Darren's life in China

Day trip to Tanggu

darrenssmall — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:30:18 +0000

Monday was my day off so a couple of my landlord’s students invited me to go out to Tanggu, which is kinda like the business district area of Tianjin but also kinda like a separate town altogether. You can see from the first picture here that it also has a lot of European influence in it’s architecture. It’s really not too far (about 20 minutes by light rail) but it has a little bit of a different feel to it. It’s not quite as crowded and it’s on the ocean! I actually really liked it. I got to go to a big, very interesting shopping center, see the Pacific ocean in China for the first time, ride on a boat, and see a park that reminded me of some parks back in the US. Oh, and I also found a motorcycle shop which I think I might visit later when I’m in the market for one. :)

There are some cool indoor shopping places in Tanggu

Here are some of the big boats that come up the river

A bunch of white birds in the park.

I made the move

darrenssmall — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:02:30 +0000

There have been some changes with me over here since the last time I made a post. In fact, I had to change the name of my blog from “Darren’s life in Beijing” to “Darren’s life in China.” That’s right, I don’t live in Beijing anymore. Just a few weeks ago I moved to a smaller town called Tianjin. Now, when I say smaller I don’t mean small. Not at all. It actually seems small compared to Beijing but it’s still about 12,000,000 people. It wasn’t my plan to move here but after months of looking for a job in Beijing and not being able to find a good one I decided to take a position here in Tianjin. It’s not so bad. I’m still getting used to it though. Despite being only 90 miles from Beijing (a short 27 minute train ride), the city seems very different. It’s interesting how there are so many differences depending on what part of China you are in. Anyways, Tianjin has an interesting history and had some European influences along the way. You can definitely see it in some of the architecture around town.

I have a new apartment. This one is a little bigger than my last one, has nicer furniture, and a more centralized location in the city. Oh, and it’s cheaper too! The new job is going pretty well so far. I’ll work at total of 6 weeks at my current location and then switch to a REALLY small one where I will be from then on. I worked one day there last week and I was the ONLY teacher in the whole center… just to give you an idea of just how small it is.

Anyways, I’ll post a few pictures of my apartment, the building I live in, and maybe a few from around town.

This is the building I live in

This is the street that I live on

That’s a pretty great wall

darrenssmall — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:23:47 +0000

Today I went with Torrey and Heather, who are here visiting for a few days, to the Great Wall. We went to the section called Huganhua. I’d been there before a few years ago with my good friend Justin but when we were there it was night time and we didn’t hike too far before sleeping in a guard tower. So, today I didn’t actually realize we were going back to the same place I’d been before. We ended up taking quite a hike and some parts of the wall were really really tough. It was a GREAT time! *no pun intended* —well, maybe a little. They’ve been here for the past three days and in that time we’ve covered all of the major attractions in Beijing and made a trip to Tianjin! They are heading out tomorrow to do down to Tibet but it was great to have them here.

Torrey and Heather at the Great Wall.

The hightest point we climbed to was quite a ways up there ans it was a relief once we got to the top.

This section was in need of a little regular maintenance.

This might give you an idea of how steep some parts were even without any stairs

Parts of it were like rock climbing. No hand rails. No ropes.

Spa

darrenssmall — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:49:16 +0000

I’m at a spa. I think that’s what you would call it. In Chinese it’s more like the word for sauna, which they have here, but that’s definitely not all they’ve got. I was invited by my friend to go get a massage this evening and what I had in my mind was something much more low key. The massages I’ve had here before have been mostly at little places and nothing fancy. But here when you arrive are taken into a HUGE “locker room” for lack of a better term. The locker room has a row of showers along one side and many hot tubs at different temperatures. No bathing suits needed… or allowed for that matter. There are also a coupe of saunas in the “locker room.” After you are finished in there you can put on some clothes which are provided for you and walk downstairs at eat at the all-you-can eat buffet. There is also a large public co-ed room where they show movies and put on shows while you get a foot massage or you can go up to a private room and have a full body massage. The massages cost extra but if you get one you get a discount on the price of the spa admission. There is also an exercise room in case you feel like a work out or a computer lab with “free” unblocked Internet access which is where I am right now. The one down side is that NOTHING is in English. Nothing. And none of the staff speak any English either. But even that has an up side: it’s good practice. All of this is available 24 hours a day and you can stay for up to 24 hours. Simply amazing!

I didn’t spring

darrenssmall — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:44:59 +0000

With the exception of Hawaii and all but the Navajo Nation part of Arizona, all of you people back in the US just suffered the loss of an hour of sleep. Daylight savings time. What a joy! The only real way that this affects me here in China is that I now have to recalculate in my head the time difference. I WAS 14 hours ahead of central standard time and now I’m only 13. So, while most of your are having your alarm clocks go off earlier than your body wants them too I’ll be drooling on my pillow for another hour.

