Driving home for Christmas (not literally, obvs)

In a weeks’ time I will be home for Christmas and I will have been here 6 months. 6 months. Half a year!  That just seems unbelievable to me, especially when at the end of the first two weeks I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stick it.

It wasn’t the easiest of transitions – losing my incredible nan 3 days before coming out here and missing her funeral, living in a hotel and then my boss quitting after my first week made me feel completely lost and alone and desperate to sack it all in and come home. But I stuck with it, and I’m so glad that I did.

I am having such a good time here and I completely love this city. I’ve been so lucky to have met a really good group of people. Everyone says the best aspect of expat life is the social side of things and they’re right. There’s no planning here, which at first drove OCD me insane - you might mention going out for drinks one night but nothing’s ever planned until the last minute. Everything feels spontaneous, and everyone knows, spontaneous nights are always the best!

And there’s always someone to do stuff with. It’s not like at home where you have to book your time in 3 months in advance, someone can message you on a Friday night and say let’s go out and off you go. Maybe some of that is just living in a city vs. a town, I’m not sure.

My resolution for when I come back is to travel more – go on weekend breaks and see more of China. Having only seen Beijing and Shanghai up to this point is terrible, so I am going to see more. Selfie stick at the ready…

I am so excited to be coming home for a bit –to see my family and friends, meeting all the new babies and my niece, who is getting so big now and Skyping just isn’t the same as giving her a big hug! And even though there are Christmas trees all over the place here (and knitted reindeers in my building lobby), it’s not the same as hearing Slade or the Pogues blasting out every time I go into a shop or get in my car. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Christmas, so being somewhere where it’s not such a big deal makes me a bit sad. Plus there’s all the little rituals missing – decorating the trees with my mum, going Christmas shopping, putting my best friends’ tree up whilst drinking red wine and watching the Muppet Christmas Carol. And I can’t find anywhere that sells Advocaat, which upsets me more than I would care to admit!!

And finally on a slightly cheesy note (but hey it’s Christmas), it’s been a tumultuous year but I am so lucky to be surrounded by such amazing friends and family who have been with me every step of the way this year. Your love and support is what gave me the strength to do all this, and I am so grateful for you all xxx

A very long post about Beijing

After 5 months of being here, I finally made it to Beijing. I know it seems like I should have gone sooner, but even though it’s in the same country it’s so far away – the flight is the same time as a flight from the UK to Germany or Spain. 

I went with a friend of mine who’s been here 6 months who hadn’t been yet either.  We decided to take the train, which is cheaper than flying but takes just over 5 hours.  Taking a train in China is an interesting experience to say the least. Even booking tickets is difficult. There’s an official site (like National Rail) but it’s all in Chinese. The English ones whack a handling fee on so you end up paying a bit more, but most of the time that’s your only choice as the trains are so busy you can’t just go the station and risk not getting a ticket. At the station itself there are these big screens (in Chinese) that show you how many seats are left in each class on each train. As it was cheaper we decided to go second class (about 50 quid one way). Have to admit, was slightly concerned what second-class Chinese train carriages would be like. The answer is absolutely gorgeous. Loads of legroom, reclining seats, nice toilets, buffet car – I was very impressed. Not sure the trains to the provinces would be the same, but this was amazing!

The first thing that struck me about Beijing is that it is very different to Shanghai. Firstly, it’s bloody freezing. I had been warned but the contrast to Shanghai was quite a shock.  Secondly, the taxis are newer, cleaner and the drivers not quite as crazy. No-one pushed in front of us in the taxi queue which was a China first for me, and the people overall seemed much friendlier.  The other major thing I noticed was that Beijing is quite spaced out- everything is a metro or taxi ride away whereas everything in downtown Shanghai is within walking distance which I think makes it easier for day to day living. There’s also a lot more history. In Shanghai, lots of the historical sites have been torn down to make way for skyscrapers, but in Beijing a lot of them are still intact which was nice and made a real change.

We went on the weekend of the APEC meeting, which is a global summit for countries like China, the US, Japan, Australia etc. This year it was being held in Beijing and to be honest we didn’t think much of it. One bonus we hadn’t banked on though was the air quality. Because it’s a global conference the Beijing government had closed the factories, limited the number of cars on the road and given people holidays. So the pollution score was about 20 – compared to its usual 200/300/500 rating. To compare, London is normally about 40. This was great for two reasons – one, it made my photos look so much better. Two, it meant you could actually walk around. Everyone was referring to the sky as ‘APEC blue’.

