Week 1: Culture Shocks? More like the Culture Rocks!

So I have now been here for seven full days. There is so, so much to tell, so I'm going to break it down into categories. Enjoy!

Food

My delish (forbidden) fruit skewer

AKA my favourite thing, besides food. The food here is AWESOME. On Monday, I bought a fruit skewer coated in a sugar syrup. Three wonderful, juicy mouth-fulls into it I suddenly thought: I am going to get food poisoning. On my first full day. Why?! Why did I pick this fruit??!!
Nonetheless I also tried some free tasters of Chinese sweets (not that sweet, but instead they're like a stretchy goo covered in sesame seeds) and some of Evie's deep-fried crabs on a skewer. Equally delish.

On Monday we also visited a tea farm, complete with talk and demonstration (using iodine) of how green tea cleans out your insides, where we got further free samples of biscuits, sweets and nuts. I didn't buy any, as they weren't particularly special, but I did buy some gut-scourging green-tea miracle pills.

Having noodles for breakfast was weird, but tasty. Lunch's excitement has worn off. Rice every day, with assorted bowls of things from the canteen. The biggest disappointment are the meat dishes which look nice, but then are distinctly worse-off for being cold.

Two lovely fish heads. 

In the evening we go exploring. Everything is SO CHEAP. On Monday, we went to this crazy place where you cook your own selection of dishes in a pan of flavoured water/soup-like stuff. £13 for five people. Two consecutive evenings but with different people I went to an awesome, authentic restaurant where we ate stuff like pak choi, broccoli, chicken feet, fish heads, sweet and sour pork etc. First night: selection of ten dishes, rice, and two beers = I paid £5.50. Second night at same place: selection of 14 dishes, rice, and two beers = I paid £4 (as was split between more people).
A bottle of sprite is 20p in the canteen.
Yesterday, we visited the largest campus of Zhejiang University, and I had an amazing noodle soup full of yummy stuff, and dumplings (dumplings are WONDERFUL).

Haagen-Dazs afternoon tea

Today, we spent the day with families. I was with Katie, and we got very lucky with our family. They were SO generous! Mum, Dad and Daughter (13). Lunch: we went to a western-style restaurant and ate with cutlery for the first time in a week! I had seafood soup (Chinese bread was better than my experience of Italian bread), then cod on a bed of tomatoes, then a weird cake I didn't like so I shared Katie's lemon marscapone cheesecake thing. I had green tea and a mango smoothie (which came in a bowl). Weird cultural observation: the Mum ordered for the Dad and Daughter while the former was off picking up the latter from school, and the waiting staff brought out their food even though they hadn't yet arrived. And the staff brought out all of food whenever it was ready - so barely had we started our soups that Katie's main course had arrived! My dessert was sitting opposite me all the way through my main course... Then we went to a famous market street, and I tried a 'sweet'. Not very sweet, but had a rice exterior and a bean-paste interior. Could have been worse. Then (after buying a pretty fan) I got some 'medical' green tea. Then we went to a Haagen-Dazs store, and had a three-tier of desserts and fruit and ice cream. I also had Earl Grey tea. Delish.

THEN we went and had dinner which was the BEST thing I have sampled so far. Simply amazing. Again, the waiting staff just brought out dishes as they were ready rather than serving it all at once but making us wait. I suppose there's a logic in that. We had sunflower seeds to snack on, then our dishes were: prawns in sauce (eat everything, shell and all, except the head, which 'proper' Chinese people spit onto their plate); meat skewers (meat, then fat, then meat etc.); some weird sweet pastry thing served with tomatoes, cucumber and dressing; 'Cantonese kale stems' - really nice; things similar to kidney beans; a salt bone / yam soup - delish; and then.... piece de resistance.... the family had ordered an entire duck for us. We watched the chef carve the entire duck. First, you eat the skin dipped in sugar - scrummy; then, you eat the parts he has cut off for you like duck pancakes - pancake, ducks, sauce, cucumber and spring onion. But that's not it. Then they take away the carcass, cut it up with all the remaining bits of flesh on it, and they deep fry it with spices and small morsels of HEAVEN. Then they bring it back and you eat that. I genuinely could not stop eating.
Simply wonderful, and the restaurant looked out over the tea-fields.
So, so far in my culinary experience I am putting on weight, rather than losing it as I expected. I have also eaten fruit, salad and ice-cream despite guidebook warnings that you are not to eat such things. I could actually do with some food poisoning, to ease things up, if you get my drift... You may not be such a food fanatic as me, so I'll move on....

