Trying to get backstage by claiming that I’m friends with the star…

I went to 常州 ChangZhou with 2 exchange students to visit 2 other exchange students who were spending their exchange year there. We went to a theme park called ‘Dinosaur Park’. It was quite fun, we were on a few rides and enjoying the great weather :) 

Around 7 pm we noticed a big crowd of people who seem to be waiting for something. So we asked them what they were waiting for. They said that the Korean band 2AM was going to perform at 8.45 pm. Too bad that we had to get the train at 8.20 pm to go back to 南京 NanJing. I really wanted to see them, since I’m quite a big fan of Korean music, so my friend had 3 ideas:

#1: Go on the stage and claim that we are all European superstars.

#2: Go on stage and only make Douglas (American exchange student) dance.

#3: Go backstage and try to meet 2AM.

We chose #3 because we couldn’t agree on a name. There were two options “The Foreigners” or “The Fakes”. The Fakes because the Chilean exchange student was always mistaken for a Spanish person, one of us was Icelandic but being mistaken for an American, a Russian who is being mistaken for a German, the American who looks like he’s from Ireland and me looking Asian but being German. So we couldn’t just perform a song, also because we couldn’t agree on which one. Option 2 was also not really an option because Douglas didn’t want to, so there was only #3 left. So the Icelandic guy went to the security and told him that he’s good friends with 2AM. That security guy told us to wait for a while and then came back and we could go backstage! But there were even more security guards but the Icelandic guy also told them that we were good friends from 2AM, so they didn’t bother us. But in the end, I think it was their manager, we were being told to go… But before leaving we could catch a glance on 2AM :P 

After that we were in a bus which was getting us to the train station and of course we were talking in English and it was pretty crowded, so someone said “Everyone who understands Chinese, please go further to the back!” That was quite funny to us :D

Winning is more important than your health!

Today I’m going to talk about a ‘Sports Meeting’. It’s basically an event where students compete with each other and try to get into first place. That’s nothing bad, right? A lot of schools have these competitions. Even my school in Germany has something like that. So I was watching them competing against each other and I saw how a guy tripped when he was running and he injured his arm, he sprained it. Although he was injured he still took part in the next discipline and I asked another classmate why he was doing that and why he wouldn’t just rest, since he is injured. The answer I was given was just shocking.

Getting a medal is more important than your health

It’s good that students are so ambitious but that’s just a bit too much. It’s horrible that those students are thinking about winning and getting the first place all the time. 

Students had to march before the Sports Meeting started...

They had to stand in rank and file after that Sports Meeting (that photo was taken wen the students were 'released')

Peking/ Beijing!

I got the chance to go to Beijing with the other exchange students! To be honest, I got quite a shock when I saw the hotel. I don’t expect a lot but when I entered the room I saw that the door handle was dismantled, you couldn’t lock the door and the bathroom was approximately 2 m² big… I think it was a ‘sex hotel’ because they gave away free condoms. Anyway, we decided to take the bus and just get off somewhere :) Luckily, we went on the bus which went to Tian An Men Square. So we got off there, walked around, took some pictures and then went to a park. There’s a street with just Pubs and Clubs and in front of them there are men trying to persuade you to go in there. Some of them were really aggressive and tried to drag some girls into the club/pub! Good thing that we were a big group and our supervisor screamed at that guy for trying to pull the girl into the club. 

We also did a lot of sightseeing. Tian An Men Square, People’s Conference Hall, Forbidden City, JingShan Park, WangFuJing Street. To be honest nothing really exciting to me. The Great Wall was pretty cool. The view from there was amazing! I also experienced something quite funny there. An American explaining German to a Mexican in China. That’s what I call multicultural! We also went to the Beijing National Stadium that was nice to see and also the Beijing Olympic Park and the National Aquatics Centre.  The Summer Palace and The Temple of Heaven were impressive! We also went on a rickshaw. That was a nice experience although I have to admit that I felt really bad for the guy cycling…

