Speaking of horns, I hate walking down Liufang, it’s “the village” just up the street from us. I hate it when I’m walking down the narrow streets and hear a van come down it while s/he’s blaring the horn to let you know that they’re there. It’s LOUD! Try standing at the bus stop and have a bus honk their horn 20m away. That’s even louder!

If there are others with me while crossing the street, I let them take the lead. I still hesitate when they decide to cross but I do my little freak-out skip across the street instead of the calm and collected prance of my neighbour.

I don’t think it’s a China-only thing. When I cross at a crosswalk in Toronto, I still don’t cross if there’s a car that looks like they’re still going 30 km/h and barely slowing down. I wait for them to come to a near stop before I walk out. I’d rather be safe than sorry. I can’t assume that they noticed the blinking crosswalk lights with all the distractions in cars.

This week, I’m working on a project for my students. Little paper craft houses for our little town. I’m glad I have a small class just finishing up the last few and then I’m off to bed. Anyone want to purchase property in our little town of 12? Contact Karen Realty, you know where to find me.

Today, I went to extend my resident permit. I was going with someone from HR and two other people that needed to renew their permits, too. I felt like I was doing something wrong by putting on my seat belt when I sat down in the van but I can’t help from doing it. I’ve been in a few accidents, one of them in China, so I understand how precious the seat belt really is. I feel like I should stop wearing it so I don’t offend the drivers but Wuhan driving is kind of crazy sometimes.

We have school buses that drive students home after school. The buses are supervised by two teachers. I had to take over someone on Friday. I love the driver, he’s an awesome guy, but I get scared when I’m in the bus sometimes. I don’t know exactly how fast he was going but it felt like 80 kph because it sounded like the bus was working pretty hard but maybe it was only 60 kph. We’d hit bumps on the road and I’d fly half a feet into the air. I would flinch whenever he braked hard to avoid the vehicle in front of him or the person that was jaywalking across the street.

As I am tired, I am going to stop right here and go to bed. Good night. :p

My luggage is checked. I head to the waiting area but remember that I have a bottle of grapefruit juice in my bag. I sit down and finish my drink while listening to some music playing on someone’s laptop and watching whatever is playing on the huge monitor in front of me–it looks like some Victoria Secret fashion show of Santa lingerie. All done. I find myself a recycling bin and head to the “Safety Check Area.” No liquids? Check. No lighters? Check. Some man is boarding in 10 minutes, I let him go ahead of me. Carry-on scan time! “I have a laptop.” “Okay, take it out, please.” I walk through the detector, green light, I’m clear. I don’t have to take off my shoes this time because I’m wearing my Crocs. I pack up my laptop and head to the departure gate. I set up shop a couple rows from my departure gate. I’m in denial and think that Wuhan has turned to the light and decided to offer free Internet at their airport. No luck. The only unsecured wireless network is China Mobile’s and they require a CMCC account. It’s about 08:30 and my flight isn’t scheduled to take off until 10:20 so I end up listening to music until about 09:30. I look at the monitor above my departure gate: “ETD 11:50″ Delayed 1h20m! Fine. Listen to more music, stand up and stretch a million times, open up a bag of Chinese chip-style rice-cake-like snack to nibble on because I’m getting hungry.

I see the plane! Time to pack up and sit and twiddle my thumbs while all the passengers get off the plane and we can finally board the plane. There’s the announcement. China Eastern Airline cardholders get priority boarding. Okay, twiddle my thumbs a little longer. There’s only two people left in the line, my turn. Seat 19A. Window seat! 19B is empty, yes! I pick up the safety booklet (because you’re suppose to review it every time you get on a plane!) and read it through. I chuckle at the baby doll a woman is holding and the photoshopped water to show how to use the seat as a floatation device. We sit around for a while and we hear an announcement on the loudspeaker. Due to poor weather conditions en route to Shanghai, the flight has been delayed indefinitely. I shuffle through the 3-4 publications in the seat pocket in front of me. Oooh, Shanghai Expo 2010. It’s in Chinese and English. A little while after, they tell us they’re going to start serving lunch. The flight attendants serve the back 3 rows when another announcement is made. It looks like the weather en route to Shanghai has cleared up, we’re taking off in 5 minutes. Lunch is on hold, time to prepare for take off. *rumble* That’s the engines warming up. I look out the window. The wing flaps are adjusting, we’re almost ready to go! The plane heads to the runway. We’re on standby for, what feels like, 10 minutes. I nod off. I wake up to the plane moving. Finally, we’re taking off! As we rise higher and higher, Wuhan slowly grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears below us as we enter a fog of white clouds. That’s all we see for the rest of the flight. We hit a bit of turbulence once we get into the clouds but it only lasts about a minute before it calms down.

