Well it’s about 3 months overdue but I thought it was about time I revived the blog. I think I was assuming that studying at a reputable university in a well developed city would leave me with little to blog about, but China will be China and I think that keeping a record will remind me that life wasn’t always like this…
So here I am sitting in my room on campus at Xiamen University, trying to ignore the fact that Christmas is fast approaching and the most festive I’ve felt was listening to somewhat misplaced Christmas music playing in McDonalds last week. And here’s what I’m still doing here in China…
After struggling with the language last year I realised the next best step was full-time studying, so I applied for the Chinese Government Scholarship (pretty much on a whim after meeting a couple of guys travelling who were on the scheme). For lack of any real desire as to the location I put down Xiamen as my top choice and now here I am, living and studying in China courtesy of the Chinese government (they even give me pocket money each month).
I should admit up front that it's been a bit of a struggle going back to being a student again, hard to settle and surprisingly difficult to be surrounded by white people (somehow in China it just feels wrong). I've felt far more homesick this year and am still missing the good old Pingxiang crew from last. In short, not the best start to my second year, but in this magical country where you really do have to either laugh or cry I've decided to start focusing on the positives.
I briefly visited Xiamen back in March but definitely did not appreciate its full potential. The biggest draw to the city is how (relatively) clean the air is, and how nice the environment is. Xiamen is located on the south-east coast of China, directly opposite Taiwan on the mainland, in some happy little bubble of almost permanently good weather. I arrived in early September and didn’t see rain for months. The temperatures have dropped a little recently but today was 26°C so I feel no reason to complain. It’s sunny to the point where I've actually started getting a bit annoyed with the weather. I don’t understand why it has to be so infuriatingly happy all the time.
Above is a photo of my kite-surfing friend Matt, who knows how to appreciate Xiamen's efforts.
My scholarship means I have free accommodation on campus and I was fortunate enough to land the glorious Cai Qing Jie building, dormitory for overseas students, PhD students and Chinese holiday-makers; next door to the building where I have class and 5 minutes from the beach.
It is officially the best dormitory on campus, notable for its lift, the tiny shop downstairs where you can buy anything, the friendly security guard Xiao Han who will bring you delicious ‘local flavour’ (read unfathomably dry peanut powder biscuit) whether you want it or not and the room service that the restaurant on the ground floor offers. If we ignore the rats out front and the fact that someone stole half my pants from the balcony, it’s a great place to live. When I first moved in I had a roommate, Molly from the U.S., who just happened to have the misfortune of checking in at the same time as me. We spent the first few weeks looking for apartments off campus because we couldn’t stand the sight of each other (and she couldn’t understand simple English like ‘knackered’ and ‘bin’) but eventually decided just to stay put and enjoy spending all the money we’d save on accommodation on massages and cheesecake instead. Here's one of the more attractive photos of the two of us, on a free tour (cue tour group hats) of Xiamen back in the first week of term.
Sadly Molly recently ran off to France and left me all alone. To celebrate her departure we bought incredibly stylish animal shirts off the market.
I hope she’s wearing her zebra in Paris with pride.
It was a little weird having my own room at first but 2 single beds pushed together is a luxury I can’t not enjoy. Of course, it’s probably only a matter of time before one of the staff realises my roommate is missing and I get a new one. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, and, in the meantime, continue to rearrange the furniture from time to time to avoid all suspicion.
So here’s my university, officially the most beautiful campus in China. It’s pretty nice.
And here's one of the running tracks, conveniently situated just behind the Cai Qing Jie. Note the original 1921 architecture.
But we’re not here to admire the scenery, obviously. I am a student of Chinese, fully dedicated to the pursuit of fluency in order to foster good relationships between China and the West. Studies are my sole priority.
But here's the nice beach road that starts from the back of campus and runs for miles down the coast.
And here we are at shao kao, the nightly street BBQ...
And here I am by the campus lake.
Also, here's a whimsical piano.
But yes, studies. Us foreign language studes are divided into a number of classes at a variety of levels and I’m in a nice small class of about 8-13 students (attendance is somewhat flexible) where everyone is a different nationality. I am the only native English speaker so am frequently called upon to answer troubling questions such as "What is the difference between a ram and a goat?" and “How does one pronounce ‘comparison’?”.
Classes are fairly unstressful. We have 2 teachers: He Laoshi, our writing and comprehensive teacher who sticks mostly to the book but is too young to dare reprimand us for making any mistakes or not doing our homework (instead she sort of giggles), and Tang Laoshi, a ridiculously cute, if somewhat unprepared, teacher who likes playing games in class, gives us MnMs as prizes and took us to the Botanical gardens for a picnic.
Here's a complete picture of the class, except some of them aren't my classmates. Also, some of my classmates aren't in it.
Last Saturday we had a class Monopoly night.
Tang Laoshi likes showing us clips from China’s Got Talent, the latest of which featured a Chinese woman singing Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma’ who can’t pronounce the Italian so just substitutes in the names of meats and vegetables. Tang Laoshi was pretty sure this was a valuable teaching tool. Later she taught us a poem about a rabbit.
So that’s my current situation: a lowly student again but studying in a pretty great city. Stay tuned for tales of Fuzhou with father, Pingxiang revisited and the many jobs available to white girls in China…