So we hired a private tour guide, which I think was the best thing we could have possibly done, after seeing the hordes of people getting on and off buses, all wearing matching coloured baseball caps and following a person with a flag and a loudspeaker. It wasn’t that expensive either – for pick up at the hotel, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, a couple of factories where they try and get you to buy stuff, and the Wall, it was 50 quid each.  The only extra cost was 10 to go up to the Wall in a cable car.

We started at Tiananmen Square, which despite being there at 830 in the morning, was fairly full of people. And soldiers. With guns. Which is really scary.  The biggest queue was getting through the security check, because of the history of the place they are very cautious letting people through without checking them first. However, a lot of the Chinese people that were queuing decided to take the matter into their own hands and jump the barriers. It was kind of funny, until the soldiers came over and started telling them off – that was terrifying! Essentially Tiananmen Square is….a big square. It’s even split by a road, so you don’t really realise you’re in it to start with. Our guide walked us straight over to the building at the front of the Forbidden City, where she told us that the portrait of Mao was specifically done so his eyes follow you wherever you go…

What we didn’t realise was that was it for Tiananmen Square, she rushed us straight through to go through Mao’s gate and into the Forbidden City which was a real shame.

Onto the Forbidden City. Seriously impressive, and not that busy which was great. Just building upon building upon building, the size of the whole thing is incredible. Some of it is closed off to preserve it, but apart from that it’s exactly like you see it on TV.

And then to the Wall. There are two or 3 parts of the Wall that are open to tourists- the most popular of which is Badaling, as it’s the most accessible and it’s about an hour out of Beijing. By accessible I mean all the others involve some level of hiking. However this means it is also the busiest and this was the part we went to. On the drive there you saw glimpses of it, in particular where roads have been built and so the Wall has been broken and is now eroding on either side. When we got there, we had to decide whether to walk or get the cable car -we chose the cable car. Again busy but not that bad – I think maybe I’ve been in China so long I’m used to queuing now.

When we actually got to the Wall, you have a few options of which way to go to walk. We decided to go one way, and it was steep. I was shocked by how steep it was actually. And busy. We got about half way (after having stopped to take countless pictures and selfies of course, and been asked to star in a few other people’s pictures too) and looked up to see if we could keep going. And it was just one big mass of people, not moving, just crammed in, so we decided that was maybe a no.

I have to say it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It's not every day you get to say ‘I stood on the Great Wall of China’. Made all the more surreal by seeing one gentleman take a box of KFC with him to the top, presumably for a picnic. Reminded me of the episode of ‘An Idiot Abroad’ where Karl eats at Pizza Hut overlooking the Pyramids.

And then of course dinner was Peking Duck, which is the local speciality, and then Sunday we went to the Summer Palace which is about a 30 minute taxi ride out of Beijing centre. Again, one of those completely surreal moments when you realise you’re in China, on a lake, in a boat, in the sunshine.

One of the best weekends of my life – and more things ticked off the bucket list.

Bits and pieces

A couple of months ago I did a blog post about little subjects that didn’t warrant a full post by themselves. The list on my desk is getting long again so here’s part 2.

IKEA

Oh, IKEA. Your mecca of reasonably-priced glassware and colourful shag rugs transcends the globe. So why oh why does your smaller store in Shanghai NOT HAVE MEATBALLS!! A complete travesty. But I digress. Apparently IKEA is aspirational here. I needed to get a few things for my apartment, and was warned not to go on the weekends unless you go really early or really late, as it is a free for all. So I went at 7pm on a Sunday night and it was completely fine. If anything, there were less screaming kids than at the one in Milton Keynes. What was different to the MK store was people in the beds. Yes. IN the beds. That’s some serious road testing going on there. I swear some people were actually asleep.

Someone at work told me that because IKEA is aspirational, it’s also a destination. People actually meet there for coffee or lunch. Slightly different to what we do which is hold your breath, run through as quickly as possible in a style very similar to Supermarket Sweep, and get the hell out of there.

And then when you leave, there’s a row of van taxis outside to take you home. Awesome.

Nanjing Road

Every city I think has their version of Leicester Square. A pedestrianised, overly neon-lit haven for tourists and touts. Shanghai definitely has one of those and it’s called Nanjing Road. When I visited a few weeks ago it was dark and as I stepped out of the subway, I was dazzled by a giant neon ‘Samsung’ sign. Then I noticed the noise. And by that I mean crowd noise. The best way I can describe it is like coming out of the toilets at a gig and hearing the buzz of anticipation as the crowd waits for the band. Lots of people, lots of street sellers pelting you with weird whirly helicopters, lots of kids on those wheely trainer things. Adding to the surrealism is an M&M world (exactly like Leicester Square), which of course is the busiest place on the street. And there’s also these little tourist trains that take you from one end of the street to the other (the one I saw was M&M branded, of course) and they don’t stop they just drive right through the pedestrian street – so you’re expected to jump out of the way or get flattened and the last thing you’ll see is a red circular sweet with a scarily grinning face and an ‘M’ on his chest looking over you..

