This produced some interesting situations, in which random people would say “Hello Eva!” as I passed, and I would have no idea who they were. Nevertheless, this came in very handy on one occasion when I mislaid my swipe card and couldn't get in. Some members of the department were passing and of course knew who I was and let me in right away. Maybe being the only Western person in the building and sticking out like a sore thumb has its advantages.

Setting up for life in China........passport please

The first few days after my arrival went by in a bit of a blur. Of course there was some adjustment to the time, and I was tired from the long journey, but there was much to be done to get me settled at the university, and since I arrived first thing in the morning, there was a full day’s work ahead.
                In order to help me get settled, I had one of the boys from the lab, YZ, was assigned to help me get set up in China and settle in. He will be the second guy from the Shanghai side to take part in our exchange, and is due to come to the UK in January. He is a bright, young boy of 24, and I think he was assigned to help me, not only because I will inevitably return the favour when he comes to Leicester, but also because he has by far the best English out of anyone I have met here (that includes the professor). And thank goodness, he has been such a great help.
                During my first day YZ took me round such an array of places, I lost count! Basically, we got my student card, which is the general currency on campus, paying for everything from food to showers, went to go top it up, went to the accounts office, went to the Bank of China to set up a bank account so that I can receive my scholarship from the government, got a new Chinese SIM card for my phone, went to get basic food shopping, and generally help get me settled in. What most of these steps basically involved was going to an office, having a photo taken or needing to procure a passport photo, showing them my passport and some vital piece of paper, or going to another place and photocopying a vital piece of paper.
Generally, I was surprised at the level of bureaucracy, coming from a place where I could easily pop into any Phones4U, and come out with a new pay as you go sim card in about five minutes. Here I had to show my passport, and residence details, and so much more problems which was all said in Chinese between Yingzhou and the staff, that it seemed like an age. And they gave me loads more bits of official paper. I also couldn’t even order water for my water cooler without giving my passport number down the phone to the water company! (Well, Yingzhou did that, since the water company didn’t even have any English speaking staff, despite supplying the international student accommodation with water!). The bureaucracy level reached its craziest heights at the visa centre, but more on that later.
Settling in to my room I have to say was a very pleasant surprise. Having heard about Chinese university dorms and seen the pictures from Chinese friends and also Monika on her exchange, I had pretty much expected the bog standard desk/bunk bed combo shared with a room-mate. Before I arrived, I was informed though that actually I would be getting a single room, and I thought this may be because I was staying in the international student’s building. However, I was genuinely surprised to get a spacious room with a nice big bed:
The massive bed all to myself, next to my desk
              Not only that, but it has been equipped with a TV, mini fridge, microwave, lamp, working AC system, water cooler (on account of the Chinese tap water having dubious quality standards) and telephone!
My water-cooler, microwave, fridge and TV
 
(Although I'm not sure what is the point of having a TV, since all the channels are in Chinese anyway).  Despite not having my own sink, we have a shared bathroom on each floor. This might not sound much like luxury, but the home students in the other dorms don’t even have bathroom facilities in their building, and they have to go to an outside building for showers, and even this is only open between the hours of 3 pm till 10 pm, so if you've missed the time, you've missed your shower for the day! I have heard that one fifth of Shanghai’s population still does not have indoor plumbing and they use bed pans at night, so I think I've gotten very lucky here! I am most surprised to find that I don’t have to share, since I've seen that some of the other rooms on my floor have two international students in. But I guess I just have to be thankful for the special treatment. Although there is a funny smell in here that my lab friend seems to think might be a fungus that would be very difficult to remove.....ah well, swings and roundabouts!           

Monday 23rd September – Journeys and arrivals

After much deliberation and searching for a blog that isn't blocked in China, I've caved in and decided to let Sam upload a blog for me. I know, this is a crazy idea, and who knows how many “I miss Sam so much” and “Yeeeeeeeeeeah’s” will be added to each blog post, but still, it’s better than nothing (or figuring out how to set up one of those proxy things to circumvent the Great Firewall of China).
 After a disastrous start to my journey during which my luggage pretty much started coming apart when I pulled into London, and forced me to buy an emergency new suitcase at St Pancras Railway Station (thank God a shop selling them was actually open!). To be fair, this was an old suitcase, which even when we were travelling through Australia in 2010 my father had started raising doubts about, but I didn't really think it was getting this old and bad. The long and the short of it though, was that not only could I no longer pull it along my the handle, but the wheels were splayed and some edges were starting to look less than secure, and I really couldn't afford to run the risk of it coming apart during the transit of such a long journey. So I made the decision to buy a brand new one then and there, and dragged along two large suitcases through London to get to the Holliday Inn at Heathrow where I unpacked everything and left the hotel staff a present of a broken, but loved old suitcase, that I was almost sad to part with, since it reminded me of fun journeys of the past. Bye bye suitcase my old friend.

Shit happens. Especially if you fail to plan and check your suitcase before packing for a very large and long journey
This palaver had led me to go to bed quite late, and I had to wake up at 5 am to catch my 8 am flight to Zurich the next morning. However, this actually put me for a great start in adjusting to Chinese time, since that was the equivalent of waking up about 12pm (not too bad a start), and it also made me very tired which would only encourage me to sleep more in the second, 11.5 hour leg of my journey, from Zurich to Shanghai Pudong airport. Zurich was a great stopover, not only because Swiss Air came highly recommended to me for flights to China, but also because this allowed me to stock up on some quality chocolate at a good price (as a welcome present of course, but some for me too!)
The real turn up for the books though came during this second journey from there, when I introduced myself to the middle aged Chinese lady booked on the seat next to me. It quickly transpired that she didn’t actually speak more than a few words of English, but having lived in Switzerland for 20 years, her German was fluent, and she was happily reading the Bild next to me for the first hour or so. I expected a lot of things from this journey, but I never expected to be discussing my trip to China in German! It also made me realise just how many gaps I had in my German knowledge (what is the German for “research exchange”? Or even “PhD”?! It’s lucky that ‘Mikrobiologie’ sounds so similar to the English!). Nevertheless, we just about managed to get by, and she explained that she was going home to Shanghai to visit her family for the important National day holiday which starts next week. She also explained that she’s been working as a Chinese-German translator in hospitals, and that on the side, she also taught Chinese. She made a valiant effort to correct some of my pronunciations of various words I’d learnt, but after a while I think she decided it was too much of an undertaking to give me a crash course in Chinese, via German in the little time we had. Probably wise, as I think I'm pretty much a hopeless case in Chinese! We tried to sleep as much as we could after it got to evening time.
Overall rating for Swiss air was that although it wasn't as spacious as Qantas, it was tolerable, and they had a good choice of things to watch and listen to on the entertainment system (even Great Gatsby! And Community!), and the food was adequate and given at good times that helped to adjust to Chinese time.
My new professor to be Prof Hong-Yu Ou gallantly agreed to meet me at the ridiculously early arrival time of 7:15, although thanks to the queues at passport control, I didn't make it out until about 8:00, but he politely waited and then pulled my luggage along to the car, to make the perilous journey back through Shanghai city centre, to get to the other side of the huge city to drop me off at the Jiao Tong University. I say perilous because all car journeys seem to be perilous here. Heck, crossing the road is quite often perilous.
This was the start of my introduction into Chinese etiquette, which traditionally means that the host should do his utmost to be as hospitable and polite as possible. It means that whoever is receiving or guiding you is compelled to pay for things and carry your bags and to refuse would be offensive to them! I didn't quite get a grasp of the extent of this for a while and got a bit confused, but I'm getting used to this as normal now that I understand more about it. More on this in the upcoming posts.