China: Going East

Goodbyes are never easy, especially when you’re moving to a different continent. It’s not the only thing to contend with when moving abroad though; there’s packing, nerves, research etc. The week leading up to a move can feel like a full time job sometimes and with friends and family like mine, I feel like I should be paid a full time wage as compensation (only kidding).

After wiping away the last of my goodbye tears on Monday I had a 20+ hour journey to contend with and Manchester airport at 3am was definitely not the ideal place to start it. Terminal 3 is quite possibly the most depressing place on Earth at that time. There was no way I was forking out £10 for a shoddy fry-up so I sat and people watched. Besides the usual businessmen and pensioners there was a group of lads who seemed to be going on a stag-do and were already hammered; pretty impressive considering it was only 5am. I felt quite sorry for the woman who was manning the Swatch stall – who would want to buy a watch at that time in a morning? Who would want to buy a watch full stop? Everyone has a phone now, don’t they?

After a short layover in Brussels (essentially a long corridor with toilets and an expensive sandwich shop) I boarded my flight to Beijing. This flight turned out to be my first experience of life as a minority – something I’ll have to get used to. The cabin crew were all Chinese as were the passengers. They were even showing How I Met Your Mother dubbed.

 Things got worse at Beijing Airport where I was the only foreigner in sight. I did manage to get a picture of one of my first proper glimpses of China though:

 People were staring at me as if I was an alien but that was the least of my worries – I was starving. I found a shop and bought the only two things I could find that looked like human food in an attempt to ease myself into Chinese cuisine – a can of what I think was Fanta and something that looked like a Snickers bar. The Fanta was great, exactly like in the UK, but what I thought was a Snickers was a soy bar; it was like eating a bar of soft, flavourless wood. This bad luck was a sign of things to come unfortunately; my connecting flight to Kunming was delayed by an hour and when I arrived my bag didn’t show up on the conveyor. After managing to find the only person who spoke English in the entire terminal I managed to explain my predicament; my bag was probably still in Beijing he said. Eventually I went to find my new boss, Mark and a Chinese guy called Walter who helped fill out all the paperwork. I’ve still not got it back. Thankfully there isn’t much in there that isn’t replicable; just a few photos, a couple of my favourite football shirts, a watch and most of my best clothes.

When shopping for clean underwear I soon learnt the hard way that Chinese clothing sizes aren’t the same as in the UK. I bought a couple of pairs of boxers which were labelled “L” on the box; they were anything but large, they looked more like a thong on me. I managed to get hold of some XXL ones which fit almost perfectly though (now I know how Rob must feel). I’ll just have to try to convince Jacamo to ship me a package to China to replace the rest of my stuff.

Other than the suitcase incident everything’s going well. I’ll write more about the city, my school and my apartment some other time. Right now I have to try to sleep even though my body clock is telling me it’s 3:30pm…