It’s 2am and I want a Big Mac!

darrenssmall — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:37:38 +0000

Not to fear if you live in Beijing. There are McDonald’s restaurants (Mai Dang Lao) scattered all over this city that stay open 24 hours a day and, provided you can speak the language, you can call in any time of day and have your order delivered to your front door. It’s actually kinda cool. I’ve never had any McNuggets or anything delivered to me since I’d probably just call in and confuse the crap out of whoever answered the phone. They delivery guys wear these big boxes on their backs like backpacks to carry the food and they ride their little electric bicycles to your home if you don’t live too far away. I think there is a minimum order or something but it’s probably only about 3-4 dollars. Oh, and since tipping isn’t allowed in China you don’t even need to tip the delivery guy. (But you still kinda feel like you should.)

He's getting ready to make a run.

Scouting out my ‘hood.

darrenssmall — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:01:03 +0000

The place I live now is near where I lived when I lived in Beijing before but it’s down the street far enough that my immediate surroundings are unfamiliar. So, I decided to take a day and just walk around to see what all is around me. I’m not really in the part of town that has a whole lot of stuff so I really wasn’t expecting to find much at tall. I was really surprised to find an Italian restaurant really near my house! So near, in fact, that I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before. I could see it from out my window if it weren’t for another apartment complex blocking the view. Another really cool thing that I found was a HUGE outdoor sporting goods store. This will be PERFECT if I ever decide to take up mountaineering! Haha! Or maybe just buy a really good sleeping bag to go camping on the great wall or something. I really was surprised to find this place as well. All in all it was a great day of learning my surroundings. (I still have yet to try the Italian place but I’m looking forward to it.)

Pictures are as follows (left to right, top to bottom):

Some apartments near my place
My apartment building
Some of the sporting goods inside the store
The outdoor sporting goods store
The Italian restaurant

Mupdate

darrenssmall — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:57:06 +0000

I realize I haven’t made a post in a little while so here it is. Nothing too interesting to share so I’ll just give a little Me Update. Let’s just call it a Mupdate, shall we? Ha! Anyways, money has been a little tight since I haven’t found a full time job since I’ve moved to Beijing… ok, it’s been really tight. But YESTERDAY I found a $100 bill in my camera case that got put in there without me knowing. It made my freakin’ day! So, in spite of the fact that it may not have been the wisest financial decision, I decided to buy myself a DVD player today so I’ll have something to watch other than Chinese soap operas. It’s pretty sweet because it’s a portable one that I can still plug into my TV to use as a normal DVD player and it’s got a SD card slot and a USB port. All for the low low price of only 370RMB!

Alright, enough about my DVD player. I had a very important “demo class” yesterday at Wall Street English. That’s the same school I taught at last time I lived here. It’s really a pretty good school. This demo class wasn’t at the center I used to teach at though. It was at the center located in the World Trade Center building. I’m supposed to hear back in 5-7 days about the job and I think I’ll probably get it since I’ve worked there before but you never know. Please pray for me!! In the mean time I’ve been teaching random one-on-one classes here and there but a lot of them have been for new students and the first class is always free so they can evaluate me to see if they want me as their teacher. They’ve all said they want me so far but I’ve only had a couple repeat students so far since I’ve only been doing it for a week or so.

Oh, another current event I could include in the Mupdate is that I had an “ayi” (or maid) come and clean my apartment today. I hired her for almost 4 hours to go to the store and find the cleaning supplies (very hard to do on my own not being able to read the labels) and come back and clean my whole place floor to ceiling including the dishes and the laundry. After she was all done it was only $8.85! SO worth the money!

That’s about it for the new news in my life right now. I plan to post an update like this from time to time so you don’t think I fell into a big black hole. I’ll leave you with some pictures of entertaining signs that I’ve seen in the last couple days. These are always great! (Notice the first two say the same thing in Chinese but have different translations. It means “watch your head.”)

Darn Himalayas!

darrenssmall — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:23:26 +0000

Last week I saw a man crash his bike because of the Himalayas. It’s a little bit of a stretch but it makes a little sense if you think about it. Beijing borders the largest desert region in Asia called the Gobi desert. The Gobi desert is a rain shadow desert formed by the Himalaya range blocking rain-carrying clouds from reaching the Gobi. The desert is expanding at an incredibly fast rate. About 1,400 square miles of grassland are overtaken by the Gobi every year and it is creeping closer and closer to Beijing. This has caused Beijing’s climate to change into something much drier than what it used to be. So, every so often the government “seeds the clouds” and causes it to rain so that they can get some precipitation. This winter Beijing hadn’t had any snow up until last week. And since China has been having the longest drought in 50 years the government seeded the clouds but instead of rain they got snow. It wasn’t enough to solve the drought problem but it was enough to make the side roads slick and make some guy slip and crash his bike in front of my apartment complex. I bet he’s not too happy about the Himalayas.

Playground exercises

darrenssmall — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:25:34 +0000

This is a video that I took when I was in the park yesterday morning. I posted the video on Facebook already so if you saw it there it’s the same one. It cracks me up every time I watch it. Luckily, I was able to contain myself when I was there in person.