Something interesting: We also went to a shopping mall just for foreigners. The sellers  were trying to rip us off! Telling us that a sweater was worth 700 RMB (~70 €), the price tag said 110  and in the end we got it for 120 RMB (~12 €) which is still expensive for Chinese stuff. But the seller got quite angry at us for telling her that a friend of us got the same one for 100 RMB (~10€), which was a lie.  And whenever a seller gets angry it must be near the real price ;) The scary thing was that every seller could understand a little bit of English, German, Spanish and even Russian. So they understood when we said that this is cheap/expensive or ‘I wouldn’t spend more than 100 RMB on this but try to bargain’. .

 I’d show some photos but I lost my camera when I was in BeiJing :(

Just because I gave you some chocolate doesn’t mean I love you

I got a package from my parents filled with chocolate because I’m not a big fan of the Chinese chocolate. They also have “Rittersport” and “Fererro” but you can only get them in shops where they import stuff and that can get quite expensive. Since I got so much chocolate I decided to give to the ones in my class who I’m close a piece of it :) The girls took it but I also planned to give some to 3 guys and they looked at me in a weird way. I didn’t really understand but then a girl told me that giving a guy chocolate means “I love you”.  I had a real awkward time explaining that I don’t love them…

I know that I look Asian but when I’m telling you that I’m from Germany and you hear me speaking English with a German accent you should believe me and not insist that I am definitely from China… That happened to me once while I was waiting for the other exchange students. I was about to show that guy my German ID card! Another time, I was on the subway talking to some exchange students in English and after they had to get off a woman approached me and asked me if I was a teacher and if I was interested in teaching at an university. It gets tiring, explaining where you’re from, why you look Asian and why you don’t know that much Mandarin. But it’s fun to listen to others talking about you :P

Weird/Shocking experience: I saw a little kid taking a dump on the street and his mom next to him cheering him on… I visited Ferris Wheel Amusement Park in SuZhou and wanted to ride a roller coaster but wasn’t allowed to because my hair was too long? Even if I have a pony tail i wasn’t allowed to go on it :(

Saw some crisps with weird flavour

I don’t speak Spanish and a normal schedule of a Chinese student

I went to China in order to study Chinese, so Nachi and me got a “private” Chinese teacher from our school. Our teacher gave us a book “New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook 1″ It’s a rally good textbook, in my opinion, everything is well explained and you also learn some idioms. The bad thing about the one my teacher gave me: It was in Spanish?! So, do I have to learn Spanish before learning Chinese? I thought that it might be a mistake and that that textbook was meant for Nachi (she’s form Chile, so she knows Spanish) and that she might have a German or English version.  Well, it wasn’t like that and my teacher just said that I could still learn Chinese with a Spanish textbook without knowing Spanish. Great! I ended up translating everything with the help of the great internet and with the help of Nachi.

I’ve tried to ask  a few classmates to hang out with me on the weekends or after school. But unfortunately they never have any time. They told me that during the week they have to go to school from 7 am to 5.30 pm, then go home which takes 30 – 60 minutes (if they live further away, they move to the dormitory, eat dinner, start doing their homework, take a shower, continue with their homework and they’re usually done around midnight. On the weekends they have private tuition, [insert instrument] class, [insert sport] or calligraphy class and of course homework. So during the year I’ve been in China, I only managed to meet up with a Chinese high school student twice.

China makes me feel fat. Although I know I’m not. A teacher asked me for my height in order to order a school uniform for me.  I’m taller than the average Chinese girl (170 cm), so my school uniform size  in China was XXXL. I usually wear S/M and I even asked if that can be right that my size is now 3XL. After I got the uniform, which was way too big for me and I had to exchange it for a smaller size,  it turned out that I was “just” a size XL.

