I'll take that one...

Weird bread, cloud cake, bottle of coke - okay the day has begun. Another bus trip with my new best buddy, Jake Chai, and we arrived at headquarters again. This time for a beginners Mandarin lesson. We walked around a lecture theatre pointing at pictures of vegetables and summoning phantom waiters to order what should have been broccoli but probably in fact suggesting that we build a log cabin on the ghost waiter's navel - the tones used in Mandarin are tricky and the same word means something different if you saiy it a different way. For example:

Be very careful if you want to ride someone's horse...

 Destruction of a foreign language done, we waited for our new centre managers to come and collect us to take us to our new centres. When they arrived it was like people picking puppies out of a box at a pet shop. "I'll take this one, he's got bright eyes!"

XuJiaHui centre is lucky enough to be the only centre in Shanghai with actual windows that open, or so I am told. A fact that I am very grateful for. It's on the 8th and 9th floors of an office building overlook the XuJiaHui cathedral and takes up about a third of the 9th floor and the same on the 8th. It is apparently home to over 1,000 students but not at the same time as that would defy the laws of physics more than clown cars (seriously, how do they get all those clowns in the car? It's tiny!)

The furthest left of the three big fellas is my building

The last thing on the list for the day was to find my apartment. I'd spoken to a guy after seeing his ad on Craig's List so I went to check out the apartment and...boom! Found a place to live on my second day in Shanghai.Not bad for a rookie.

Here Comes the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

My not-so-Eastern Chinese breakfast

The next morning I woke up early and headed out to forage for breakfast, which took the form of some odd variation on the theme of topped toast and what I came to know as 'cloud cake', the softest edible material on this good green (not so green in Shanghai) earth. Oh, and I got a bottle of coke to seal the deal...The West Prevails!

Cloud cake!

After breakfast it was time for another hair raising trip in Jake Chai's death buggy. To distract me from the millimetres between us and other cars I decided to have a chat with Jake and stretch my Mandarin legs a bit. I managed to get that he was called Jake Chai, he thought the English were cool and that we were now friends. What more do you need?

On arriving at head office we enjoyed free dumplings and yoghurt before going over all the fiddly contract stuff and doing warmers and 'get to know you' activities. Turned out one of the group could do pushups on his wrists. If someone says they can do pushups on their wrists, don't ask for a demonstration...it's unpleasant to behold.

I got edited from behind. How embarrassing.

We headed out en masse post contract stuff and had a wander around Shanghai a bit, finishing up on the Bund, the area on the river where you can see the big impressive office buildings in Pudong (the other side of the river).

The Onboarding group - courtesy of Mo. Yes, I am stroking my beard...get over it!

From the grandeur of the Bund, I headed to the Metro and was amused to find that it was the perfect place for folks to have a good stare. Particularly the kids; one young boy stared at us (I was with Ben, the guy doing the boyband-style crouch in the picture above) open-mouthed for about 5 stops. We said hello in Chinese and his parents were saying something along the lines of "Say hello to the foreigners." but the kid was catatonic. It was hilarious. The staring was to become a theme while here in Shanghai. The city might not always be new to me but it seems I'm still new to it.

Cultural Hangups

Coming to China has meant a bit of culture shock, as you would expect. For one thing - smells. China has some serious aromas and odours in the mix. Some of them are good, some of them...

One of the things to contend with has been the language. In the centre of Shanghai you can get away with speaking little or no Chinese, which I think is a bit of a shame, but hey. In ChiFeng, where my hotel was, this was not so much the case. My use of the language was a pretty peaks and troughs affair. From successfully asking for some coathangers for my room, using nothing but Mandarin and charades-quality miming, to accidentally asking a woman in a convenience store to sell me 20 of her cheapest goats - I was aiming for cigarettes but said 'yang' instead of 'yan'. On the plus side the staff at the store seemed entertained as they all stopped working to watch this odd 'laowai' mangle their language.

Not long after that I accidentally tried to buy some poor guy's groceries from him. I said hello and asked how he was and he gestured his bags towards me. I thought he was telling me he wanted to me to buy them so I offered him some money. It was only when his mate came out of the shop as well that I realised I'd been trying to have away with this guy's dinner. At least I was offering a good price...

In general though, my efforts to speak Chinese have been rewarded with many huge grins, laughter, appreciation, bits of advice and, quite often, downright confusion and surprise - not a huge number of westerners actually try to use the language it would seem. So I'm determined to keep on trucking - regardless of the accidental purchasing of farmyard fauna.

If only they'd sold these, I might have got away with it.

The other thing that has been a real adjustment is the price of things over here. Since coming here I've bought a pack of cigarettes for 20元 , which is about £2, and dinner for 7元. The dinner came from a tiny local place near the train station which had a big sign declaring that it had 'passed its hygiene inspection.

Who needs a smiley face?

Dinner consisted of beef and noodles in broth and loads of coriander. I was delicious and, happily, was never seen again - which was a definite concern. The staff were pretty surprised when Derek and I wandered in, especially seeing as Derek is half Cantonese but doesn't speak Mandarin, meaning I ordered for us both. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at a bakery for dessert and I got short changed. I was just about to say something when I worked out that the difference was about 10p and that if someone felt the need to swipe that, they could go ahead.

'Jake Chai the Driver Guy' and Other Tales

Once the teachers were all gathered on the seats we were sold by sign-holder McGavin that a driver would take us to our hotel and that he would be here imminently. Cue Jake Chai, a man to whom red lights, car horns, road rules and occasionally other cars were mere rumours.

