I left Wuhan in June, and in the month and a half since I left, a lot has happened there. One friend got married (these things can happen quickly). The Wuda campus was flooded with water. See below for pictures, via Eric, who since I left has started a company to connect people to teaching and business opportunities in China (a good person to talk to if you want to teach in Wuhan).

The most shocking piece of news was one that I discovered via the Washington Post. The director of the Women’s Health Center in Wuhan, which I wrote about a few months ago (here and here), was arrested, and according to the Washington Post, is currently in detention — I’m hoping to hear how she’s doing soon.

This time around, there’s an added element of only just having settled in, in that it’s only really in the past month or so that I’ve been able to have substantive discussions in Chinese instead of in English. When the only things I could discuss in Chinese and others could discuss in English were food, weather and travel, building friendships was a much slower process. I’ve noticed in my own learning process that the more energy I’ve had to spend on thinking about how to say things, the less energy I’ve had to think about what I’m saying — and so up until now, I’ve stuck to simple, safe topics when I’ve been speaking Chinese, and on the whole most Chinese people I talk to have probably done the same when we’ve been speaking English. Maybe partly for this reason, I’ve gotten the impression during my year and a half here that Chinese people my age are generally very apolitical and relatively uninterested in social issues, since those topics never seemed to come up.

And then today, I’ve had three really interesting, several-hour-long discussions about politics, society and life, with friends who, I’m realizing, have impressively smart and thoughtful things to say. Obviously there’s sample bias — I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the people I’ve liked the most and chosen to become friends with are also people who have intelligent and thoughtful perspectives on these types of issues. In the taxi on our way home from dinner, a (Chinese) friend said that the others I had invited to the dinner were unusual among Chinese university students in terms of just how intelligently and critically they thought about these kinds of topics. So obviously there must still be a lot of people here, just as there are in every place, who care more about celebrity gossip than social justice. But now that we’re having the discussions in Chinese, I’m realizing just how many of my friends actually do care more about social justice than about celebrity gossip — which makes leaving my life here behind that much more difficult.

The common theme in the conversations was that while on one hand there are lots of social problems and a growing and worrying income gap between the haves and the have-nots, as an individual you have to find a job and find a way to pay for a home and provide for a family, and there’s nothing that one small person can do to fight strong forces in such a big country. If things get bad enough, the only feasible option is to emigrate. My opinion: China is at a crossroads, and right now it’s being decided if this will be a country where people will be left to fend for themselves (more like the US), or a country where there’s a social safety net that catches those who fall behind and gives everyone the opportunity to succeed (more like Western Europe). It’s only if you guys get angry and speak up for social justice that there’s any hope of going the route that I consider to be the better of the two. Everyone talks about stability and seems to worry that there’s a revolt brewing just below the surface, and you guys know better than I do if that’s really is a risk. But it’s at times like this that people who are brave can influence the course of history, and I think that harmony is overrated.

The positive side of all of this is that I’ve seen a lot of China in the past five days. Our flight back from Hainan was first delayed and then, because of weather problems in Wuhan, made a bonus stop in Zhenzhou, Henan province, where we spent the night before boarding our rescheduled flight to Wuhan the following day. After two days of navigating through university and government bureaucracy in Wuhan (which went much more smoothly than the first time I had to go through this process when I first arrived in China, most likely because this time I brought Hainan coconut candy for the Wuda administrator who needed to connect me to all of the different signatures I needed for a visa extension), I was finally informed that I wouldn’t be able to extend my visa in Wuhan, and so I boarded an overnight train to Shenzhen. A short walk through the Shenzhen train station took me to the border control and then onto the Hong Kong subway system. I’ll take the afternoon train to Guangzhou tomorrow, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that despite Spring Festival travel madness, it will be possible to get a ticket from there back to Wuhan.

For now, I have the afternoon free, and so I’m sitting at a Starbucks overlooking the harbour, enjoying my unplanned mini-vacation. Hong Kong is also maybe my favourite city ever. It feels a bit like London, with more colours and better weather (the last time I was here, in June, it was sweltering hot, but right now the weather is perfect). The one drawback is the weird language they speak here — after a year and a half of studying Mandarin, it’s frustrating to have to start over almost from zero with Cantonese — but I’m feeling so positive about Hong Kong right now that it might just be worth it!

But being in a touristy place also brings the usual dose of scams, especially directed against foreigners who don’t speak Chinese. I suspect that on the whole, the return on investment in the job market for learning Chinese is not huge (despite insistence to the contrary of neighbors and mothers “back home”). But here in Sanya, being able to read a menu in Chinese has saved our group a small fortune, my most solid return on investment to date.

