blog.thequonk.com

It’s 07:00 in the morning and it’s pouring rain. Mr. Chen arrives in his van to pick me up to take me to the airport. It’s my bumpiest ride to the airport ever. The first bridge that we cross in Wuchang is all pot holes. There’s a pot hole every five centimetres, I kid you not. I don’t remember ever going over a bridge like that in Wuhan. The rest of the ride to the airport is smooth though. I am scheduled to pick up my paper ticket at the Ctrip Counter #38 between 08:00 to 09:00 in Terminal 2. I arrive on time. So good, so far. I stand in front of the monitors looking for my flight number to figure out which area I go to check in my luggage. After about 10 refreshes, I find it! Sections A08-16. I head there and find a tour group of 20 standing around in front of the counters in a haphazard queue, if any. Check in just opened, I have lots of time so I wait patiently behind them. It’s finally my turn after some random guy–not part of the tour group–decides to cut in line right in front of me. I keep my mouth shut, though my mind rolls its eye at him for being so rude.

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. (more…)

Today is my first weekend in Shanghai. Luckily, I just got back from shopping, it’s pouring outside now. It’s been raining every night. I started my day early and left the guest house before eight. I was walking towards the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park with no destination in mind. Okay, fine, I was trying to see how far the subway was by walking, but I never got that far because I kept on turning into side streets that had more stores. I need a sign on my head that says, “I don’t speak Mandarin.” It gets tiring telling every salesperson that I don’t speak Mandarin in Mandarin when they start telling me how great their new products are. I think I should enter a store and start spewing English. There weren’t a lot of cool stores but I eventually hit a bunch of food places. There were so many options for lunch but I decided to stop at a Korean place to have some spicy tofu/vegetable soup with rice. My stomach is still holding up. No mishaps so far.

I finally decided that it was time to take a cab to the Jīnqiáo Carrefour–because my legs were getting tired. It’s like a French Wal-Mart, it’s pretty popular among the teachers at SMIC. The Carrefour is huge. The biggest store I can think of is Costco and this Carrefour is definitely larger than Costco. Costco is roomy with a lot of space to maneuver your shopping cart, but not at this Carrefour. They have a little imported foods section where you can get stuff like Kraft Mac & Cheese, dried pasta, pesto, Japanese Glico curry pastes, and Korean hot chili pastes. I went to go buy a hair dryer because it’s kind of hard to put my hair in a ponytail when it’s so short. I bought a bright yellow Panasonic one for ¥89. The saleswoman that helped me didn’t speak English so she was comparing the Panasonic hair dryers for me by point at the different number of settings/speeds and pointing at “Cool” on the box—as in cool air, not “Gnarly, Dude!” cool.

I’m in Shanghai for two weeks for training, so I’m staying in a guestroom at the Shanghai school. They call this area “SMIC world” because there’s an entire block dedicated to apartments and offices for SMIC employees. I can’t set up Internet here because I’m leaving for Wuhan in two weeks, so I’m using someone’s 11.0 Mbps unsecured b-wireless connection that keeps on kicking me off every so often. It’s better than not having Internet at all but it’s really annoying sending consecutive messages on MSN and having them returned undelivered. I’ve opted to use Skype during this time, since it saves the messages until you log back on. I don’t have any pictures for you because this Internet connection won’t let me upload a large amount of data without having a headache. You’ll have to wait until I get my Internet set up in Wuhan. I always forget to take pictures of my food. I guess it’s kind of weird to pull out a camera when you’re with new people and snap photos of your meal. (more…)

I’m heading to China soon and this post has been sitting in my Drafts on my old web server for a long time now. Since I lost all my data from that side because I have poor back-up habits, I had to try to recreate the list. It’s still nowhere close to the size of the old one, but it will have to do for now. I made this list to keep track of China-related stuff that I could go back to whenever I needed it. I had it in Private, but figured it might be helpful for someone else too. When I remember what other things I had on it, I’ll add or make a new post.

Chinese Consular Information in Toronto

Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Toronto
240 St. George St. Toronto, ON M5R 2P4
Office Hours: 09:00 – 12:00, 13:30 – 15:30 Monday through Fridays (except holidays)
Tel: 416-964-8861
Fax: 426-324-9010

• Chinese Visa Application Requirements
  • Passport, original copy. Make sure it expires no more than six months after your return date and has enough blank pages.
  • Visa Application Form. Don’t forget to sign the form.
  • Passport Photo. Attach it to your visa application form.
  • You must apply and pick up your visa in person.
  • You pay for the visa when you pick it up. Bring cash.

(more…)