We both arrived as the same time. “You two?” the driver
asked.
“Yes,” we nodded.
“Welcome to China,” he said and started walking away. We
followed.
“I’m Zach,” I said.
“Nate,” he said. Sabrina had emailed us that we were
roommates—a fact I remembered because we ironically have the same last name.
Outside, we waited a few minutes for an elevator. When it
didn’t come, our driver directed us towards the escalator. There was still an
odd burning odor about the air, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
At the bottom of the escalator, there was a blue minivan.
The driver opened the trunk. Nate put his bag in and the driver lifted mine up.
He then opened the side door and I climbed in and across, straddling my
backpack between my feet.
As we pulled away from the curb and out into traffic, I
noticed the cars were very different from Europe. They weren’t as big as
American cars, but they were bigger than Skodas. Volkswagen actually appeared
to be the most popular brand I saw, with the Santana being the most popular
model.
We bobbed and weaved through traffic. It was a little
erratic, but no worse than riding with a US taxi driver. As we flew along the
high way and across over passes, I couldn’t help but feel that the city looked
so “normal.” All the street signs were in English and looked like street signs
back home (exits, speed limits, yield, etc.) There was even an Ikea!
Shanghai must be doing very well, because there were
construction cranes everywhere. It was a bit odd to drive past row after row of
identical, concrete, apartment buildings. Some were more or less elegant, but
every development had six to ten matching buildings, built one right after
another. There were more that were going up on either side of the freeway.
As we drove along, we were both enchanted by the scenery. We
made light chit-chat about school, and majors, and plans after college. Nate
speaks Chinese—as well as Vietnamese—so he was looking forward to the practice.
We came around a corner and saw a big white bridge. There
were Chinese characters on the entrance which I assume may have said something
like “Welcome.” Beyond the bridge were beautiful and breathtaking skyscrapers.
No two were exactly the same and they were all crowned with incredible
architecture.
Traffic became heavy as we crossed the bridge. There was a
lot of horn-honking and it appeared that
the lanes in the road didn’t really matter. I couldn’t help but notice that
there weren’t any women drivers. I wonder if this is a legal issue or just a
social more (or if we just didn’t see any yesterday.)
“Is traffic always like this?” I asked, assuming it was.
“Um, no speak English a little,” the driver said in the rear
view mirror.
“Ok,” I said and smiled back.
After bobbing and weaving through traffic, we arrived at our
building. I couldn’t tell if it was an apartment complex or a hotel, but when
we pulled up, two very enthusiastic bell hops immediately ripped our suitcases
from the trunk and started dragging them inside.
Nate thanked our driver in Chinese and we went inside.
A young girl—she looked like she was either our age, or a
little younger—greeted us. “Hello,” she said, “I’m Sabrina.”
“Nate.”
“Zach.”
“Welcome to China,” she said. “Can I have your passports?”
We handed them to her and she went to the front desk. I’m thinking this building
is a hotel, but I can’t tell.
When Sabrina returned, she had another young girl with her.
“This is Emma. She will take you to your room. You will have ten minutes to
unpack and then meet me down here for the orientation.”
Emma led us around the corner to an elevator.
“How are you?” she asked us.
“Tired,” I said.
“Did you have a good flight?”
“It was good,” Nate said. In the car, we’d discovered we’d
actually been on the same flight.
The elevator came and we got on. All the signs in the
elevator were in Chinese. They were mostly advertisements for massages, bars,
and restaurants. The doors closed and Emma pressed 29. Nothing happened. She
hit it again. Still nothing.
I noticed a small RFID reader in the middle of all the
buttons. There was a sign above it in Chinese.
“Do you need to scan the key,” I asked. She tried that, and
there was a beeping sound. She hit the 29 button and it lit up. Within seconds
the elevator started to move.
My ears popped as we went up. At the top, the doors opened.
“This way,” Emma led us. When the hall dead ended, she said, “Actually this
way.” We turned around.
Our room was at the end of the hall. Nate touched his card
to the RFID scanner and the door opened.
Inside, the apartment was huge! There was a large entry area
that led to a dining room, with a beautiful crafted table. It was carved of a
dark, almost black wood with gold trim lining the edges and small gold diamonds
on each corner. The kitchen was off behind it and had a full size
refrigerator, as well as a stove, electric wok, and sink. There was also a
washing machine (but no dryer) in the kitchen. Off from the dining room was a
sitting room with a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table that matched the
dining room. There was also a chest and a flat screen TV (although it doesn’t
appear to be hooked up to any service.)
