Day 17: Urumqi so far

Okay, apologies for not blogging, I've been mentally busy and now for some reason Blogger doesn't seem to be working.  Oh well.  This update will be seriously long, so now is the time to go to the toilet and make yourself a cup of your beverage of choice.

 

Okay, so we arrived in Urumqi on Friday, and had planned to wing it.  We had the names and addresses of a couple of cheap hotels, and were going to jump on a shuttle bus and head to one.  Slight issue.  Urumqi airport is not unlike Inverness airport (in terms of size and helpful staff).  So we were looking at a map, when a friendly man approached us and tried to help us find out destination.  He even gave us a paper map and pointed out the locations we were looking for.  "Okay, thanks" we say.  Then we decide to take a taxi.  So he takes us to his taxi, and charges us 100元 to get to a hotel.  Ripped off.  Another girl paid 60, and another paid 50 (and she went even further, more about her later). 

 

So we get to the hotel, and with our fairly limited Chinese tell them we want a room for the night, cheap please.  We are told 320元, okay.  Plus a 500 deposit.  Right.  Then we hand over our passports (the police track your every move in this country).  Our visa says it is valid for 000 days because it's a student visa and we get a residence permit within 30 days (the minimum validity for a visa) anyway.  They didn't understand this, and the girl behind the counter was so rude, every time we tried to explain, she just giggled and starting talking to her friend behind her hand about us.  Not impressed.  We got to the room which wasn't even that nice, where the little book thing informed us our room should have been 288.  So clearly the taxi driver got a cut (he was hanging around for ages after we got there) and they were fleecing us.  So far, our impression of Urumqi was not good.  We both missed Beijing (which we absolutely fell in love with) and we were in a not very nice part of town, and were generally not happy.  So we did what any westerner would do in that situation.  We went to KFC, where we met the only sensible person we had seen in this city until that point.  The girl behind the counter.  She gave us a pointy menu, spoke slowly and pointed at things when she had to ask something.  We liked her.  The next morning, we got in a taxi to the university where things went from bad to worse (don't worry, this post isn't entirely miserable)

 

So we got there, went to the office and were taken to meet the man in charge of international students, who spoke English!  Hurrah!  He welcomed us, chatted to us for a bit, then got a bilingual (apparently) girl to take us to the dorms.  Wow, the dorms.  In a word, slums.  Each room had two beds with mattresses around 2 inches thick and made of straw.  And a desk.  Well, two of these as we shared rooms.  The toilets were holes in the floor that...well, to put it politely, some people had some bad food and couldn't aim.  There were no showers.  There was no hot water.  There were no laundry facilities.  It was horrendous.  Nikki cried, I was too stunned to.  We went back to Anniwar (the guy in charge of international students) and spoke to him about moving off campus, that was too awful.  He told us to think about it.  We then went and saw him again saying we refused to live there.  So he put us in touch with a Uyghur lady who owns a flat near the campus.  So we went to see it.  He kept telling us it was so expensive, and it was better for our learning to live on campus.  Not quite, I would have been sharing with a Russian, and this landlady speaks only Uyghur and Chinese.  Anyway, the apartment is 600USD per month for everyone living there, and there are now three of us.  And we had to pay up front.  So to the ATM every day to get out money so we had enough to pay her.  But then we read the contract, realised instead of 27000元 each, which would be for a year, we needed 11 months, minus the difference between the deposit we gave her and the amount we should have given her (less), so it was 24250元.  The apartment has three decent sized bedrooms, large living room, kitchen, western style bathroom with a washing machine, DVD player (soon), internet and phone (soon, because it's a new build, we haven't been wired up yet, hence my sporadic internet access), TV, everything really.  And no curfew (you'll see why this is good soon)

 

Hurrah!  We moved in, all was well.  We just had to finish our forms for registration and then start classes.  Three copies of this form, passport, get a medical (again (but this one was only 322 元)), done!  NOT.  You need four copies.  Oh.  No wait, five.  Oh.  We finally get everything together (including copies of our landlady's ID and things, and a temporary residence permit), when they suddenly inform us it's actually six.  So we've still not registered.

 

Classes:  On Wednesday we had our listening/speaking class.  It was kind of hard, but not so hard I couldn't cope.  There were bits I just sat with a blank look on my face, but I got the general meaning.  Then on Thursday we had a "Comprehension" class (which seems to be more just general Chinese, with a little extra grammar).  The teacher was SO nice, and I understood a good 90-95% of what was going on.  Like that class.  Then we had reading.  Wow.  In the texts we read, between us we new around 50% of the characters, at most.  She won't teach us new words, and she wants us to skim read the texts.  Can't do.  We sat and basically cried for two hours because it was so difficult, then toddled off home.  We have since confronted our BanJuRen (the woman in charge of our class) about the reading class being far, far too difficult, and they're putting on an exam on Tuesday afternoon to check our level, so we can change book (hopefully).  The head of the school was not happy about this, but she never seems to be happy about anything, ever.  She looks like a Chinese wicked witch of the west.  And acts like one.  But anyway, she was saying a couple of people could cope - that was because they spent a good day or two days preparing the texts, and they had Pinyin (romanization of Chinese) and translations into Korean (they're Korean, not mental) on almost every character.  Then we had a culture class, which is aimed at the top level of students here.  But we went anyway, and while we didn't understand everything, we understood enough to now know the complete history of Chinese characters, despite it being taught in Chinese.  Which makes me feel incredibly proud.