Our hotel is in Dadonghai, a very touristy area, and virtually every restaurant here has one menu in Chinese, with prices that are higher than in Wuhan (but still reasonable), and then another menu that’s fancier, has pictures, lists dishes not only in Chinese but also in Russian and sometimes in English, and has much higher prices than the simpler Chinese-language menu. At some places, the dishes on the two menus seem to be different, and if asked the restaurant would probably say something along the lines of that those dishes use more expensive ingredients or are better quality. But at some restaurants, most of the dishes are the same, and Chinese guests only get one menu while foreigners only get the other. It’s simple price discrimination, an effective way to get more money from the people who point and order.

The restaurant just below our hotel has gone even farther — they have pictures with prices outside the restaurant, and then a menu inside with the same dishes, same pictures, but higher prices. So step one is noticing the price difference and making sure that you’re paying the lower of the two prices. Then they add lots of little extras to the bill — extra charges for rice, napkins, and dishware — which are included in the final charge but not listed on the bill. Things like Coca cola or beer are much more expensive than customers expect, making the bill grow even more. And then at the very end, they round the amount up to add on a little extra, banking on that the customer won’t check the math (and if the final amount hadn’t been twice as much as the cost of the dishes, we probably wouldn’t have noticed). The Chinese group ahead of us apparently had a similar experience (this particular restaurant scammed all tourists equally)… I guess in a place with so many tourists, it pays more to get as much as possible out of every transaction rather than winning over loyal customers.

But for the most part, people have been friendly, the food has been delicious (and much cheaper than in Europe, even with the occasional scam prices), and the weather has been perfect. I still think Wuhan is an ideal place to study Chinese, but for anyone who wants to perfect their Chinese and Russian at the same time and then leave some time in the afternoon for the beach, this is the place to be!

Sometimes I ask people why the universities don’t build newer, heated dorms for them to live in, and usually people tell me that that wold be too expensive and would mean that students would have to pay more for room and board, which wouldn’t be feasible for the many students who come from the countryside and already struggle to be able to afford university fees. Then they laugh at my next suggestion, that the university could at least build a few new dorms and let students choose if they’d like to pay a bit more to have heating, since that would be unfair to the students who can’t afford the better dorms. Students want cheap housing, they tell me, and that’s what the universities provide.

But when it comes down to it, the obvious answer to me seems to be that the universities should subsidize student housing — not to put students up in luxury flats, but to make sure that the rooms they share with 3 or 5 other students at least have heating and hot water. It seems like a small investment could go a long way in terms of comfort, and as they are right now a lot of the dorm buildings seem downright dangerous. I wonder of part of the reason for why this hasn’t happened is that the power that be actually think it’s good for students to live in relatively basic conditions for a few years, as a form of character building. Maybe they actually could put more money into student housing, but choose not to so that kids who have been pampered by their parents get toughened up a bit, a modern version of being sent out “up to the mountains and down to the countryside”.

As for me, I’m off to enjoy even sunnier weather in Hainan for a week. I’ll be back to the blog when I return. Until then, stay warm!

Fish drying in the sun

It started a couple of weeks ago, with fish. On a sunny day, there they were, hanging in a tidy row on a stick by the side of the street. A few days later, someone had hung up some pieces of meat to dry. Now it’s everywhere — fish, chickens, beef, pork, sausages, all marinated and hung up in rows on railings, balconies, and by the sidewalk, drying in the sun. Even my neighbors have gotten in on the act.

I asked my students this afternoon what was up with all of the meat hung out to dry, and they confirmed what I suspected — Spring Festival preparations are underway. Apparently people traditionally marinate different kinds of meat for Spring Festival, and then hang it to dry wherever they can find space. In the case of my neighbors, that means pushing their laundry to the side to make room for meat on their balconies.

Meat hanging to dry on my neighbor's balcony

“Ten reasons for liking Wuhan — can you even list one?” So the incredulous have asked. Wuhan gets a bad rap, and even the locals seem to have learned to stay quiet when people from other provinces complain about the sweltering summers / freezing winters in unheated buildings / traffic nightmare / hot-tempered inhabitants. I have to admit, it is a little bit annoying to have to import my cocoa from Shanghai. But the city has its charms, and many of us have come here for what was originally supposed to be six months, or a year, and have ended up staying for longer.

