Living in Changzhou, China

Where am I?

I've been over here for about 2 months so far, i'm living in a city called Changzhou, just East of Shanghai.

The city of Changzhou doesn't have much going for itself in terms of touristic attractions (apart from its dinosaur park if you have young children). However, its location is pretty convenient as it is within an hour or two from cities such as Suzhou (the little Venice of China), Nanjing (where the rape of Nanking occurred), Shanghai (well, shanghai...) and Hangzhou (has a huge lake and is surrounded by some lovely temples and mountains).

Arriving in China

As I had never traveled to Asia prior to this, I didn't really know what to expect from China. The first thing that surprised and affected me the most was the fact that it is extremely rare to find English speakers. Once arrived at the Pu Dong airport of Shanghai we were trying to contact the individual whom was supposed to pick us up. However, using Chinese phone booths and buying a Chinese sim card wasn't as easy of a feat as one would expect. Even the people at the tourist information desk only spoke 1 or 2 words of English. I've only really got myself to blame in this situation though as I was the one in a foreign country armed with only a handful of words in their language:

• Nihao = Hello
• Xie xie = Thanks
• Wo bu dong = I don't understand

My Chinese has since evolved and I can proudly say that my Chinese cursing is second to none(but I still can't ask for bananas from my local supermarket).

The second shock was how developed everything was. Before coming over, I had this image of China having men running around carrying people in carts everywhere such as the guys on the right here (slight exaggeration). But as a matter of fact, the cars on the roads were all decent, quite a few BMWs and Mercs driving around and it's not uncommon to see the odd pink Bentley continental or pimped out Audi tt drive by.

I jumped on the tube to the other end of Shanghai to catch my train and was amazed by the fact that wifi was available throughout the whole line, something that we have yet to achieve on the London underground. Needless to say, the dates at which the two systems of transportation were built are decades apart, but it was not something I was expecting.

Once arrived at the station, Ticket lines were extremely long and I had to display my passport in order to purchase a train ticket(apparently this is to avoid mass purchases from one individual whom will then resell the tickets at a greater price). Queuing is something that is embedded deeply within the British culture, however the way they queue in China is quite different. You literally have to have your belly touching the person in front of you in the queue, if not some sneaky Chinese man will come along and squeeze into the slightest gap of opportunity you give him. 

Another baffling difference in culture between the English and the Chinese is that over here they do not wait for you to get off the train/tube/elevator/bus before jumping on. It seems quite backwards to me because it just lengthens the duration of the stop seeing as it slows down the whole process of disembarking -> embarking. At first it angered me, but by now I have embraced the madness and treat every disembarkation as a rugby scrum.

On the train itself, it was quite noisy, there seems to be some kind of resistance against the use of headphones in this country. Everybody was watching movies on their ipads with loudspeaker on. Some passengers had brought this spiky fruit called durian on the train with them, which was releasing some of the worst odors. If you're ever given the opportunity, do not eat that fruit.