Weird/Shocking things: There’s a teacher who doesn’t call the students by their names but by their numbers. I had to learn with my class how to go to the schoolyard and how to go down the stairs? After a month of only eating Chinese food, McDonalds, Burger King and KFC (I only feel confident ordering in these fast food restaurants because they have pictures and I can just point at them, although people look at me like I’m stupid for looking like a Chinese but not being able to speak proper Chinese) I miss the food I usually get in Germany. Sure, I also get Chinese food, since my parents are Chinese (I guess? They were born in Vietnam, my grand-parents are from Hong Kong and we all speak Cantonese) but I also get Western food,too (of course).  So I started to miss roast chicken and even started to smell it!

 

DBSK in Shanghai and going to school during holidays

DBSK, an acronym for for Dong Bang Shin Ki 동방신기 , is a South Korean pop group, also known as TVXQ 東方神起 were holding a concert on 2nd of  October in Shanghai. In fact, it was their second last concert because 3 of the members decided to file a lawsuit against their agency but that’s another story which you can read somewhere else. It was really exciting for me to go to their concert because they were my favourite artists (they’re voices are amazing!) The Chinese fans planned a project and handed everyone who attended the concert a banner with  믿어요 Mideoyo – I believe printed on it and we were holding them during their song ‘Believe’ in order to show them that we believe that they will be able to go through this difficult time (with the lawsuit). But to be honest I didn’t know what was really going on at that time, so my friend (Fany) and I were really confused when all the girls next to us started crying after the concert finished. Sure, it was a great concert  but no need to cry? Luckily, we found a fan who spoke English and explained everything to us :)

TVXQ

  That was basically my day in Shanghai, I didn’t get to see a lot (a bit of downtown and a few shops) because I just went there for the concert.

Shanghai

Shanghai’s infrastructure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also went to a few other cities nearby (SuZhou and ChangSu) with my host family, since I had a week national holiday :D But during the national holiday my school also celebrated that the school has been there for 110 years. So I had to go to school and listen to a few speeches which I still didn’t understand.

Sometimes I felt that school is like a prison

After that day I though ‘Well, at least I still have a few days off.’ Wrong! My host sister told me that we had to go to school on a Saturday! We usually didn’t have to, so I asked her why. She said ‘In order to get this week off, we have to go to school on Saturday’ Why do Chinese people have to be so ambitious? (Or rather why am I so not ambitious?)  By the way, all the windows have these bars in order to prevent people from entering the school/apartment/house without permission . Although I sometimes thought that the bars were there in order to prevent students from escaping…

School

On 1st September I had to go to school, although school didn’t start. Students had to get their books and stuff I guess. Mrs. Yu showed me the room in where Nachi and I could study Mandarin. It’s in the teacher’s building and has an AC, sofas  and computers with internet access! But when I entered it or the first time I saw Nachi cleaning the room?! Mrs. Yu said that if we’re going to use the room we also have to clean it. OK, sure I get that but then why would they also send people to clean the room?

On 2nd September I had to introduce myself in Mandarin to the whole school while standing on a stage. There were  about 6000 students! I was so nervous! After that I went to my class and saw that there were 56 students in every class! My first thought was ‘No way that the teacher can control a class that big.’  Wrong! As soon as the teacher came in everybody was quiet, stood up and greeted the teacher. And we were only allowed to sit down after the teacher said so. That was so different form Germany! I didn’t expect that…

In a Chinese school you have to make morning exercises every day! At first, it was really difficult for me because I was always half asleep and they had a choreography which I didn’t know, so I was basically just standing there and watching them. But after a while I kind of figured it out and in PE a teacher taught us the choreography (I think it’s the same every year, it’s just for the students who are new and didn’t know it)

I got used to the Chinese school (7 am to 5.30 pm) and tried to talk to some people which was really difficult because I was so shy and insecure about my Mandarin and they only knew a bit English so in the beginning they only stared at me… Then girls started to talk to me and guys were just standing in front of me looking at me and talking about me but not with me. But after a few week I also talked to guys more often. But actually only three of them talked to me frequently and I was so thankful to one of them who was constantly trying to talk to me /text me although he almost didn’t know any English and could only text in Chinese but then tried to text in English for me :)

Shocking/Interesting things: Teachers have to use a microphone so students can hear them. There are ‘playgrounds’ for adults! I saw that big hole on my way to school…  The thing which shocked me the most: The Chinese toilet for students! The smell was so horrible that I tried to avoid the toilet the whole day and even if I had to go I tried to go to the teacher’s building and use their toilet.