We’re almost at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, we hit some more turbulence that feels like the drops on the Mindbuster. About 5 minutes before the announcement to land comes on, we change elevations and my right ear doesn’t find it’s equilibrium even after trying to swallow 20 times. It slowly starts to feel like my brain is being pulled out from my ear and I have this ache all along the right side of my head. Is this what a migraine feels like? The ache doesn’t go away until we’ve landed and we’re rolling into the passenger drop off. The pain is gone! My ear drum isn’t going to explode! *cheer* Arrival time, 13:40.

I get out of the plane and walk down the metal stairs that don’t have coloured strips to tell you where the next step is. I took care, didn’t stumble and didn’t look like a klutz. I boarded the shuttle that drops us off at the domestic arrivals door. I’m one of the lasts, so I squeeze in. Some girl doesn’t take off her backpack and ends up taking up blocking my only path to go further into the shuttle to make room for more people. I end up squishing between the backpack girl, some 50-year-old Japanese guy and a 60-year-old Chinese lady. I can reach the overhead handle, I feel gigantic! My arms start to give because I’m holding my carry-ons in one hand but we’re almost there! Must… hold… on. I make it! We walk through the domestic arrivals door and I’m heading the pack. Baggage claim, up the escalators. The escalators aren’t turned on yet. Incentive to walk the stairs! Halfway up the stairs, the PVG employee gets to the escalator and turns it on.

I follow a series of signs and head down another flight of stairs and I arrive at baggage claim. Monitor says we can find our luggage on belt 2, to my left. I pick up a trolley and head to belt 2. First one there. At the start of the belt. Baggage starts to roll out. A total of one bag in first/business class. o.O Roll, roll, roll. Not mine, not mine, not mine. Of course, first to check in, last to get her luggage, as always.
I walk to the exit and they check to make sure I didn’t take someone else’s luggage by checking my luggage receipts. Right, you’re not an idiot, you can go through. First stop, SPD bank machine. Withdraw some cash and head to currency exchange. They sell Canadian in Terminal 1, yes! I get my cash and head to Terminal 2. Terminal 2 is packed, a flight just arrived and people were streaming out of departures and clogging up the hallway. It just so happens that my destination is on the other side of the crowd. I make my way through the crowd and get to my destination, the “Cash Recycling” machine, also known as the ATM. I pull out more money. There’s maximum withdrawals per transaction. I didn’t want to stand at one machine putting my card in multiple times, so I just go around to different machines–strange, I know. The guy behind me is a foreigner too. At first, he walked past the machine not realizing that “cash recycling” meant ATM before the security pointed him in the right direction. I mean, duh, who doesn’t know “cash recycling” means ATM, right? *boggle*

I have nothing else to do so I head to check-in. They tell me my flight has been delayed five hours. “Would you like another flight that connects through Vancouver?” The first and last time I connected through Vancouver I missed my connecting flight because Customs took to long. “Mmm… no thank you, I’ll wait.” Oh, I get a 70 RMB coupon for food, valid in any Terminal 2 restaurant. Score! I can’t find a vegan option anywhere and I’m starving! I didn’t have breakfast. I pick coffee with 3 packs of brown sugar and noodles in soup with seafood. It seemed like it had the least animal product in it, but, in fact, it came with half a boiled egg as well as two pieces of fish- or shrimp-meat chunks. It came with pink kimchi too!

I spend the remaining 7 hours of my wait at gate D75 surfing the web and dealing with tax stuff for my last two months of salary. Shanghai is awesome enough to offer free wireless or at least someone named “spia-guest” gives us free wireless. Since my last visit, they’ve added little outlet hubs with universal plugs where people can plug in their laptops or other electronic devices so they can burn energy while they wait. I used to use the plugs in the floor that no one seems to know about.

Everyone at school wears them, so I’m just jumping on the band wagon 10 months late at the school and 4 years late in the world. I bought a full-back version of the Malindi and an Audrey. I don’t like the bow on the Audrey much but I was there and I was buying one anyways and they were going to be indoor shoes so it didn’t really matter that much. I like the Olivia but the huge faux-gem kind of irked me so I put it back on the shelf. I spent 428 CNY for both, which according to the website and today’s exchange rate and taking into account Ontario taxes, I’m paying the same price. They’re kind of comfy. I’m just not fond of the plastic-on-skin noises if I’m not wearing socks. Some of their styles are cute but others are really tacky. You win some, you lose some.

You gotta love sleepless blog posts.

The Guānggǔ Music Festival is a televised event in Wuhan. I’m not sure about the rest of China. It seemed like a big thing. The production had stage monitors, fancy-shmancy lighting, pyrotechnics like fireworks and flamethrowers, smoke machines, bubble machines, and exploding containers of gold paper that would shower the stage. They were passing out signs for the audience to hold up to the cameras when it passed by and whistles and glow sticks and colourful lightsabers. They cued fake applause, cheers and whistles. The works! It was pretty cool to see it all first hand.