“See you downstairs in ten minutes,” Emma said.
She left.
“This is huge!” I said. “It makes my apartment back home
look like a cardboard box.”
“Yeah this is nicer than I expected,” Nate said.
There were two bedrooms, a smaller one off of the sitting
room and a larger one a little further down the hall. “Which one do you want?”
Nate asked.
“I’ll take this one,” I said motioning to the smaller one.
“Ok, I’ll get this one,” Nate said taking the other one.
There was a bathroom at the end of the hall with a full size
bathtub and handheld shower.
We took a few minutes to unpack. There were only two hangers
in the closet so I hung up my suit and folded everything else into the shelves.
I put my valuables back in my backpack, locked it, and then locked my backpack
to the bedpost. I had a few odd things I wasn’t sure where to stow, but I’m
sure they’ll find a home over the next two months.
We went back down and met Sabrina along with two other
American girls in the lobby. Sitting—in what felt like we were in the
way—Sabrina gave us our welcome packages. Inside were sim cards for our phones,
transportation cards—loaded with 400RMB per week of our internship—and an
international calling card. Sabrina told us we would get all of them, as well
as a VPN address, set up tomorrow.
She went over a lot of health and safety stuff, most of
which I had heard before. Her biggest tip was to watch out for scams. She said
that many locals can be very friendly and really do like to get to know
foreigners. While most are harmless, she cautioned against strangers who want
to take you to “lunch” or “traditional tea ceremony.”
“There is no tea ceremony,” she said. “If a stranger invites
you, you will get robbed.”
She also gave us map and emergency contact cards—written in
both English and Chinese. We went over the schedule for our week and talked
about various legal things we will have to do, as well as some tours that were
included in our fees.
“Do not go anywhere without me today,” She said. “You could
get in big trouble if you get caught, and we don’t want any of that. Besides,
Shanghai traffic is very hard to figure out. Walkers never have the right of
way. Even when the walk sign in green cars can still go. I will help you learn
what to do.”
“We will have dinner together tonight,” She said. “There is
a very good restaurant in the penthouse of this building. I hope you will like
it. It is lots of different Asian foods.” She also gave us a list of take
restaurants that deliver to our hotel.
As a welcoming gift, they gave us Snickers bars. At that
point, we had a lot of paperwork to sign including housing contracts (which
includes a weekly maid service), employment contracts (which specify that we
will be deported or imprisoned if we accept any form of payment), and liability
releases (which indemnify our employers and both the recruiter offices in the
US and China.)
“Please do not get drunk while you are here,” she said. “It
is okay to drink but not a lot of people get drunk and you can get in big
trouble or make big mistakes if you do.”
With a few parting words and a reminder to meet back in the
lobby at 6:30, Sabrina sent us back to our rooms.
It was really hard for me not to go exploring—I was
specifically thinking of trying to find a McDonalds so that I could use the
free Wi-Fi to let my parents know I’d made it—but I decided to take her advice
and wait until tomorrow to go out. Besides, we’d have Wi-Fi by the morning so I
could contact them then.
Nate and I went back to the room and talked for about an
hour. I shared about my travels in Europe and he talked about trips he has
taken to Taiwan and Vietnam (both of which are now on my bucket list.)
“I think Vietnam would be hard without knowing the
language,” he said.
“I think learning the language as you go is part of the fun of travelling,” I said.
A little before six thirty, we went back down to the lobby.
There were now four American girls who Sabrina was orientating. When she
finished, one of her colleagues led us upstairs to the restaurant. The elevator
took us to the 33rd floor, and then we took the stairs to the
penthouse.
The restaurant was beautiful. There were golden pillars and
faux marble tables. Bamboo plants filled all the corners.
It sounded like Sabrina’s colleague was arguing with the
hostess but I think they were in fact just trying to figure out where we could
sit. We followed them out to a glass enclosed balcony where they pushed a few
tables together for us. Electric paper lanterns hung overhead and we could just
glimpse the neon skyline of Shanghai.
