My First Week in Beijing

I'm finally here! I arrived at Beijing airport at around 11:30pm local time. My friend from Sydney who just happened to be in Beijing visiting family picked me up and took me to Tsinghua University, which is where I will be studying Chinese for the next year. I checked into my student apartment and had to pay six months rent upfront, which was RMB 11,600 (about AUD 2400). I finally got into my room by 1am. I have a single fully furnished studio room, and it's very comfortable. 

My apartment.

The only thing is the bed is quite hard as it consists of a wooden board and a thin mattress.  

My very firm bed.

I'm very happy with my room, especially as it is within close proximity to the main cafeterias and the building where my classes are held. My dormitory bulding has a 24-hour reception and the staff behind the counter are extremely friendly and helpful, answering all of our endless questions. Every second day, the staff clean our rooms and change our sheets while we are at class. 

My friend Juliet who I study Chinese with in Sydney arrived the day after me. Luckily, she has Chinese background and so her family has friends in Beijing. They picked us up and took us to a nearby Carrefour supermarket to buy what we needed. 

We went exploring around the campus, and soon discovered it is much bigger than we thought. It covers about 395 hectares, and takes about half an hour to walk from one end to the other. The campus is enclosed by a wall and there are guards on every entrance gate. Because of the size of this campus, we each bought a second-hand bicycle. Mine cost RMB 100 (AUD 20). I decided to buy an old bike so that it would be much less likely to be stolen.

Me and my "new" bike.

All the local students use bikes, and the streets within the campus are teeming with a constant stream of cyclists. 

One of the busier streets on campus. If you look closely, you can see a sea of cyclists in the busier section of the street.

One of the bicycle parking areas near the university's West Gate.

One of the bicycle parking areas near the university's West Gate.

It was very difficult to get used to riding around and trying to navigate through the mass of other cyclists without crashing into someone. 

I took some photos of the campus, however it would look much better in late spring or summer. 

One of the canals running through the campus.

One of the canals running through the campus.

One of the sports grounds on the campus. The buildings in the distance are all student apartments.

Tsinghua was founded in 1911 on the site of a former royal garden from the Qing Dynasty. In the 2012 Times Higher Education World Reputation Ranking, it was listed number one in Mainland China and 30th in the world. There are around 31,000 full-time students and international students from 112 different countries.  

A sculpture depicting Tsinghua University's official seal.

The grand reception hall in the university's Main Building.

Last Saturday, Juliet's family friends took us to the Temple of Heaven. We decided to just walked around the park next to the temple instead of buying tickets to go in, as we figured it would be better to visit the sights when the smog eases off so we can take nicer pictures.

The Temple of Heaven amongst the smog.

A path lined with old trees in the gardens surrounding the Temple of Heaven.

An old tree in the gardens surrounding the Temple of Heaven.

On Sunday, Juliet's other family friends took us ice skating with their son and his friends from school. I realised they had told the parents there would be foreigners coming, so everyone was excited to practice their English with a native speaker. They were all around 13 years old, so their English was very good.

We had lunch afterwards at a nearby dumpling restaurant, and as there was a large group of us we had to use the private dining room. We couldn't all fit in one room, so the parents all went into one room and left Juliet and I in another room with all the children and told them they had to speak to us in English. We all had a great time, and we were surprised by how good their English was.

The weather has been quite cold, between -5 and 4 degrees. As this part of China can get very cold during winter, there are thick curtains hanging in all of the doorways to most buildings throughout Beijing to try and keep the cold air from coming in. 

Curtains hanging in the doorway to one of the university cafeterias to keep the cold out.

The last few days have been much warmer (around 9 degrees). However, the only reason it was so warm is because the pollution was very heavy. The pollution was measured on the PM2.5 Air Quality Index at 512 yesterday, which is more than two and a half times over what is considered as highly hazardous towards peoples health. In comparison, Sydney is usually around 50 on this index. For this reason, we decided to invest in some face masks. In the photo below, I was wearing a cheap mask from 7-Eleven, however we recently bought some industry standard chemical masks as the thinner ones aren't good enough to filter out the hazardous particles in the air..

Not exactly fashionable, but necessary.

Thankfully it rained yesterday evening and the wind picked up, so today was sunny with blue skies. Here are the photos from yesterday and today to compare the enournous difference.

The view from my bedroom window on 26/02/2014.

The view from my window on 27/02/2014.

Last week we had a placement test and I was put into Advanced Chinese 1. We have two classes per day from Monday to Friday, all between 8am and 11:40am. We have four compulsory subjects and a minimum of one elective. The comulsory subjects are Comprehensive Chinese, Reading, Writing and Speaking. For my elective, I chose Business Chinese for this semester. Next semester, I plan on choosing Advanced Listening to try and further improve my listening comprehension.