I haven’t been able to find any articles on last night’s show yet, but here is the old one.

“光谷音乐节” on 武汉晚报 (May 24, 2009) (*.pdf) You can read the article in shoddy English here.

We don’t have a 4-day weekend, but we still have time to travel. Some of the teachers and I are going to head to Hángzhōu (杭州) to do the tourist thing. I really don’t know what we’re doing when we get there, but they have it all planned. We’re taking off by plane tomorrow after work and then coming back by train Saturday morning, just in time for the music festival. I did some digging around and Hángzhōu happens to be the home of the Lóngjǐng tea or Dragonwell tea (龙井茶). I’ll have to buy myself some of that. It looks like it will cost me about ¥300/box. o.O

Every Monday, we have flag ceremony in the morning instead of homeroom. After standing at attention for the Chinese national anthem a student stands under the flag and says a speech about a relevant topic for the week. This Monday, it was the Dragonboat Festival. Crystal talked about the best-known origins of the festival, the story of Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan was a scholar and a minister to the King from the Southern Chu during the Warring States Periods. The King from the Southern Chu allied with a stronger state. Qu opposed the alliance and was banished and accused of treason. Years later, the alliance state conquered the Chu capital. After this news, Qu committed suicide on the fifth day of the fifth month by drowning himself in the Mìluó River (汨罗江).

The story says that locals that admired Qu Yuan tried to retrieve his body from the river by paddling out on boats. This is said to be the origin of the dragonboats. In hopes to stop the fish from feeding on his body, the locals threw rice into the river to feed the fish. This is said to be the origin of the rice dumpling, zòngzi (粽子) that is commonly eaten during the festival. I have some in my fridge right now. They’re so teeny tiny and cute.

We find out over the weekend that the judges have selected 3 performances from our school. Now, we have to prep for the big show on Saturday because there’s a ¥5000 prize money for the first-place performance!

Flying back to Canada

I have to make a transfer in Shanghai and then it’s a direct flight to the T-dot. My flight back to Vancity was mostly Chinese food, I wonder what I’ll get to eat this time. Things for me to remember:

• Recommended check-in time is 150 minutes before boarding for international flights from Shanghai.
• Review: Carry-On Baggage, Liquid Rules
• Don’t forget to have Baggage ID Cards, because so many people have lost their luggage.
• Keep track of what I need to declare on my Form E311.
• Remember where I recently traveled and make sure I’m feeling a-okay!

My coworker’s wife arrived in Wuhan last week from the U.S. She came into Wuhan from Hong Kong. When the plane landed, airport personnel boarded the plane and took everyone’s temperature. The passengers went to Customs and had their temperature checked again. If one person on the plane had an abnormal temperature, everyone on the flight was quarantined. It took my coworker’s wife about an hour to get from the plane to the passenger pick-up area. I have to plan my transfer accordingly because I have to fly from Wuhan to Shanghai.

Resources:
- “I Declare” from Canada Border Services Agency

Going Postal

If it turns out that I need to send things by post to get under the weight limit on my checked bags, I have to be prepared!

Resources:
- China Post on Beijing Time

Bring me back a…

I’m a terrible shopper, especially when it’s not in my native language. I also hate how salespeople follow you around all over the store, it makes me feel all uncomfortable. But I said I would try to find certain things for people and I have and will continue to try.

• Chinese silk jacket, any style (Male Large) [1]
• Shiseido Lostalot Faceline Effector [1] [2]
• Sugus soft candy [1]

You can’t beat the Sugus here. It’s so much better than the ones I’ve eaten in Toronto. I’ve found Shiseido but not the Lostalot Faceline Effector. By the time my mom asked me to buy a silk jacket for our uncle it was already 25 degrees outside. I’ve only seen silk jackets at the silk emporium in Xi’an and those were ridiculously priced or really ugly ones that I wouldn’t want to see my uncle in.

Funds

I have a small portion of my salary paid to me in my Chinese bank accounts and the rest into a USD account. Getting money out of the USD account will be no problem. It’s the Chinese accounts I need to think about. My options:

• Transfer money by Western Union.
• Use my Chinese bank card in Canada.
• Carry up to $10,000 CDN in RMB with me on the airplane.

You can transfer money through Western Union by visiting any of the participating Chinese banks. There are many banks in Wuhan that I can visit to transfer money

China Unionpay is to China as debit is to Canada. Just this January, China Unionpay it is said that Toronto does have some merchants that take China Unionpay cards. The chances of me using point-of-service payment

Diet

I knew coming over to China meant I would have to change my diet. I’m a freegan over here since I get breakfast and lunch served at school 5-days a week. By myself, I still don’t eat meat. I haven’t weighed myself but I’m pretty certain I’ve gained weight. I’m working my way back to veganism when I step off the plane.

Resources

• Canuck Abroad