Counting down from 10, here are a few of my favorite things about this sprawling industrial city in the heart of China:

10. Central location. Wuhan bills itself as the transportation hub of China — it’s a convenient overnight train ride away from Beijing to the north, Shanghai to the east, Chengdu to the west and Guangzhou to the south. With the new high speed train to Shanghai and ultra-high speed train to Guangzhou, those distances feel even shorter. To be fair, distances in China are so huge that even with a central location, it still takes forever to get anywhere, which is why this reason barely makes my list… but Wuhan is nonetheless a relatively convenient base for exploring other parts of China, and deserves a point for that.

9. Bus network. The traffic situation on the whole would have to be a minus for Wuhan — it takes hours to get from one side of the city to the other, and you generally have to budget twice as long as you should need to get anywhere that might be affected by a sudden surprise traffic jam — but the reach of the bus network is actually pretty good. It’s very extensive, easy to use (especially if you use googlemaps to plan your trip), and if you get on the bus at the beginning of the bus route and get a seat, it’s relatively comfortable. Plus, it’s cool to be able to take a bus across the Yangtze River. Now all they need to do is get rid of some of the cars and put in more buses, to get rid of that packed-like-sardines in a traffic jam quality the bus rides so often take on…

8. Springtime in Wuhan. It may only last for two weeks, but for that short, wonderful period when you’re not shivering in the freezing cold or melting away in the blistering heat, Wuhan is beautifully covered in a sea of cherry blossom trees and photo ops.

7. Autumn in Wuhan. Like its springtime counterpart, autumn in Wuhan is short but wonderful (this year it seemed like it was a little bit longer than the spring, so I’m putting it one step up on the list). The characteristic flower for autumn is the sweet osmanthus (桂花, of 桂林 — Guilin — fame), and although it’s visually much less striking than the cherry blossom, I highly recommend walking around the Wuda campus to smell its fragrance while it’s in bloom.

6. Modern city. While it’s not a particularly international city, Wuhan is still a very big, modern city, and has all of the conveniences that usually come with a modern city — including Starbucks, McDonalds, and some (relatively basic) import foods. It’s no Shanghai, but in terms of facilities and products available, it’s still a comfortable place to live.

5. Lack of foreigners. Although it’s a huge, modern city, Wuhan has relatively few foreigners. Maybe the climate scares people away. The small expat population has its drawbacks — like an accompanying lack of things that foreigners like, like foreign food — but it also comes with advantages. The biggest, in my opinion, is opportunities for language learning (see below) — since there aren’t that many of us, people haven’t gotten tired of talking to us yet. There are also lots of part-time and full-time teaching jobs available for the foreigners who do make their way here, and not having restaurants, shops and a sketchy expat scene to burn our money in can be a good thing when trying to stay on a budget.

4. Food. As a foreigner who hasn’t yet learned to distinguish between the subtle differences in the cuisines of each province in China, I think Wuhan food is absolutely delicious — it seems like the perfect mix of all of the different regional foods. It’s spicy (influenced by Sichuan and Hunan cuisines), but not too spicy. There’s sweet food, but it’s not too sweet. Wuhan is also a big city with food from all over the country. The few attempts at Western food are generally heavily adapted for Chinese tastes and best avoided, and Western ingredients can be hard to find, but there’s lots of delicious Chinese food from all over the country, and restaurants are generally cheap and plentiful.

3. Cost of living. Obviously more expensive than the countryside, but much cheaper than Beijing and Shanghai. Ideal for those who are spending savings from abroad, or for anyone on a fixed-sum scholarship. Money goes a long way here, which is not to be underestimated.

2. Language learning. The local language, Wuhanese, supposedly belongs to the same language family as Mandarin, but it’s pretty different from standard Mandarin pronunciation and vocabulary. Nonetheless, Wuhan is a great place to study Mandarin. So great, in fact, that I put this at number of 2 on my list of why Wuhan is amazing. There are tons of universities, so there are lots of Mandarin-speaking students from all over the country, and since it’s a transportation hub and lots of people from all over China pass through for short or long stays, pretty much everyone speaks relatively good Mandarin. At the same time, it’s not a very international city, and English-speakers are few and far between, so not only are there opportunities to practice Mandarin, it’s more or less essential for getting around the city. Taking Chinese classes is relatively affordable, and most importantly, the people who live here are incredibly friendly and helpful to language learners.