Yesterday, I locked my bike up outside Wudaokou station and took the subway to Shuangjing to have coffee with another Chinese friend that I know from back in Australia. I made the mistake of heading back right on rush hour. I had to change lines at Zhichunlu, and when I reached the other platform, it was so crowded people could barely get off the train. 

Zhichunlu station at rush hour.

I got towards the front of the crowd, and when the train arrived all the people behind me rushed onboard, sweeping me along with them. I tried to stay near the door as I had to get off at the next stop, but the force of the crowd was so strong, they pushed my all the way to the middle of the carriage. After the doors closed, I then had to force my way through to the door. When I finally got to there, I had no room to move. I ended up having to press my forehead against the glass just to keep my balance. I breathed a sigh of relief once I finally got off, only to discover it started to rain and I still had a fifteen minute bike ride to go. 

The food in the cafetierias here is quite good, and extremely cheap. A bowl of noodle soup costs around RMB 5 (AUD 1). I had another meal with rice, a plate of meat, a plate of vegetables and a Chinese style bun all for just RMB 9 (AUD 1.80).

To pay for the food in the cafeterias, we have to use a prepaid card. The only dowside is that foreign students have to pay a 20% surcharge everytime they load money onto the card. The other big killer is the internet fees. To connect to the university wifi, I have to pay RMB 10 (AUD 2) per day, whereas local students only pay RMB 1 (AUD 0.20) per day. 

Shanghai

I went to visit my friends down south in Dongguan, Guangdong. From there we went to Guangzhou and took a train to Shanghai. We bought the tickets too late so we missed out on beds, and when we got on we were lucky to get seats as they sell as many tickets as they can, so there are always people standing. The train had more then 15 carriages and the ride was very slow and bumpy. 

The trip took almost 21 hours. We left Guangzhou at 2pm and arrived in Shanghai the next day at 10:45am. I was sitting virtually the whole way. When we first left it was so hot inside, and the carriage was full of cigarette smoke. Unfortunately, the windows were all sealed shut. There were so many people standing or sitting in the aisles on their luggage.

After six hours or so, I got up to go to the toilet. I stepped over a few people sleeping on the floor, and when I reached the toilets I discovered they were squat toilets. I won't go into too much detail of what I saw, but just try and imagine what happens when people try using a squat toilet on a moving bumpy train. I decided to stand and let someone have my seat for the last five hours as I was sick of sitting down.

When we finally arrived, we went to my friend's cousin's place to stay there during our trip. The next day we visited the Bund, which is the main walkway by the harbour. The bund is lined by European style buildings built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The Bund

They served as banks and trade-houses from the UK, the US, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The city skyline viewed from the Bund. You can see the famous Pearl TV Tower on the left.

Shanghai is a very nice city, with a lot to do and see, it has a very modern feel to it and the streets are very clean which is always a plus.

During my stay we visited the Yuyuan Garden, which was filled with old buildings and shops, and a constant flow of people.

We stopped by one of the tea houses there to try Shanghai's world famous Xiaolong Dumplings (小笼包). They were absolutely delicious.

The next day we went to visit the West Lake in Hangzhou, just two hours outside Shanghai. We went for a boat ride around the massive lake. It was very peaceful and scenic, but unfortunately it was raining constantly.

My grandmother is a devout Catholic, so she wanted me to visit a cathedral in Shanghai that she had heard about. It's called Saint Ignatius' Cathedral and is located in the suburb of Xujiahui (徐家汇). The Cathedral was built in the early 1900's by French Jesuits. 

Although I do not believe in any religion, I still admire beautiful architecture of both religious and secular buildings alike. The cathedral itself is a very nice building, and the interior is truly worth seeing, filled with white stone, beautiful stain-glass windows and artworks. 

Later on we went across the river to go up the pearl TV tower, but the line was too long as this was during the time of the Shanghai World Expo.  We decided to just go and eat dinner nearby instead. At around 10:30pm, we decided to head back to the apartment, but we didn't realise the subway had already closed and there were no buses going across the river. We ended up having to catch a taxi and split the cost between us, which the total came to 120 RMB.

The next day, we went to the World Expo. It was so crowded with long lines, and it was very hot and humid, but it was well worth seeing. The grounds were so big and the pavilions looked really interesting, especially the Chinese one which was by far the largest and towered above the rest. 

The Chinese pavilion. To get a sense of the enormity of this pavilion, just see if you can spot the people at the top of the stairs.

Israeli pavilion.

We got to the expo at 10:30am and left at 9:30pm, so it was a very long day. We managed to get inside a fair few pavilions, including China, Pakistan, Israel, New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Australia, and Finland.

Taiwanese pavilion.

Australian pavilion.

Serbian pavilion.

Spanish pavilion.

UK pavilion.

Feel free to view my full albums with all of my photos from Shanghai, the West Lake and the Shanghai World Expo 2010.