Hello again! After many months of stagnation, I am here to update about life in China. How fast time has flown – it’s been 4 months since my last post, and first year is over! Feels like just yesterday that I was wondering what life in Oxford would be like. Now it’s time to wonder about what life in PKU is like! ๐
I flew SIN-PEK on Singapore Airlines yesterday at 0110hrs, and landed in Beijing International Airport at 0645hrs. The plane ride was smooth, though I slept quite little (2 hours, not good by my standards :P). I did manage to read some Nietzsche on the plane, and mused a lot too. So I guess that was good ๐
Took a taxi from the airport to get to the apartment I’m staying at, which is ไธญๆนพๅฝ้
ๅ
ฌๅฏ. It’s on this road called ่ๅท่ก (Suzhou street) and is in the ๆตทๆทๅบ (Haidian District). It’s a really lovely apartment, relatively safe and quiet since this area, also known as ไธญๅ
ณๆ (Zhongguancun), is the tech-y area of Beijing, with loads of technology shops and offices here. It was pretty hard to find, so the taxi driver and I both had some trouble locating it (resulting in us making a few rounds around, because it wasn’t facing the street.
On the 40-min long journey into West Beijing, I had a nice conversation with the lady driver. She looked like she’s in her late 40s or early 50s. We talked about the weather, the roads, the Olympics and how it’s changed Beijing’s landscape, and about what I was doing in China. It was nice to hear her tell me that she thought my spoken Chinese was good! Haha. She’d ferried a girl a few days back from Singapore as well, and she said that the said girl had her nouns and prepositions in all the wrong order, so the driver couldn’t understand what she was saying. So she was pretty surprised when she heard me speak and even more so when I told her I was from Singapore. It was a nice welcome to China, my conversation with this lady. For one, it kickstarted my conversational Chinese again after a long time of being away from the language formally. Also, it helped me ease into the country – even though we’re known as ‘Aliens’ by the Chinese Immigration authorities, we are not so ‘alien’ after all.
Indeed it’s strange that I actually feel more at home in China than I do in the UK – after all I’ve been in the UK for 7 to 8 months proper, and this is my second time in Beijing only (with the first being a 8-day holiday in J1). But it was so easy to fall into the trap of security in a land where we are all ้ป็ฎ่ค๏ผ้ปๅคดๅ as opposed to being in a place where I am obviously not an angmoh.
Also, while I was still at the airport I overheard this Singaporean lady (who had a British friend with her, and spoke with a thick British-like accent) laughing at bad English found on a sky train notice. It was queer but I felt this indignation rising in me, because the grammar used in the notice was perfectly acceptable; it was only the use of vocabulary that deviated from what we would have used in Singapore. Not that I don’t myself laugh at bad English, but I did realise that maybe sometimes we tend to hold China to too high a standard of a language they’ve only begun to use extensively in the last one or two decades. This is something I shall try to remember the next time I’m tempted to laugh at bad English in China. Like I said, it’s weird but it’s way easier to feel at home in China than the UK. This is a place I could grow to enjoy living in, despite the crazy roast-pork worthy weather.
I ended up arriving at my apartment too early, and was kindly given a place to rest while I waited for my place to be cleaned so that I could receive my keys and sign the contract. Mr. Liu, the man whom I met to get my keys, was very nice about me arriving an hour too early, and helped me with my luggage even though there was really no need to. I was quite pleased with the whole process of getting my keys and checking the place, etc! Guess you get what you pay for, I’m not regretting this as much as I thought I would, splashing in so much money on accommodation.
The apartment is a very well-furnished place, with all the necessities one might need for a month’s worth of independent living, and more (like washing machine, microwave, hob, etc). It is also clean and quite quiet, which is good because living alone can be quite dangerous if there are suspicious characters lurking around all the time. It’s also protected by a number of security guards who work round-the-clock shifts to ensure that only proper residents can come in, so I am quite glad for this. Shall still have to be careful with lifts and stuff, but definitely less scary than what I had thought it might be.
Settled in very fast because I brought quite little stuff with me, the heaviest things I had were just my books. Put my dirty clothes to wash in no time, and then I headed out to explore the place.
Made my way to the shopping mall that Carrefour was in, intending to set up my Chinese mobile along the way, and then grab necessities from the supermarket. The place is massive, but they don’t sell SIM cards. Haha, turns out I had to go to a proper telco or buy one at a newsstand (which sounded quite dodgy at first, but has worked out fine). Anyway, so grocery shopping was just about the most therapeutic thing I had done all day since getting into China. I am such a nester, haha. Bought whatever I needed for the apartment, and some food to cook/eat. There were other stores at the shopping mall, like Breadtalk, Food Republic, etc, which made the whole experience seem quite surreal – like almost as if I had never left Singapore, but simply gone to visit a new shopping mall. Dropped by the E-plaza before that, which was opposite and sold lots of tech stuff, much like Sim Lim Square in Singapore. It was scorching yesterday, and I was still a little jetlagged from UK (haha finally) so I decided to scoot back to the apartment for a nap first.
Went out for a walk in the evening to look for the campus after a 3 hour nap. It’s really nearby, just a 10 min walk away, with lots to see on the way, so I was pretty pleased about it ๐ Lots of food places also, so I guess I won’t go hungry as long as I don’t spend all my money on books/shopping haha. Stopped by the book plaza, and bought a Lao Tse book in Chinese, which cost only 12RMB and explains the Dao De Jing in quite good detail. I think I might be buying more stuff from there soon!
The walk left me pretty exhausted so I returned to my apartment, fixed a quick dinner and showered. Fell asleep while trying to write the Transatlantic paper, skyped home, and woke up at 8 today.
Left the apartment at 0830hrs to meet Val at the uni, where she would bring me to the classroom. It was nice meeting her too, nice to have someone whom I know I can approach for help in this place! ๐ ๆ่ฐ่ฟไบฒไธๅฆ่ฟ้ป๏ผ
Met quite a number of Singaporeans, including a PPEist from Warwick and a senior scholar. It’s really not very difficult to settle into a group of Singaporeans, and it was quite alright getting to know some of the rest of the course mates too ๐
Alright, I am really exhausted now, so I think I’m going to stop here. Will continue soon, stay tuned! ๐
balance and breathe 