Chinese New Year Madness

If you are familiar with Chinese New Year you know the insane amount of people on the road during this time of the year. I think for anyone it is hard to imagine how many people really are on the road traveling back to their home towns. Even after five years it is hard for me to picture the whole thing. Essentially everything is being influenced by Chinese New Year here: 

ATMs: It is custom that parents and married couples will hand out money in little red enveloped to their friends and family. Besides the amount of money that is in the envelope also the actual money itself is incredibly symbolic: It has to be new. So people have been flooding ATMs here in the city taking out a lot of cash, which has quite frankly caused quite the shortage of money. I went to 8 different ATMs on Saturday and none of them had any cash! 

Metro: People take the metro with a lot of bags on them, minimizing the space in the metro that is available for people. Commuting here in Guangzhou is based on a very fine line that is separating complete chaos from barely functioning. Last week one of the escalators was broken at the train station I have to transfer at. People were pushing and crowding around the one escalator that was working, essentially blocking everything else. It was quite frightening how much pushing and running was going on. 

UPDATE: So I actually wrote this a couple days ago, but I wanted to see how the situation continues to worsen as spring festival approaches and I was not disappointed. China is experiencing some really cold weather, which caused a lot of trains to delay at the main train station I usually transfer the metro at here in Guangzhou. The station was shut down for metro users, because more than 10'000 people were stranded there on Monday night. The situation just got worse and now this news update: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/02/at-least-100000-chinese-new-year-travellers-stuck-at-railway-station
The sheer amount of humans there is absolutely unimaginable: 

Ticket Prices: The prices for everything that has to do with traveling is soaring at the moment and there are a lot of people selling fake travel tickets online. One of my colleagues had to call the police because he bought a fake ticket. 

... and there are many more that I can't think of right now. 

I was trying to figure out what I should do during my time off and how I could avoid some of the crowds for spring festival. It is impossible to avoid the crowds, but you can definitely minimize the stress level. So I looked at a map of China and was trying to find the last place I would ever go to: Ningxia Province. And rest assured the tickets were quite cheap! I will fly to Ningxia next week and then take the train from Yinchuan to Inner Mongolia where I will meet a friend from there. I am super excited and am planning packing all the warm clothing I can possibly find since it is -20 degrees in Inner Mongolia. 

I wish everyone a great Chinese New Year and for everyone to be patient .... 

China Hasn't Beat Me Yet!

I haven’t written in a while and I am well aware of that. Writing makes me deal with the things that stress me out and sometimes make me uncomfortable, but I have so many topics running through my head and I think it would be good to put them in writing. Here are some things I would like to address in my writing:

Switching from music to podcasts on my commute and what difference it makes

Feeling very much alone in this huge city

Trying not to panic when all I want to do is panic

Trying my hardest to be polite at all times

Talking about that guy who blew his nose for 30min on my metro ride today

Alcohol & Drugs

Sitting for 9 hours a day 

China.

I will write about every single one of these topics and will try my hardest to keep a consistency to posting the blogs.

I am standing so frozen because a soldier was yelling at me not to take pictures next to the sign.... and that was on a weekend trip to Dali in December. Nature is fun. 

Censorship in China

During the week I like to watch BBC world news at 7am while I eat my breakfast just to get a quick glimpse at what is going on outside of China. I have noticed that on some days the reception can be bad and I never second-guessed it, since the internet can also be painfully slow at times. So over the past couple days these black outs have been quite frequent and they only ever last for a couple minutes. Today it happened again and the report went as follows:

“XJP visited various pubs in London while enjoying the company of so and so. Meanwhile in the House of Commons Mr. XX was addressing more serious topics concerning China such as human rights and how last year a prominent lawyer disa----------“ 

My initial thought was: “God damn it. This stupid satellite.” I ate another spoon of oatmeal when suddenly my brain started working. I finished reading 1984 a couple weeks ago and it was probably because of the book that I started thinking about it. This has happened multiple times over the past couple weeks and it has only ever been at interesting times because I remember always wanting to know what people would say the second it blacked out.

Then I thought some more. Yesterday an interview aired where Mr. Xi only answered one very vague question at a press conference before the TV again blacked out.

Immediately my heart started pumping very quickly. It’s censorship! BBC is really being censored!

I thought it was absolutely crazy. I am aware that youtube, facebook and google don’t work. That stuff is the obvious censorship. The one you know about and start to live with in your everyday life. You start to accept it. However, the subtle stuff like some agency disturbing the news broad cast and blacking out the sensitive stuff is mind blowing to me.It felt like I had caught the censorship office trying to sneak into my daily life. 

By the way. I couldn’t post any of these things is it wouldn’t be for a working VPN and it has been hard to find one that works well. In my experience it is becoming stricter.

The Tiny Japanese Restaurant in the Alley

Guangzhou is big. Let me rephrase: Guangzhou is absolutely insane. The city is huge and there are high risers after high risers after high risers for about as far as the eye can see 360 degrees from the top of the largest building in Guangzhou. (I have been there and actually starred in fascination into the distance).