'playground' people exercise with these things

  

Student’s toilet (female)

Great infrastructure work there China!

And my adventure continues

So I was waiting in the lobby with all the other exchange students for our host families to pick us up. We felt like these cats in a box waiting for someone to pick them up

While waiting for my host family to pick me up my “supervisor” (Mrs. Yu, a teacher from my school) also cam and started talking to me and told me that Nachi and me were going to study at the same school. It was kinda awkward because Mrs. Yu could only speak Mandarin and I tried my best to reply, good thing that I grew up with Cantonese, so I could kind of guess what she was trying to tell me. Anyway, to be honest I didn’t really know if it was a good thing that another exchange student was going to be at the same school because I thought that we might hang out with each other a lot and only talk in English or we might have this competitive feeling. In the end we did hang out a lot and talked a lot in English but I don’t regret it, since we became best friends :)

My host family came to pick me up. I already kind of got to know my host sister because we e-mailed each other a few times but it was still very exciting for me to see her. She had a bouquet, which she gave me, and after saying goodbye to the ones who were left, my host mom  drove us to a small restaurant to have lunch. To be honest it was kinda awkward because my Mandarin wasn’t that good (I was a total beginner) but my host sister tried her best to make me feel welcomed and talked to me in German on the first day (She’s been in Germany as an exchange student). On the second day we started to talk in English since it wouldn’t make any sense going to another country and still speaking your native language. Although my English wasn’t that bad I was really exhausted just because I wasn’t used to talking in English the whole time. In the beginning I would translate everything I want to say into English and then say it out loud.  But now I can just think in English :)

Although we’ve already moved to our host families we still had Chinese class at a university. My host sister taught me how to take the bus, you might think “That can’t be so difficult!” Yes it can, if the bus schedule looks like this:

 The first few times I took the bus back home I missed my station and always arrived at the final station… I just never understood the station’s name nor did I recognized my surroundings! So I just went to the bus driving back and asked the bus driver if he could tell me when to get off (thanks to my host sister saving the station’s name as a text for me). Every time I asked the bus driver he would look at me as if I’m stupid… Could be because I look Asian.

Actually, I prefer the one with coconut jelly (or whatever that is)

 I experienced so much in August. I went to the KTV (karaoke room) with the exchange students and some host siblings, went to downtown and the Confucius Temple lots of times. It’s just really fun walking around because there’s so much to see :D And food is everywhere and oh god! I fell in love with Bubble Tea <3 I miss that so much!

I also went ice skating which was really fun and that’s actually what I did for a month.

 Things that shocked me: I noticed that at 9 am there were a lot of girls all dressed up, looking beautiful but then I saw: unshaved armpits… It just kinda disgusts me to see girls like that, maybe it’s because I grew up in Europe? Something else also shocked me, well rather surprised me: Old people meeting up in a park and doing Tai Chi or Qi Gong (I don’t really know the difference, sorry).

1st September  2009: School starts

Should have blogged more often when I was in China

Yep, I definitely should have when I was in China for 11 months as an Exchange student.

But since I wanted to go out and experience China back then I’ll just recap everything I’ve experienced in a few posts.

2009, the end of July – It was supposed to be my last day in Germany for the next 11 months. My flight was in the afternoon, so I went to school to take part in this school project ‘School as a state’ which lasted for 3 days. Every class has to think of something, one class, for example, was selling candy, another class was offering games to play. My class decided to make burgers. We didn’t really know what to expect for the first day, so we just decided to buy enough ingredients for 100 burgers. After a few hours we were sold out! We would have never thought that our burgers would be such a success! So for the next day we prepared ingredients for 200 burgers and again sold out after a few hours! We didn’t even really have to advertise since you could smell the burgers from everywhere in the school building.