Xiami

Xiami is like Spotify but all in Chinese of course. However, I tend to listen to it on my computer at work as the streaming time is really quick and I can figure it out. There’s a search box, you type the artist in (in English) and voila! Their name comes up in English, there’s an orange button underneath it, you press it and job done.

Jing’An Sculpture Park

As Shanghai has got bigger and bigger, there has been a fair bit of space put aside for parks and greenery (plus it helps with the air). Near me there is a place (called the Jing’An Scuplture Park as you may have figured out from the title). And it is exactly that. Nice green space, Natural History Museum smack bang in the middle and a load of random sculptures with no rhyme of reason that are replaced every few months or so. When I went the theme seemed to be ‘giant sculptures of glittery fat baseball playersand musicians'. Pictures below so you can see what I mean!

Youku

Youku is another online find. It’s kind of like YouTube, but better (I know, it’s a bold claim). You can find anything on there. Again, all in Chinese but the search box recognises English characters so it’s relatively easy. What’s brilliant is there’s also a subscription option, so if you want to watch a particular movie or show, you can pay – kind of like a pay as you go Netflix. Also, they have all the US shows before the UK so I will actually be ahead of everyone when I get back!

#expatlife

Being an expat is weird. I was adamant when I came here that I didn’t want to be an ‘expat’ – I wanted to experience local things for local people. But that’s not really how it’s worked/is working out and I don’t know if that is because of the place I’m in or if it’s the same everywhere.

There are days when I really feel like an expat.  I don’t mean that as in ‘I feel really at home here’, I mean ‘living it up in Western places and paying ridiculously inflated prices for food and alcohol.’

I think there are a few reasons why. First of all, from what I can tell the entire bar culture here is fuelled by expats. I’ve seen no such thing as a ‘Chinese bar’ which means that most of the places we go in are full of expats.

Secondly I think this place is so much of a culture shock that you end up craving the familiar. Hence why I got so excited when I found Heinz tomato ketchup.

Thirdly, your body simply can’t take eating Chinese food all the time. And supplementary to that, it’s sometimes difficult to ascertain what’s safe and what’s not, so ‘going local’ isn’t always an option. Also, a lot of the people I’ve been hanging out with have been here a while so they’ve already done the ‘local thing’.

I work in a very Westernised, very sanitised part of town. Yes, I’ll go over to the mall and have a spicy soup and dumplings for lunch, but it costs £2.50 (which is expensive by Chinese standards) and above your head there’s about 15 floors of designer clothes, expensive handbags and overpriced electricals. Oh, and a Toys R Us. My building is connected to the other tower by another shopping mall, which is populated with Gucci, Prada, D&G etc etc. So when you pop out for lunch every day, you’re not really seeing the ‘real’ Shanghai.

Where I live is also quite like this. The first thing I see when I walk out of the subway is Burberry. I’m round the corner from an Aussie bar (which incidentally is awesome, has the cheapest beer here I’ve seen and has a killer pool competition on a Sunday afternoon). This week I have eaten Chinese, Japanese, French, American and Italian and every single one of those has been expensive. Add in drinks and it becomes extortionate.

And the expats tend to stick together – I’ve got to the point now where I will go to a bar and meet someone I’ve met previously – despite having 25 million people in this city, sometimes it still feels very small!

Singapore!

As I mentioned previously, bank holidays here are grouped so you get a week or so off at a time. Early October had one such holiday, the so-called ‘Golden Week’, which starts on National Day (anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China). Most expats use the week off (which doesn’t come out of your holiday allowance) to jet off to somewhere and do a little bit of travelling. Of the people I work with we had Vietnam, Bali, Borneo, Thailand, Japan. I decided to go to Singapore to see a friend as I had never been. The flight was only 5 hours which was fantastic and was relatively cheap. I managed to do most of the touristy things – museums, Sentosa - which is an island off the coast of Singapore and you can get a cable car over. Very man made but there was a beach which was nice – Little India, Fort Canning Park, and of course one of the famous champagne brunches! My favourite thing though was the Singapore Museum – it was so interesting to see the origins from part of Malaysia to English colony to now.