1. The people. Cheesy as it may be, number 1 on a Wuhan top ten list has to be the people here. Whether it’s Wuhan locals or people from other provinces, once people have gotten over their initial surprise that you would want to live in Wuhan, everyone is incredibly friendly and welcoming. One friend said that Wuhan is sort of like the Midwest of China — just like in the American Midwest, people are friendly and down-to-earth. They smile patiently as you stumble over your first attempts to communicate in Chinese, they walk you to the building you’re looking for when you’re lost (whether or not they actually know which building it is), and they open their homes to you and teach you about Chinese culture. Basically, they make you feel at home. That’s my Wuhan number 1.

Happy New Year!

The security guards for our building know us well by now (there was that one time when the lock to our front door broke, we couldn’t get back in through the door, and after a locksmith had spent hours tinkering with the door and we had spent the night in a hotel, the police finally had to come with a rope ladder and lower themselves down from our neighbor’s balcony, enter through the window, and open the lock from the inside… and another time when a fuse was blown, but my roommate couldn’t find the fuse box, and the security guards convinced her that all of the electrical wiring for that side of the apartment would need to be replaced, which the landlord luckily cleared up for us before any drastic measures were taken…).

This time the 保安 really did know what he was talking about, and when I came back with the new tubing, he put everything back together for me, and even got rid of the drip that we’ve had from the washing machine ever since we moved into the apartment. I learned some useful vocabulary from the experience (“screwdriver” might come in handy in the future), and was left with a warm fuzzy feeling over how friendly and helpful our security guards are. Sometimes I suspect they’re extra nice to us because they take pity on the hapless foreigners who have somehow ended up in their building, but either way, it’s nice to know that there’s someone to turn to the next time I find 4 cms of water on the kitchen floor!

According to the author, when English and foreign codes of politeness come into conflict, the English codes, which tend towards greater informality, usually win out when the language spoken is English:

Businesses from countries where formality is still strong have to adjust to that. “When we go on a road show to meet investors in New York and London, we are on first name terms while we speak English. But as soon as we are speaking German again, it is Dr Schmidt and Herr Braun,” says the public relations chief for one of Germany’s best-known firms.

Makes sense — it seems like for the most part, people don’t find it too difficult to vous or usted when appropriate in French or Spanish, and switching down a level of formality should be even easier (although I almost always forget to use 您 when I’m talking to my teachers). Sometimes, according to the article, the cultural difference in how to address business contacts or new acquaintances can cause friction:

In countries such as Japan and China, the use of first names is restricted to the very closest family members—spouses and parents. Foreigners hoping to cement their relationship with Japanese or Chinese counterparts by shifting to first-name terms are often unaware of the consternation—akin to public nose-blowing—they are causing.

One of the most interesting parts of studying a new language and learning about a new culture is trying to figure out how to be polite in that new language — difficult when you haven’t even mastered basic forms of expression yet, let alone figured out differences in what to say and when to say it. I had a birthday party on Friday night, and since it seemed like a classic example of an occasion where cultural expectations differ, I was a little worried that I’d do something wrong and fail to be polite. As a foreigner in China, you tend to get a lot of leeway when it comes to etiquette, and the most simple etiquette rules are pretty easy to figure out (don’t stick your chopsticks into your rice bowl so that they stand up and look like incense sticks; take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home; if you run into someone on the street, ask them if they’ve eaten yet). And all of the guests knew that it was a Western-style party, so they probably didn’t mind that some things were different. But I obviously still wanted them to feel as comfortable as possible. So I dutifully made sure that there were slippers for all the guests (I scavenged through the apartment and miraculously manage to scrape together 18 pairs that had been tucked away in different nooks and crannies); I put presents to the side to be opened later rather than opening them immediately in front of the guests, in order to avoid appearing greedy; I made lots and lots of food and tried to stuff them as full as possible.

I’m not sure how many etiquette mistakes I made, but my guests in turn were all exceptionally polite, and didn’t let on if they thought that anything was out of place. Almost everyone arrived punctually a few minutes after 8 pm, except for a few stragglers who got lost and found my apartment at most 10 minutes later. They told me the desserts were delicious, even though I’m pretty sure some of it was too sweet for their tastes (it seems like most Chinese people aren’t huge fans of sweet things, especially not eaten on their own). And almost everyone left en masse at 10.30 pm, 30 minutes before those at the party who were students needed to get back into their dorms before the doors were locked for the night.

But obviously what left the deepest impression wasn’t just my friends’ politeness, it was their kindness. I was showered with birthday presents, each incredibly thoughtfully chosen, each one reflecting some aspect of Chinese culture that they wanted me to learn more about or take with me home to share with my friends and family. When the time comes (a few months from now) to leave Wuhan behind, it’s going to difficult to leave.