Adjusting to life abroad

Learning a language is about learning to lose your dignity.(What a cheery start)

Practising your writing means inevitably making mistakes and saying things you didn’t mean to say; practising your reading means understanding a key word, but no context and coming to the wrong conclusion; practising your listening means misunderstanding people and becoming needlessly offended; practising your speaking means causing offense to others and great frustration to yourself as you can’t say what’s on your mind. Of course, most of the time, misunderstandings are hilariously funny, and not a real problem at all, but there are occasions when the amount of energy required for every conversation (as you strain to hear a word you might know, and hope against hope you won’t be asked that dreaded question, ‘Ming bai ma?’ Do you understand? and you have to admit that for the last ten minutes your mind had drifted to thinking about what three items you would ship from the UK if you could ship anything) is so much, you are left exhausted. (In case you were wondering, at the moment I would ship; Green and Blacks’ dark chocolate, a large and very dense fruit cake, and some really really good roast coffee.)

     To no one’s surprise, my year abroad will teach me some things about myself, my friends and the world. One of the other things I have concluded, that I am so grateful for, is that communication is so much more than language. (Hence silent films!) We use body language, signs,gestures, facial expressions, posture, movement and even resort to acting out what we mean if someone doesn’t understand. We also make noises and use intonation to add meaning to our words – which is replaced with music and sound effects in a silent film. This means we can actually understand a great deal here, despite not understanding a lot! For example, we can guess that when someone at dinner points at a dish, tilts their head a bit, looks at us directly, raises their eyebrows, smiles and says something with the intonation of a question, that they are asking if we would like more food. (And really what else do you need to understand in life?)

     Another reason to be thankful for gestures and body language is China’s dialects. Sichuan, the province in which Chengdu is located, has its own dialect, Sichuanhua, as do most other provinces or cities. To us, Sichuanhua is unintelligible. Its pronunciation is so dissimilar to Mandarin that there’s nothing to hold onto.  On holiday last week, (I’ll tell you about it next time) I went to Fujian province, on China’s South-East coast. Xiamen, the major tourist city there, speaks Minnanhua (as do parts of Taiwan).To give you an example of the difference in sound;

English:  What did you say? (Literally; say what?)

Mandarin: Shuo shen me

Minnanhua: Gong si mi

It’s at times like these that I would like to ban every dialect and enforce a common language across the whole world. (NB. Of course I wouldn’t like to do this. I think dialects should be protected and taught in primary schools, and preserved as part of the culture and heritage of local areas, but sometimes they can be frustrating to outsiders….)

     Something else I have realised recently is that everyone is convinced that their way of doing things is best. Whether that is our country’s practice, our family’s practice or our own. This does not mean that we’re not open to trying new ways of doing things, or that we think using other methods is below us, but that deep down,we are convinced that our method is better. Of course, sometimes our own methods are more efficient, or more cost effective, more suited to ourselves,more fun etc. But that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘better’! Living in a different country and culture means doing daily battle with your superiority complex. Many times cultural differences have led us to say; “Why, China, why?” but it seems that for now the most open-minded answer is “Why not?”

Leaving my musings far behind, let me tell you about my day-to-day life here.

We have classes every day from 8.30-12; that’s two 90-minute classes with a half an hour break. We have listening, reading, writing,speaking, comprehension and a history & geography of China class. Most days it seems like an hour and a half of class is too long; we feel exhausted by lunch and our teachers are forced to give us a small break in the middle of the lesson, during which everybody’s heads drop down onto the desks for a power nap, some of which stay down for the second half of class… As I said before, we go out to eat for every meal, so normally Rosie (my roommate) and I meet up with the other Newcastle students in our teaching building to go and get lunch somewhere not too far away ( I admit, we are a bit cliquey). Meals seem to take a long time here – we have to decide on a place, interpret the menu, order,eat, (and inevitably chat about what happened in our respective classes that day) and then walk back, probably stopping at a shop on the way. By the time we’re back, a nap is needed, and then the appropriate amount of time to wake up from said-nap, before our homework begins. There is a library here, but you have to pay a fairly hefty deposit to get in, so at the moment we work in our rooms at our desks. By half five, we’re planning where we might go for dinner and by the time we get back from eating, more work is the last thing we want to do, so we normally chill, which involves a mix of watching films, keeping up to date with the Great British Bake Off, and playing table tennis. Our dorms have a Ping Pong room with four tables, and everyone purchased bats and balls within the first few weeks, so that’s one of our go-to activities (Tokyo Olympics here we come!). Something we find frustrating here is the lack of societies and activities outside of class. Comparing Newcastle’s Student’s Union to the one here is a bit like comparing War and Peace to a blank piece of paper. Ok, there probably are things here, and we’ll find them eventually, but for now they are staying very well hidden….

Another aspect of our day-to-day life, which I guess we don’t really think about in the UK, is the technology we use. Obviously here in China it’s quite similar, except for the fact that our wi-fi in the dorms is Appalling (with a capital A). However, when I arrived here, I bought a Chinese phone, to save me the hassle of introducing a Chinese sim card to my English phone (I didn’t think they would play nicely together). So in honour of my Chinese phone, I’m going to give you my Top 5 Chinese Apps, which I (or Chinese people generally) make use of everyday…

In 5^th place is my Chinese weather app 墨迹天气.Every day it shows a little girl with an appropriate background for where you are, and a change of outfit, depending on the weather. It has all the normal weather info, including a 15-day forecast (although how accurate can that be?)and loads of little graphs. You also have the option to listen to the girl tell you the weather forecast (in Chinese) in a very calming voice, with Cavatina from ‘The Deer Hunter’ playing in the background. It’s lovely.

In 4^th place is Ali pay. I don’t have this app yet, but it’s a must-have for the Chinese. You can basically use it to pay for anything; it produces a bar code which every shop and restaurant here can scan, which makes life very simple.

QQ music is in 3^rd place. QQ has a lot of different parts to it, including email, but the music app is simply amazing.You can download essentially any music you want, instantly, for free. There probably are some songs it doesn’t have, but I haven’t found any yet.

2^nd place goes to Baidu maps, because it is very much a life saver here. It’s like Google maps, and travel planner and the TFL app all in one. For any given journey you want to make, it gives you routes by public transport, walking and taxi (including the expected fare) and tells you how many stops away your bus is. It’s just fab.

WeChat, of course, has to be in 1^st place. WeChat = life. For those who don’t know, it’s like Whatsapp, Facebook, Facetime, and free phone calls all in one. And it has great stickers. There is no one in China who doesn’t have WeChat. If you are in a taxi going somewhere,and you come to a stop, even for 2 seconds, I kid you not, your driver will whip out his phone and check his WeChat. Most motorcyclists use it as they drive. Also, anyone and everyone will ask for your WeChat. We’ve been asked by strangers in restaurants, on the street, on campus, and in the park for our WeChat details. In short, WeChat is not just an app, it’s a way of life.

If you have any Chinese friends, or I’m your friend, I recommend downloading WeChat, as it will serve all your communication needs! And after that obvious product placement, I’ll say bye for now.