So here are my observations on Singapore from an expat perspective:

1.       It’s Diet Asia.  Which isn’t a bad thing at all – it’s like Asia with all the tough bits taken out. By that I mean people drive on the ‘right’ side of the road, English is spoken everywhere, everywhere is super neat and organised and you can go on the subway without coming out feeling a bit violated.

2.       There is a lot of money. Everything seems quite extravagant, and as cost of living is so high there seems to be a lot of money around. The epitome of this is Marina Bay Sands – essentially a giant ship-like creation hoisted into the air by 3 pillars which comprise of expensive shopping malls and have a canal a la Venice running through the middle of them. You can go up there to take a look at the view but it’ll cost you.

3.       A lot of the tourist places are man-made. By that I mean somewhere like Sentosa which is like an amusement park, Gardens by the Bay which is completely man-made. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of places that have historical significance

4.       I think if I’d have gone there first, then to Shanghai, I would have hated Shanghai. It’s such a nice place, and Shanghai is such a culture shock in comparison I think I would have really struggled.

5.       Someone once told me (and I’m guessing a lot of you will figure out who this is) that Milton Keynes is like Nicole Kidman – everything’s in the right place but you still don’t fancy it. I guess that’s kind of how I feel about Singapore. Gorgeous place, really enjoyed it but don’t think I’d want to live there.

 Some pictures:

A long overdue update..

EDIT: this was written a few weeks ago just hadn't got around to posting it.

What I like about life here (and it’s true of every big city I suppose) is the variety. On a weekend recently, I did a huge mix of stuff which kind of sums it up:

Friday night: Drinks at the Boxing Cat Brewery (possibly the best name for a pub ever). There tends to be a few different types of drinking/bar locations in Shanghai that I’ve seen:

-          The crazy streets full of bars that cater for expats. The main one here is called Yongkang Lu (Lu means road), and it’s like being in Benidorm. Or Liverpool. Not my scene at all.

-          The ‘local’ streets – like Danshui Lu. Lots of bars that cater for expats, but are street bars and very small. Generally, the alcohol is also fake which means you will end up with a skull-splitting headache the next day (as I have learned the hard way)

-          The ‘designated areas’ –like Xintiandi. The ‘designated areas’ isn’t the official name for them of course, but what they tend to be is areas of the city that are re-developed, sometimes keeping some of the original architecture, sometimes not. Xintiandi is one of the biggest – it’s old Shikumen style buildings (Japanese) but has been turned into a trendy bar and restaurant area. Caters mainly for people with way too much money and tourists. Unless it’s Happy Hour in which case it’s carnage (mainly Brits and Aussies, I have to say. Maybe our reputation is justified).

Anyway, so the Boxing Cat is located in a Xintiandi-style area called Sinan Mansions which is beautiful, but dead. Apparently, it opened about 5 years ago and was really popular, but lots of turnover of bars and restaurants opening and closing means it’s now not as much of a destination. The bar we were in was busy, but next door a place called ‘Rendezvous’ was completely empty apart from a Chinese woman murdering ‘Against All Odds’ by Phil Collins. And there’s always a new neighbourhood/place to go, again the same as in New York/London I guess.  I also witnessed the worst of expat behaviour – haughty rudeness from a British girl who kicked up such a fuss about a slight smell of bleach that I wanted to smack her.

Saturday day-time:  Brunch with a work colleague and her friend in Tianzifang. Tianzifang (you can read more about it here) is a maze of little side streets off Taikang Lu in the French Concession. Architecture-wise, it’s similar to Xintiandi but it’s not been cleaned and tidied up so it has so much more character. There’s all sorts in there –little markets, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops etc. Hugely busy so not much chance to look around, definitely one to go to early or late (like most tourist places here), but a fantastic atmosphere regardless – it gives you a real sense of place.

Saturday night: the Kung Fu Comedy Club (really). I wrote about a dive bar that was giving out free underpants with beer not long after I got here – well this is its comedy club. Really popular, they do open mic nights and have house and visiting comedians too. There was even a piece about it on CNN this week! This one was a Taiwanese/American who’s been on loads of US shows and was really funny. Then we went to a place called Arcade, which from the outside looked like a prison, not a bar, but once you were inside it was lovely. Also, it’s called Arcade because it has an old Arcade game machine which you can play and it’s projected on the big screen – everything from Mortal Kombat to Pac Man – very cool.

Sunday:  Latin American food festival at a downtown restaurant. Gorgeous day for it, sun was shining, live Latina music in the garden, everybody dancing and loads of great food and wine. I went with a colleague and her Italian friends and it was so much fun – everyone was in such a good mood – couple of pictures below.

EDIT: I wrote this a few weeks ago so before my trip to Singapore – I’ll talk about that next time.