Merry December!
It’s crazy to think that I’ve now been in China for a month! In many ways it feels like so long ago since I left England, but in other ways it’s like no time has passed at all.
There's not really any photos for this post, so i'll just post some smashing photos from my walk around Zhujiang New Town!
I haven’t written in a while, but for good reason – I’ve been very busy. Work has kept me for 6 days a week, the landlady informed me that I would have to move – so I began looking for apartments, only for her to later say that I was ok to stay – and best of all, Yinzi now has a job here in Guangzhou! So to celebrate, she has gone back home leaving me to fend for myself for a week…which made me feel quite nervous at first (with still only the basic speech to just about order some foods in restaurants), but it’s a good opportunity to prove myself capable with the safe knowledge that she will return soon and stay!
What I’ve learnt in my first month
Time
Now that I’m 1/6th of the way through my time here I can’t help but try to visualise the time ahead based on the past month. However I find that the one key thing I’ve learnt so far through coming to China is that time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…
If I think back to the day I left the airport (6th November) it feels like another age ago, like a distant chapter of my life. However somehow when I look back at images from Halloween – a week before I flew to Hong Kong – it feels like just yesterday…and I think about my time in Hong kong, that feels so close; but my first day in Guangzhou feels so much further. I can’t really make sense of this, and it basically comes down to one thing – time is a load of bulls**t – or maybe it would be nicer to say that it’s just a social construct; that life is not really a set of events but just one continuous present feeling, where a past doesn’t exist (beyond memory, which is a footprint of a previous now which reliving is just a sensation that is part of the present feeling) and the future is just an illusion based on assumptions made by these memories.
Anyway, I’ll put a stop to this point here, as I really can bang on about it forever…
Chinese People and Cultural points
I think there are quite a few stereotypes for Chinese people – that they’re all good at maths - or that they’re highly mannered, dignified, well-spoken, peaceful and elegant civilisation (which is a more traditional view).
I always believed the latter, but things are certainly different. Not to say that they are the exact opposite, but really they’re just very normal people. I think maybe my first surprise was how outspoken and verbal everyone is here; people I have met speak very boldly and quite loudly, whereas I always viewed Chinese people as a more quiet and reserved culture. This certainly isn’t a negative point, if anything it’s great! Although crowds and streets are loud with people’s voices (which can hinder my sleep some nights) it really adds life to the streets and shops. Speech is very direct when you enter a store or meet someone on the street. Yinzi will always enter a store with me and almost instantly appear as though she’s made friends with the people inside. In a strange (and always quite loud) way, it always feels so much more relaxed.
People here are very relaxed in fact. I went to Beijing road last weekend which is one of the major shopping streets in Guangzhou – and like all major streets in large Chinese cities, the roads are chaotic; but there are men just parked on the side of the road asleep in their carts, or sleeping outside of their shops just leaving items out on display for anyone to take. It’s hard for me to understand how they manage to sleep through the noise and to feel comfortable when surrounded by so many people, but it’s pretty cool.
There are also quite a few rules when it comes to eating, which I learnt the hard way. The first is specific to the south (so I hear), where the first cup of tea served is used to clean bowls and chopsticks, and is then disposed of. When I had dinner with my colleagues, they laughed when I downed the first cup of tea while oblivious to everyone gently cleaning their cutlery….Another one I learnt was about using chopsticks, and how important it can be about placing them. It turns out that if you stick your chopsticks so that they stick upwards in the bowl is highly offensive. Apparently, it is to represent 2 incense sticks burnt at funerals, thus suggesting that you wish death upon those who are cooking/eating with you. I probably did this quite a few times until it was pointed out to me….
Thinking – Too much of a good thing
Although a month is quite a long time in another country, I’d say it’s not enough to learn an entire culture – so up until now most of the things I’ve learnt have been about myself, and how I go about my life.
I thought back to before I came to China and how much I wanted to come here, but pessimism got the better of me due to how difficult the process was. Once my trip was confirmed, I became terrified (as expressed in my first blog post). I suddenly thought about all the things I will miss back home, all the difficult times ahead – how can I cope? I had so much time between learning that I was going to china and coming here, which gave me a LOT of time to think, and a lot of thinking was done….
Now I know that the most difficult part was taking that first leap and coming here, which was made even more difficult due to all these anxious thoughts. I know now that the thoughts are always worse than the feelings; like in the past if I felt I would fail an exam then the thought was overwhelmingly dreadful. Then when I got my results for my A-levels, they weren’t as good as I hoped for. A little bit of anger here are there, then came to terms with it and recovered pretty fast. An injection is always more painful before it happens, then it happens, and it was just a little irritating jab…. A book I’m reading now called “Wisdom of Insecurity” by the philosopher Alan Watts explains it perfectly:
“You want to be happy, to forget yourself, and yet the more you try to forget yourself, the more you remember the self you want to forget. You want to escape from pain, but the more you struggle to escape, the more you inflame the agony. You are afraid and want to be brave, but the effort to be brave is fear trying to run away from itself. You want peace of mind, but the attempt to pacify it is like trying to calm the waves with a flat-iron.”
I’m in China, it’s an exciting time in my life, and a time to just keep going with the waves.
So anyway, the other stuff I’ll write in my next post later this week, such as my first paycheck and the awesome things I decided to spend it on!
Zai’Jian!
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