 

The one thing that really annoys me about my classes though, are certain students.  Now, as you all know, I'm not racist in the slightest (hence studying foreign languages and living in the back of beyond in China where the Han Chinese make up something like 55% of the population, compared to 97% nationally).  But those students from Khazakstan so far have been an absolute nightmare.  They sit on their phone in class, chatter away in their own language really loudly, and in the culture class, two boys (I swear they're about 12, one of them has definitely not hit puberty yet, but is apparently 16 - forged documents much?) sat throwing pens at each other, making phone calls and generally acting like 12 year old boys in a class they don't want to be in. 

 

More positive now - our landlady took us out for traditional Uyghur food the other day, which was amazing.  We had what I gather is Uyghur naan bread, which has bits of meat and things through it, and is AMAZING (although have you ever tried to eat a piece of naan with chopsticks?  And I'm taking like, quarter of a pizza size pieces).  Then there was strange white jelly like things in a spicy sauce, nice, although after five or six pieces, I just couldn't stomach any more of it.  Oh, and a strange little glass bowl of what looked like yoghurt and tasted really sour, not nice.  But Uyghur tea is nicer than Chinese tea in my opinion.

 

Now I'm going to totally throw the chronology.

 

Restaurants in China are amazing.  Seriously good.  The food always looks incredibly, and tastes brilliant.  Your rice to go with your dish is 1元, and the tea is free, all you can drink.  Which led to a rather unfortunate incident on Wednesday night.  Our boiler had never worked, and on Wednesday they came to replace it as it couldn't be fixed.  After they had fitted the new boiler, they scarpered, leaving a huge mess, and the mains water turned off.  Now, we thought, do we turn the water back on because they forgot, or do we leave it because they turned it off for a reason?  No idea.  When Nikki and I went out for dinner, we decided hey, let's finish the pot of tea (around 3 litres).  So we did.  Then the very helpful waitress brought another pot.  We decided we should at least drink one cup, so her work was not in vain.  So around 1.6-1.7 litres of tea later, we toddled of home, realising we had no working toilet.  Hmm.  This was probably the funniest thing ever at the time (you probably had to be there).  We weren't the only stupid ones, Catherine (our flatmate) had had three bottles of water.  So we all sat and cried with laughter at how stupid we were. 

 

I lied, chronology is back, I just jumped backwards a few days.  So on Thursday, the three of us went out to dinner together, and decided to have a tea challenge.  One pot each.  We succeeded, and again nearly cried with laughter.  But this time, we had a working toilet, hurrah!  Earlier that day, we had gone for lunch with Tobin and Tracey, a couple from Scotland who are also students here, he in our class, she in the top class.  Then a random Chinese guy approached us with his Tajik friend, and a Korean guy from our class, so we all went for lunch together.  At this lunch, Tracey had said we will be batting off people asking us to help them or their daughters with their English, in exchange for help with Chinese, which won't actually happen, nor will any form of payment.  She was right, immediately the Chinese guy offered to help us with Chinese in exchange for helping him with English, and at the restaurant, a large group at the next table as we finished our meal starting talking to us and one woman asked if we could help her daughter.  This was hilarious, as we always assume that in this part of China (where no one speaks English really) no one can understand us, so we talk freely.  We had been discussing our tea challenge and various other hilarious-to-us subjects.  Then this man (from the large group) suddenly says "So where are you from?" in a perfect accent.  CRINGE.

 

Another cringeworthy situation, when we were in Beijing at the Summer Palace, we were in one museum pretending to be from California, talking about how quaint everything was, how cute the British are and things.  For a good half hour minimum.  Then the Chinese man behind us is approached by a member of staff who blabs at him in Chinese, and his response?  "(American accent) I'm not Chinese."  Haha.

 

Anyway, moving on.  Last night (nearly done, promise) we met up with Tobin and Tracey to go for dinner and then a drink at an Irish bar they knew (see?  They DO get everywhere).  They invited along an American couple and an American guy we spoke to briefly on Tuesday.  We had an absolute blast.  Dinner was really good, and then Nolan (the American guy) called his Chinese friend who came with us to the bar, where we sat for a couple of hours, before checking out some other bars (which were all dead or rubbish, so we didn't actually get anything there).  Then Tracey said she knew of a Uyghur disco next to the night market, we should go.  So we did.  Well, we went to the night market and had Uyghur ice cream (really, there are no words to describe how good it is.  It's kind of sweet in a tablet-y way, but not so sickly, and really soft and just generally amazing).  Then Nolan, Catherine, Nikki, the Chinese guy (Andy I think his name was) and I went to the Uyghur disco.  It's amazing.  You get a table, then it's table service, and they have various live acts when everyone dances and the bits in between everyone sits back down.  We stayed there 'til four and then headed home.  Had we been in the dorms, we would have had to be back in our rooms before midnight.  So yes, Uyghur discos, definitely worth a visit.

 

And that brings us up to speed I think.  So now I'm going to go and find something interesting in this city to do (not difficult).  Oh, and apologies for not commenting on blogs/emailing and things, as I've said, the internet here is restricted, but if your blog is down the right hand side, I do read it (with google reader), and would like to comment, but just can't :(