“Does anyone have anything they don’t eat?” Emma’s colleague
asked as we sat. They had brought one menu for each side of the table. “No pork
or anything?”
“I don’t eat meat,” the girl across from me said. Everyone
else was good.
Her colleague ordered food and then we went around and
ordered drinks. Most people got a Coke or a Sprite. I tried a Chinese brand
soda (but I noted they have Fanta on the menu too.) A couple people got beers,
but not as many as in Prague.
We went around the table several times talking about our
majors, our home towns, and how we wound up in China. As more flights got in
throughout the evening, more people joined us and we went around several times
to introduce ourselves.
Our conversation was more or less coherent as we drifted in
and out of jetlag. We certainly personified a lot of American stereotypes, from
being loud, to casually dressed, to overly opinionated.
“Has it sunk in for you yet that we are in China?” the girl
sitting next to me asked.
“It really hasn’t,” I said. “As I was travelling, it would
hit me in wave but now that I’m here it feels like a dream.”
Everyone agreed more or less, and we all assumed a night of
sleep would help us settle in.
There were a lot of big bugs flying around. We all joked
about the various malaria warnings we’d received and everyone had their own
method of how they were going to go about avoiding—or in some cases
ignoring—the disease.
Our drinks came first. The soda I ordered was apple
flavored. It was good but very, very sweet. When the food came, there was tons
of it. We passed each entrée around so everyone could sample a little. We had
spring rolls which were fantastic. There was fried rice which chunks of egg,
cabbage, and pineapple in it. It was yellow in color and tasted great. We had
roasted green beans in a sweet sauce. There were some greasy mushrooms, which
really didn’t have much flavor. Some pork like meet that sort of tasted like
soggy bacon. One brown noodle dish was sweet and had beef in it. Another noodle
dish was more spicy and had chicken in it (the beef was better.) There was also
tofu, which I think I am going to have to aquire the taste for.
I went ahead and ate everything. The restaurant seemed to be
pretty high end, so I assumed the food was pretty well prepared. It all tasted
very fresh and even though we only ate a little it was very filling.
As we were finishing, someone noticed a free Wi-Fi sign. Like
good American teens, we all pulled out our cell phones to see if we could
connect. With fifteen of us now, we just about destroyed the network but we all
got on. I was able to send a note to my Mom that I made it, as well as email my
boss that I was here. I tried to download the app for WeChat (a social media
site that isn’t censured by the government, but I need cell phone service to
activate it.)
Sabrina reminded us to meet her tomorrow at noon to go
activate our sim cards and public transport cards. With that, she dismissed us
for the evening.
The girl sitting next to me had gone out on the balcony. I
followed her, and Nate and the vegetarian girl followed me. There was a small
garden on the terrace, and the view of Shanghai was incredible. All of the neon
buildings were lit up and the lights were animated were animated like the
lights of Vegas.
“It’s amazing,” one of the girls said.
“It really is,” Nate said.
“I think these are the moments where it sinks in,” I said.
We went back to the apartment and Nate found the Wi-Fi code
so we could get online from our room. I emailed the pictures I took from the
balcony to my parents while Nate took a shower. My friend that is in China
texted me and we set up a time to get together next week.
Nate came out of the bathroom and said, “Well it’s a warm
shower now?”
“Is it not hot water?” I asked.
“Oh it is now,” he said, but it took the entire shower to
warm up.”
“Oh bummer,” I said. “Well I do appreciate it!”
I gathered my toiletries and went to take a shower myself.
It felt good to wash off the airplane although the hot water did come and go.
When I got out, I shaved and realized our sink doesn’t drain well. I don’t
think it will be a problem, but we might look into putting in a work order for
it.
After we said goodnight, I went to my room and journal led
about the day. So far, China is everything I’d hoped it would be. The people
are friendly. The food is great. The city is beautiful…and it suddenly dawns on
me…I wasn’t prepared to like it. I was excited to see it, but I was fully
expecting to endure it. In the words of Orphan Annie, after the few hours I’ve
been on the ground, “I think I’m going to like it here!”
There was an outlet adapter already in my room. I plugged in
my iPod first to make sure it worked (figured if I was going to fry anything,
it would be the easiest thing to lose.) When it worked, I left it plugged in to
charge. I put my laptop in the drawer of the bedside table and climbed under
the covers for the night.
This is going to be fun!
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