Needless to say our first experience on the roads of Shanghai was an interesting one. I got the definite impression that the rule was that you can do pretty much whatever you like as long as you're sounding your horn, thus cancelling out any element of risk. Much like the 'but I had my blinkers on!' system in the UK.

Having arrived at the hotel about 5 minutes before our shadows, what with the breaking of the speed of light and all, we headed to the check in desk and got our keys. My room was pretty nice, standard economy hotel kind of stuff with extra marble, oh and a mirror at the head of the bed...for doing one's hair in the middle of the night...right!? On that note, I have come across a hotel in the CBD which rent rooms in 4 hour blocks - because sometimes all you need is a nap?

The Sky Rainbow Hotel in ChiFeng, Shanghai

I headed back out into the hall to see how the guys were getting on with their rooms only to find them deep in conversation, not with the cleaners so much as next to them. Duray and Derek were speaking English, the cleaners were speaking Chinese and very little communication was going on.

It turned out that the guys' rooms hadn't been cleaned...like really hadn't been cleaned...and the cleaners were also saying things. So I puffed out my chest like a brave little sparrow and gathered together the scraps of Chinese I had under my belt and threw them at the cleaners like a language snowball...

...One blizzard of incomprehension later, involving much being laughed at by middle-aged ladies in rubber gloves and much laughing myself, and the cleaners had got someone from reception to come upstairs and give the guys keys to different rooms. Peace reigned in the Sky Rainbow Hotel once more...

The Sky Rainbow in daylight, courtesy of Google images

Good Things Come in Fours

With one flight and an unnecessary number of in-flights films under my belt, I strolled off the plane and past the temperature sensors, which confirmed to all the world that I was not a raging ball of feverish disease and was probably okay to let in.

This wasn't my first time in Hong Kong though. Last time I flew to Australia I had a stop over in Hong Kong and that was when I learned that it meant fragrant port (not quite as fragrant now) because of the nice smelly things they used to trade in

So, where was I... Oh yes, I was sitting in the waiting area, attracting interested looks - turns out even in an international airport, a 6ft tall laowai (foreigner) with a tattoo up his arm  is worth a look see. On the plane from Hong Kong to Shanghai I managed to collapse into a slumber-type arrangement for an hour or two - thanks be to whichever deity holds sway  on Dragon Air flights!

I finally got into Shanghai ( 上海 ) just after midday to be met by a very smiley driver with 4 A4 signs, which he shuffled through until we found my name and exchanged huge grins of mutual understanding...that's my name, I'm that person. One down, 4 to go. He gestured me to a line of benches where I joined the masses and tried not to fall asleep and drool on any locals. The rest of the teachers arrived in dribs and drabs and, in the interim I went with Jack, one of the other teachers, to grab my first bite to eat in China. I'd love to tell you that I got myself some exotic dumplings with miscellaneous animal bits hanging out the sides but alas, no. Burger King was my first culinary adventure of the East. Sorry world...

On the plus side, I did discover something that Chinese Burger Kings can offer the world...a quadruple bacon cheese burger! Who needs that many burgers in a burger!? The thought that someone sat down in front of a triple bacon cheeseburger one day and thought "Wait a minute...what if there was...no...could I? Yes! Four burgers!" will keep me going when things get tough...

Of Mice and Men...and Emergency Doors

So then, where to restart my tale of Oriental adventure...still in England is probably best:

My last meal in the UK was a stodgy affair, consisting of incredibly spicy chicken wings and eye-wateringly strong blue cheese sauce, enjoyed with my mum, dad and sister in a holiday in just next to Heathrow airport. An early night and a 5am wake up followed shortly after (all part of my ingenious plan to make sure I would get to sleep on the plane) and I drifted down to the lobby to read over the contract for me new job, because what else would you do at 5am? I blended in quite well with the busninessmen having their breakfast before flying to unknown destinations, apart from the bright green pyjama bottoms - I was in the minority there.

The rest of the day trundled by in a blurry daze of fried breakfasts (I had 2) and family time until it was time for me to depart. I strolled over to the security area, having had a Hollywood montage's worth of photos taken with the assembles rellos, and brandished my two plastic bags full of toiletries at the security guard with an air of well-prepared satisfaction only to be told it was a maximum of one bag per passenger...balls! Cue hurried stuffing of items into one plastic bag.

Time passed...airport type things happened...


On the plane I settled in to my seat, which happened to be the one by the emergency door. "Hello legroom." I thought to myself. But alas, it turned out that the seat had been double booked and the bulk of the inflatable slide inside the door had been given a spot half way up my shins...'goodbye legroom'. Like the stoic passenger that I am, I brushed this off and set my plan into motion:

Plane food:             Devoured.
Headphones:          Playing soothing music.
Blanket:                 Covering everything below the nostrils.
Feet:                      Stuffed inside my pillow to avoid the draft from the emergency door.
Brain:                     Trying to ignore the fact that there is a draft from the emergency door!

Everything was in place for me to...get no more than 10 minutes sleep at a time for the next 15 hours!

Best laid plans of mice and men, eh? Oh well, at least I didn't Lenny-hug-crush any bunnies...

And just where do you think you've been?

So, I haven't really written quite as many posts as I had planned...

It turns out that even this blogging website is blocked in China, they're a thorough bunch to be sure, so I couldn't access it without a VPN (clever internetty thing). Fortunately, in a flash of organisational prowess, I've managed to get my VPN set up after only 2 months!

Anywho, that means I'm going to try and catch up on the past 2 months here in Shanghai..starting roughly at the beginning and giving you the highlights of the culture shocks and embarrassing language failures of long ago.

Enjoy...

DISCLAIMER: I love an ellipsis, so if they aren't your cup of tea.............buckle up!