On the third day, the day when I was going to leave the country for awhile, the class representative closed our ‘store’ for a while and made an unexpected speech and my teacher even gave me a small gift saying “Even if it’s difficult for you right now to leave everything you have behind and go to a foreign country. Go for your dreams and never give up. In the end, you will know that it was worth it.” I still remember how four of my very good friends, Christina, Lena, Marc and Kai, took me home and as soon as we arrived we started crying, except for Kai who tried to held it in, and hugging each other and saying words to comfort ourselves. “We’ll see each other in a year.”, “We still can mail each other.” and suddenly imagining being away from them for almost a year seemed awfully long and I didn’t want to leave them. Suddenly I hear my little brother calling our parents “Mom? Could you and dad come and pick your daughter up? She’s in the kitchen crying with her friends.”

My parents arrived and it was time to say goodbye. I was still crying in the car and continued until we finally, after a two hours ride, arrived in Frankfurt. After I checked in, and had to go to ‘the other side’ where gates were and where the other exchange student and a YFU (Youth For Understanding) volunteer were also waiting for the flight to China, I cried again already missing my family. As soon as I got on the plane I was super excited to see how China was going to be like. To be honest I don’t really remember whether I arrived in Nanjing or Shanghai… But I believe that it was Nanjing. So after arriving in Nanjing and getting to know the other German exchange students and meeting the Chinese YFU volunteer and Douglas from the USA, who we (the Germans) all thought was also a volunteer and not an exchange student, we went to the hotel where we had to stay for a week because of the swine flue. After a day or two 3 other exchange students arrived: Fany from Mexico, Nachi from Chile and Siri from Austria. And although we were officially in quarantine we could still move around quite freely. Well, we didn’t really dare to, since we didn’t know a lot of Chinese (some were total beginners and some already studied some Chinese) and most of the Chinese don’t know English. We were even afraid of crossing the road! Too bad that I don’t have a picture of that road we had to cross when we wanted to go to the supermarket. 4 Lanes! Sure, there was a traffic light but the cars seemed to ignore them! There’s a saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, so we tried to follow the Chinese and tried our best to not get killed by the cars. Every time we crossed the road we were like “That was close!”

By the way, the Germans only spoke in German, since there were like 12 of us there and ‘only’ 4 other exchange students who didn’t speak German. Sure, every time we talked to them we switched to English but if we’re having a conversation going on, even if there were others who don’t speak German, we just continued talking in German. There were a few who tried to translate here and there but it was kinda difficult because we just weren’t used to talking in English all the time. As soon as I noticed that we were actually excluding them (I think I noticed after I talked to Nachi, Fany and Doug and noticed that they were speaking in Spanish without translating everything for me, not quite sure about that anymore, though) I tried to always talk in English or at least translating everything for them to make them feel not so excluded.

During the period we had to stay in the hotel we did a lot of sight seeing which was organized by YFU. We went to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s  Mausoleum, the Confucius Temple 夫子庙, Xuan Wu Lake 玄武湖, Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum 侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆, Presidential Palace and Xin Jie Kou 新街口  (downtown). I also tried to watch a Taiwanese drama which was aired during my stay in the hotel. It was really fun to guess what they were saying and trying to read the subtitles “Oh! I know that one! That means One!” (One:一)

 

 

A few things which shocked me: Doug was also and exchange student and you can’t use Facebook or Youtube! It’s banned! Later a friend of mine told me what to do in order to be able to access those site but everything took a lot of time to load so I just used the Chinese version of Youtube (youku.com and tudou.com) and even signed up for the Chinese version of Facebook (renren.com). Too bad that I couldn’t read any characters yet, so I didn’t really went there that often…

After that week our host families were going to pick us up :) I’ll write about that in the next post. This one is already way too long…