Welcome to Zhuhai!

A country full of contrasts but also homogeneities. Soon you will understand.

Very exhausted and kind of confused concerning the time zones, we started our journey with the second we stepped on Chinese soil. Very strong Visa controls, especially affecting the Indians and Pakistanis, withheld us from leaving the airport. After passing the Visa control successfully we got our baggage and were welcomed by a friend of us. We got on the metro and I instantly observed a few things. The people are kind and always ready to help, they are straight-forward and finally, very interested which could be determined by their constant curious looks at us. I discovered that looking at people can be interpreted as very rude. But everytime I see a Non-Chinese person (I will call them “Laowai” – 老外 – foreigner) I will do the same thing: I will stare at them asking myself what they are doing here. Actually they are doing the same thing as me – Discovering China.

There are a few challenges you have to undertake when coming as a foreigner to Zhuhai. Like getting used to…

• Stunning nature and infrastructure (everything’s so green!)
• Awesome people
• Mouth-watering food
• A fast-living life
• Earth closets
• Spitting, Burping and Farting in public
• Earpiercing noises and awful smells
• The matresses are really hard

We ate a lot right away the day we arrived. It is called “Dim Sum” and it was really delicious. Dim Sum is a Cantonese (regional culture with its own dialect – there are actually dozens of such “small” cultures in the Chinese culture – so a culture in a culture itself I would say) specialty. You order a lot of small dishes together which are shared with everyone.

After that we took a taxi to Zhuhai. And from this second everything went really really fast. I’d like to sum up what we’ve experienced in only four days.

First of all, we took a bus and went on a walk to the University.

After visiting the University and having a first look around the campus, we went to a restaurant. In Zhuhai and I suppose in all of China you can get really cheap but delicious food. You can have a full meal for just 2,00€ or 3,00€. And sometimes even less! (Still, there is good and bad quality food and you have to learn to distinguish it one from another).

On the next days we did a lot of paper work. The “level of bureaucracy” is very high. We have to do 10 steps to get our real Visa (for students) that is called residence permit. Until today (Note: a week has passed) we managed to do 7 steps. It’s a lot of work! Some people when you ask them for help are really trying to help and are quite helpful but some people don’t even bother. That is when it is time for you to deal things on your own which really isn’t easy. But from my experience most Chinese people are really friendly and don’t refuse to help.

On our second day we already started searching for an apartment. We had been staying in an AirB&B. Thanks to our friend we managed to do a lot on those two days. Without her we would have been lost! Another thing which helps us a lot is that my girlfriend speaks and understands the regional dialect – Cantonese a bit. Local people, especially elder citizens, speak Cantonese beside Mandarin. On the second evening we had some apartment tours (the apartment agencies are working till 10 pm and we also found out that we can call them till 12 am – work is life!). That is why we already could move into the apartment on the third evening. It’s just so easy in China. Most Chinese apartments are already furnished. Therefore the rent is a bit higher. We got a really nice small place (about 40qm) in a very good and secure neighborhood for about 300€ monthly. We just haven’t had the time to search for a few days more because of our late arrival which was caused by the missing document for the Visa I mentioned in my blog before.

So in the meantime we also managed to open a Chinese bank account and figured out how to use WeChatPay which is essential in China.

But what is WeChatPay?

WeChat is What’sApp and Facebook combined in one single app. You can chat with friends or post things about your life etc. But WeChat is even more! Since you can’t access What’s App, Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. in China without any VPN connection (because of the Great Firewall of China), you have to rely on WeChat. And WeChat has it all! WeChatPay is the future! Why? Because you don’t need to take your cash or credit card with you anymore. Do I sound like an advertiser? I don’t care. It’s awesome! You can pay directly per WeChat by using QR codes (those black and white squares). It’s a lot safer concerning pickpockets and it’s quite convenient! Even every little Baozi seller has his own QR code printed. So you just have to take your smartphone out of your pocket, enter WeChat and pay!

Another few things I want to mention before signing off:

• There are a lot of malls here
• I like Baozi and bubble tea very much (consuming them everyday)
• The moon on this Friday was really beautiful (The Moon festival is an important Chinese day on which the Chinese family traditionally comes together and celebrates the reunion and the legend of Chang’e)
• I like Malatang but without the “la”
• The coast of Zhuhai is beautiful, but you can’t swim in there (it’s just too polluted. Nevertheless we saw a lot of official workers and unofficial volunteers cleaning the beach!)
• I love Chinese bookstores. There are even bookstores open 24 hours a day and they have such an interesting variety of books. They even have hundreds of books about the Marvel Heroes which my little brother likes a lot. I bought some on Chinese history and even Ernest Hemingway’s “The old man and the sea” (of course in Chinese)
• I thought Walmart would be different. It’s more like a Germany’s “Real”

After having attended a few really interesting lectures on Chinese culture, we finally got our Chinese classes time table:

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
08:00-09:40			Self-Study	Plenum	Oral Chinese
10:00-11:40	Cultural Chinese	Plenum	Plenum	听力	Cultural Chinese
14:20-16:00	Self-Study	Self-Study	Oral Chinese	Cultural Chinese	Writing Chinese
16:20-18:00		听力	Plenum

The Russian version is coming soon!!!