Teaching/ Mandarin
In total we're going to have 40 hours of Mandarin lessons here, which is pretty cool. So far, we have gone from knowing nothing, to knowing how to greet, numbers, asking when someone's birthday is and what someone is going to do at X time of day. Our laoshi (teacher), JinJin, is excellent. Enthusiastic every day, and helpful, and interesting to talk to in the breaks about how characters work, for example (we're only doing pinying (phoentic Chinese), not characters). She lives at home as she is unmarried - as she said, 'why would you not live at home? It's free!' - and is TINY, yet she said she is considered 'a bit fat' by Chinese standards. Daughter in family visit was also concerned about putting on weight, aged 13, so I think there is pressure on unmarried women to 'fit the mould' and not squeeze over the edge, as it were...
Anyway, back to the Mandarin. The hardest thing is getting the tones right and pronouncing the pinying correctly, as a 'zh' is pronounced as a 'j' sound. So you have to concentrate. But I'm really enjoying it. The grammar is also a lot easier; there are no tenses or subject conjugations in Mandarin which makes things a lot simpler! I won't be anywhere near a confident speaker-level by the end of my time here, but this experience is giving me a flavour of the language, alongside the culture, which is enhancing my experience.

Traffic/Roads
Traffic rules? Highway Code? Not in China. Scooters go down roads the wrong way. Bicycles do whatever they like: no helmet, instead people wear coats on their fronts and oven gloves (no jokes) to protect their hands, while children ride between their knees or on the back. Taxis stop wherever they like. Gone down the wrong road? Do a U-turn at the next available enormous cross-roads with traffic streaming towards you, why not? Oh, and it's obligatory to use your horn if the person ahead of you isn't nearly touching the car ahead of it. Or even if there's nothing for metres around you, just honk: you'll blend right in - honest. I tried asking Chinese people what the road death rate is, but they either didn't understand or they avoided the question. In any case, I asked if they were scared when cycling in the roads and they looked at me like a crazy person: why on earth would anyone be scared, cycling surrounded by lunatics?
I find it all very entertaining, personally.

Hygiene/Toilet paper
Toilet paper doesn't go in the loo here, it goes in an open waste paper basket next to the loo. Lovely. There is no soap available in public loos. Equally lovely. Apparently water does the trick here (although since you cannot drink the tapwater in China, maybe it has enough harmful bacteria in it to kill the loo-germs... take your pick). Loos are also backwards-facing toilet seats in the ground, so you squat and wee facing the hole.
The cleanliness of the streets though is impeccable. Hardly any rubbish around. Lots of street-sweepers though, which is probably the reason. They were large, circular, straw hats to keep the rain/sun off, and have homemade-looking brushes to sweep with.
I've no idea what the cleanliness is of the people cooking my food, but so far I haven't got food poisoning, so it can't be that bad.

Umbrellas in museum.

Other activities
I realise that this post is food-dominated. Other things I have done include: visiting the Botanical Gardens; having our opening ceremony at the university; visiting West Lake and going on a boat trip; finding WalMart and Pizza Hut/McD's in case of emergency; having a taster session of Kung-Fu and Tai-ji; and with the family today we visited an umbrella museum (umbrellas symbolise happiness and completeness due to their circular shape, and so are used at weddings regardless of weather). They were first made of paper, then covered in oil to make them waterproof, then they were made of canvas covered in the oil. Then 'modern umbrellas' came along and stole the show, unfortunately. That is one of the more disappointing things here: I was hoping it would look more like it does in Mulan.... We also went to an art museum which was the best activity I have done yet: we saw decorated paper fans, drawings, paper cuttings, STUNNING embroidery which I would happily have spent £300 on if I had it on me, carvings in wood and stone, lace... it was all absolutely beautiful. So yeah, I'm not just eating here. Promise.

Decorated paper fan. Pagoda overlooking West Lake.

Work ethic
People work so much harder here. Mum of family visit is a lung cancer specialist, and she works 12 hour days Monday-Friday, and also takes calls from patients (who may be depressed and wanting someone to talk to, she said) outside of hours. She said the hospital she works in has 10,000 patients PER DAY. Her daughter (13) is at school from 8am until 8pm, and then does homework until 10pm. She also has school on Saturday mornings, and the parents are very ambitious for her to go to university in the UK.

People
Everyone that I have been able to have a decent conversation with (yes, it's my fault for not speaking fluent Mandarin) has been lovely, welcoming, friendly and kind. This ranges from the staff organising this programme, to my teachers, to the students guiding us around campus, to a boy who helped me in the phone shop, to the woman in the panini/wifi place, to the family we spent the day with today. Yes, people who don't speak English find us a bit of a plague (i.e. trying to fix SIM cards, or order in a restaurant when all we can say is 'yes', 'no', or 'my name is Suzie', and we understanding nothing), but understandably so. One boy here says he finds the people very rude compared to people in India; yes, people here burp and spit right beside you, and shout and stare, but so what? I'm a weird white person in their country. Again, all those I have spoken to have been very welcoming and hospitable.

I feel like people work a lot harder for their livelihoods here. Stuff isn't guaranteed. Life is a gift to be treasured, not squandered lying in bed watching TV... When's you're one in 1.2 billion, you need to struggle to keep ahead of your game...