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Published: July 22nd 2008
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me, patrik and stacy
our last night together before we all part ways... Last July I left all that I knew and understood in England for a summer of learning Mandarin in Shanghai. I had the vague idea then that I might stay on for a little longer than just the summer but a year later, I’m still out here and now about to embark on a worldwide travel adventure, lasting… well, who knows how long it’ll last!
Shanghai 上海 16th July 2007 - 8th July 2008
Living in Shanghai this past year has definitely been an experience I’ll never forget. I enrolled for the summer language course at Fudan University and during my first few days in Shanghai it very quickly became apparent that life in China was definitely going to be different to life in England! Hardly anyone speaks English, so if you don’t know any Chinese (which at the time I didn’t, aside from how to say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and a few other simple words, all well and good if you don’t want to eat or go anywhere!) it can be very difficult to get anything done, there seems to be no obvious traffic laws for Shanghai roads and Shanghai summers are hot and humid!! However, after a few
weeks of adjusting I soon settled down to life in Shanghai as a foreign student learning Mandarin.
The summer course was very basic and although it helped me a lot to get around and ask for what I wanted those first 7 weeks I was in Shanghai, it did nothing to prepare me for the autumn course that began in September. I struggled a lot that first month or so, became best friends with my dictionary and after a while things started falling into place and it wasn’t such a struggle anymore, although it was definitely far from being easy! A lot of time was spent writing and memorising characters, as well as getting to know my classmates and the odd bit of sightseeing around Shanghai every so often. I managed to get myself a part time job in November teaching English to school kids at a small private language school on the other side of Shanghai for 2 evenings a week, so life soon got pretty busy with studying and working.
During the summer I started attending the Shanghai Dragonboat practices every Sunday morning and very soon I was a regular member of their international team. Their
last race of the year was in October which I took part in, in Ningbo, a city about a 5 hour drive south of Shanghai. The race weekend was hard work as we’d entered the 500m and 5000m races but as an amateur team who only practices one morning a week, we did pretty well against the other international teams who were racing (some of whom apparently trained 4-5 times a week!).
I made quite a few really close friends in the past year out in Shanghai from all over the world and I’d say that our experiences of living in a country so foreign to our own was what made us become so close in such a short space of time. After the autumn semester finished in January 2008 I had to say goodbye to some really good friends of mine who were returning home to finish up with their university degrees and it was really hard saying goodbye to them. I debated about whether to return home myself but soon decided against it, as 6 months of learning a language is definitely not nearly enough time to get to grips with it, let alone master it (though,
saying that, after a year of learning mandarin I’m still far from having ‘mastered’ it!). Thankfully some of my friends from the autumn semester were staying on for the spring semester too, so I was safe in the knowledge that I’d know at least a few people in Shanghai after the winter holiday break.
I was actually really glad I went back home to London and then to Malaysia for the winter holiday because it was the coldest winter China had experienced in a long time. Mid and southern parts of China experienced snow for the first time in a very long time and a lot of public utilities such as power and transport were affected because of it. Winter in Shanghai was certainly an experience, especially when compared to the intense heat and humidity of the summer. Pretty much all buildings in Shanghai don’t have central heating or any proper type of heating systems other than using air conditioners to blast out hot air and this is apparently because its only cold just a few months a year. A lot of buildings in Shanghai are also made from solid concrete, which keeps the cold in, great for the
summer but not so nice during the winter, all I can say is that I’d never experienced such a cold winter before in my life!
The spring summer at Fudan was a lot more intense than the autumn semester was, as we were working from 5 textbooks as opposed to the 1-2 textbooks we used in the previous semester. I also somehow ended up working 3 evenings a week during the spring semester so things were pretty busy at times! As well as attending class, studying and working I also managed to spend some time getting to know Shanghai and all it had to offer. Shanghai doesn’t have too much in the way of grand historic buildings, it’s a very cosmopolitan shiny new city with a lot to offer in the way of dining and nightlife, which of course I had to sample! I got to know some of my classmates really well during this second semester at Fudan, spending nearly every day with them in class and outside of class, so when we all left Shanghai at the beginning of July, it was really sad knowing that it would be a long time before we were all reunited
again.
And so this very brief mini summary of the past year pretty much brings us up to date. On the 24th June, 2 friends of mine from the UK flew out to Shanghai to begin our travel adventure together. We spent our first 2 weeks in Shanghai while I finished up with class and work, after which we left Shanghai to begin our travels in China. First stop was Huangshan 黄山 (Yellow Mountain), followed by Nanjing 南京, then Xi’an 西安 and lastly but by no means least Beijing 北京.
Tales of our travels in China will follow soon…
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