It’s already been a few hours since the electricity in my
dormitory stopped working, it’s getting late, I can’t see anything anymore so
one of the few things I can do right now, is to continue writing my blog. I actually finished writing this 3 days later, I don't like posting stuff right after I write it.
I haven‘t been feeling so great lately, I’m a bit sick,
coughing and stuff, but a really, really weird thing happened to me a few days
ago. I was going out of our bathroom when suddenly some kind of bug flew right
into my ear. I was pretty terrified, it’s not so comfortable when something is
moving inside your ear and it can’t get out. So we somehow managed to suffocate
it with baby oil and it eventually came out, but my ear sometimes hurts and
feels weird since then. I was checking the symptoms of perforated ear drum and
it fortunately doesn’t seem like something happened. I’ll give it some time,
even a perforated ear drum should recover on its own most of the times so it’s
gonna be better hopefully. I really didn’t want to waste money on some doctor
in here, the health care system obviously works differently. So if you, for
example, have a serious wound, you can most likely go fuck yourself if you
don’t even have money for the „registration process“. I might be wrong and I am
curious how the chinese insurance works since I have one provided by the
school. Okay, whatever, let’s move on! Oh, wait, I just discovered that the
whole campus is without electricity and it just started raining, looks like a
nice downpour, maybe finally a taste of true China?
Edit: My ear already seems okay, yay!
6) Being a 老外
(laowai)
Probably the most common 2 words that you hear from people
passing by are 老外, which means foreigner (or they straight away use 美国人,
which is American), and Hello! Besides these spoken words, you hear a lot of
spitting, hawking and honking. I’ve got used to everything quite quickly,
but the ubiquitous honking, which is
mostly totally unnecessary, still pisses me off. It will be a shock to come
back home and just rarely hear this sound. Someone might even run me over ,
because I don’t really react to this anymore.
Anyway, back to the people around. You need to get used to a
lot of attention. I’ve been strolling around Qianling Park (it’s rather a
mountain) last weekend. It’s basically a reservation with a lot, I mean, A LOT
of monkeys. It was really cool to see them all around, trying to steal your
stuff, wandering around and posing for the pictures. I wanted to take a picture
with a monkey on my back or shoulders or something like that, but they weren’t
so friendly, haha. The point is that I felt like I was a bigger attraction than
those monkeys itself. One group was actually funny, they didn’t come to me for
the sake of being white, but they told me they liked my beard a lot and wanted
to take a picture with it :-D Right now, I have probably the beardiest beard
I’ve ever had, I want to keep it growing, but I also want to be a part of
Movember for the first time ever. Because who cares if I look like a paedophile
in here, right? Hard decision, #firstworldproblem.
7) Bye bye vegan food
I knew that I wasn’t going to maintain vegan diet, but I
thought I’d be cool with being a vegetarian. Which is definitely not so hard to
be when eating out, but it’s still uncomfortable. I don’t want to justify
myself, I’ve never been any strict vegan, but this lifestyle suited me really
well back in my country. Just the ethical point of view didn't change me that much, I, quite surprisingly, didn't have any major problem going back to eating "everything". There is meat in almost every dish, but I like that
they balance it well in here. It’s not like having ham for breakfast, steak for
lunch and salami or sausage for dinner. I guess that meat is like 5-30 % of
every dish, the rest are vegetables and rice or noodles. I would be really
stupid not to eat it if I eat meat broths, which are used a lot when cooking,
it’s the hardest thing to avoid I guess.
Eating out with friends is a common way of socialising, it’s
a part of this culture. If you go on a lunch or dinner in, for example, 4
people, you order 4 or more dishes which are served separately (or one big pot
instead), with a big bowl of rice, little bowls for everyone and everyone has a
piece of every dish. So even if 1 of those 4 dishes were vegetarian, it would
be pretty much against everything to keep it only for yourself. And I’m here to
discover new things, cuisine and eating with other people is such a big part of
this.
It’s actually a pretty big change to my body, I feel much
more tired in general, everything is kind of heavy. But I don’t really mind
eating rice 2 times a day anymore, I’ve already got my favorite restaurants and
dishes so it’s quite okay now.
8) I really miss home
sometimes
Let’s be a bit sentimental? Well, to be honest, I miss Brno
and Olomouc a lot. My farewell party was
quite shocking to me, I was really touched but I didn’t lose my face (getting a
bit Chinese in here). I’m not gonna lie, the day after the farewell party, the
day I said goodbye to my parents, I was sitting in a bus to Prague and I was
thinking about all the people I’ll be missing and those that are going to miss
me (not really exactly the same group of people). I even felt like weeping.
Well, this was inevitable and even if I wasn’t studying
Chinese, living in another countries and discovering the world has always been
tempting. So this is just the beginning I guess. I’m pretty sure that I’ll feel
similarly when the time comes and I’ll be heading back home. Leaving things,
experiences and people behind is just natural. One thing is for sure, this
strengthens relationships that are worth it.
Oh damn, this got emotional. I also want a simple
roll and bread, or at least something salty for breakfast! Even pastry, which
can’t possibly be sweet, is obviously sweet here. And I also need fresh salads!
They don’t really make salads in here, you can get 凉拌, which
is „mixed cold whatever is after those characters“, but it’s overly
expensive compared to the other food and
quite dull. Sure, I can buy vegetable in the market and make it myself, but I’m
scared of food poisoning when handling raw vegetables.
A draught beer please? No problem! $6-10 for a pint of not
even a good beer? Okay, bottled will do. Would you like to check some YouTube
videos? Damn, VPN doesn’t work right now. Oh, not even the college internet
works. Bye bye, neverending procrastination on YouTube. The same of course
applies to Google, FB and all other CCP's unfavorable pages.
9) Fake money
I was in a grocery store, buying some stuff, handed over my
banknote to the cashier and she started looking at it for like a minute and
then told me to give her another one, that this one looks like a fake. I already heard about counterfeited money,
but I thought that ATMs are safe, and they apparently aren’t. You can somehow
deposit counterfeits if you’re lucky enough. The most valued banknote is worth
100 RMB, which isn’t much, but China is famous for it’s counterfeits. I tried
to look into this more and those banknotes have some cool protection marks so
be aware if you’re ever going to China. Anyway, that banknote was probably
okay, I don’t know why she didn’t like it, I spent it in another shop. But
everyone is checking the banknote if you pull out red Mao.
10) Flexible
timetable
Would you like to feel like being in a high school again?
Come here! Attendance lists and homeworks all the time! With a bonus that if
any teacher can’t attend the class, they will reschedule it again whenever they
want. So I’ve already been in the school during the weekend and so on. This is
also a thing I miss, the almost complete university freedom. But well, I’m in
China after all. I wonder how the exams will look like, midterm is coming! Which reminds me that we had some lecture on fire safety with English interpreter from the Office for International Students. The Chinese guy said something like it's getting more cold so we'll start using convector heaters soon (did I already mention that "south" provinces don't have central heating system?) and the lady (well, she looks like 13) translated it like "winter is coming". Nerdish me exulted.
So we rounded the number to 10, gave you a little insight to my perception of this new world. If anyone wants to get a cool, „deep“, Chinese tattoo, here
you go, just found this out recently:
世上无难事，只怕有心人
Nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind
on it.
Sounds like a cliche, it has nothing to do with this post, but it’s one of the few Chinese
proverbs I ran into so I thought it might be a nice ending.
Last edit note: When reading about this again, I mean the tattoo, I was partying yesterday and one Chinese girl had "Fuck you" tattooed on her tits. China.
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