Where I am from the “city” looks a bit different. There is one building that could be considered a high riser and than there are a lot of quaint buildings that make you say … aw… cute… but not here. The city hits you in the face.

Actually when I finally got to my tiny hotel room late at night after my journey from Europe to Guangzhou I put down my bags, looked outside the window and started crying. People do not talk a lot about how hard it is to come to China. (This being my fifth time I returned to China) I was alone. Completely alone. I literally did not know a single person in this city of 12 million. What on earth was I doing here? Why on earth did I study Asian studies? Why does everything have to be so difficult with me?!

I breathed. A lot. Put on my work out clothing and was determined to hit the gym. I got to the gym only to see that it was closed. So I returned to my room, took a shower and went outside for a walk.

Honestly, that is my secret weapon whenever I am overwhelmed with my own life decisions. I walk. It does amazing things and in this case it made me face this city and just explore the area around my hotel. It was right in the middle of Zhujiang New Town so not bad at all.

This continued for a couple nights and every night I dared to walk down smaller and smaller roads and allies. One night after I was chatting to a woman outside her real estate office I decided to take a different route back home and walked down a dimly lit road behind my hotel. When suddenly: A tiny wooden sliding door. I look up: A sign of some sorts. I could make out that it was a Japanese restaurant and it looked awesome. I couldn’t see inside from the outside but it still looked amazing. I decided to return the next night to eat there. (When you have to eat by yourself these places are a blessing)

Yuki is standing in the entrance

So the next night I walked back down the alley and stopped in front of the wooden door. I pushed it to the side and entered. It was a small restaurant. Along the wall to my left was a big long shelf with manga magazines and dozens if not hundreds of bottles. To my right was a small bar with three stools and in the back were two tables. On the left side were three entrances to three individual private dining rooms. I immediately was in love and sat down at the bar. The manager came by and introduced herself as Yuki. I introduced myself and ordered a bowl of ramen. I looked around and all costumers were Japanese men. Interesting. Yuki and I started chatting and it quickly became clear that I would return again soon. Even better: We became friends almost instantly. The ramen was insane and it was determined that I would return again the next night.

I actually returned five times in a row and got to know all the other loyal costumers. The Japanese community is very tight in Guangzhou and it seemed like everyone knew each other. I handed out my business cards and everyone wanted to drink with me.

Yuki and me are good friends now. Her Japanese costumers and friends have taken me out to dinner (three restaurants in one night), I arm wrestled with them, drank copious amounts of alcohol, and was introduced to the Japanese magic pills which get rid of the hangover the next day.

I learned that the Japanese generally work insanely long hours and still manage to maintain a very lively drinking culture almost every single night of the week. Some of the men I have never seen sober.

But that is not the point. The point is that I am so incredibly thankful that they invited me with open arms into their world without a single hesitation. I was welcomed to sit at tables with company bosses, bottles of whiskey were purchased for me, food was ordered and business cards were exchanged. Something like this would truly be unimaginable in my hometown. (Or at least I have never experienced or heard of it.)

This restaurant (of which I still don’t know the name of by the way…. I think its something with a horse) is a huge reason why I feel so much at home in this city and it goes to show that within the vast sea of high risers lie communities that are more welcoming and open to complete strangers than in my quaint and cute home town.

The Woman with the Fish

Some things can only happen in China and this was one of these moments. Maybe one of my top 10 experiences in China.

Let me preface this by telling you a bit about my office building. I work on the eleventh floor in a pretty large building for this area, which is in old Guangzhou (Yuexiu). Next to my office is Levi Strauss and there are numerous other pretty big trading and fashion companies in this building. I work way at the end of the hallway and there is only one more office further away from the elevator. So all in all I would give this office building a pretty reputable ranking.

So two days ago around 4pm I was standing in the hallway outside my company’s office talking to my doctor in Switzerland on the phone about a possible Khmer inhabitant of my stomach. (Who is still surprised about me having stomach problems in Asia? Not me!) Anyway, I am in the middle of telling him about my symptoms when suddenly an elderly woman turns the corner and is quickly approaching me with her hands held right in front of her and in her hands was a huge fish. As I was trying to figure out how in the world I was supposed to simultaneously keep a serious voice while explaining to my doctor my symptoms and get out of the determined woman’s way the fish suddenly came to live. It was alive! This woman had carried a live fish into the office building, had managed to push the elevator button, took the elevator to the 11^th floor and walked down the hallway, with a live fish in her BARE hands. (I have no clue why she didn’t just put the fish in a plastic bag or choose one of the million other better ways to transport a fish)

As the fish flapped it fell out of her hands directly on to the nasty carpet in the hallway. The woman picked it back up as if dropping her wallet and passed me while I was pressed against the wall mortified that I would be its next victim.

At this point I could not take it anymore and had to leave in order to conduct the conversation on my phone. I have no idea where this woman went, but that moment was simply amazing.

My only regret is that Louis C. K. wasn’t there for it, because only he could retell the story with the respect it deserves. 

Yuki and me 

Dinner at a Sichuan Restaurant

 Ramen

The one time I took line 3 to get to the airport

Sunset in Kep, Cambodia