Blogs from Tianjin, China, Asia - page 17

I am challenging myself to survive on $2to $3 USD/ day in China for at least the next month to save money. $2 to $3 USD is equal to ~13.6 to 20.5 Chinese Yuan. Imagine only having $13 to $20 USD to dine on per day in the states. Could you do it? With out having every meal at a fast food restaurant? You can find extremely delicious meals here for under 5 Yuan (roughly $.71 USD). You can't buy a Snickers bar at that price in the States! Furthermore, these cheap meals are home made. For example, for lunch I went to a tiny little restaurant where they make home made dumplings right in front of you. The most expensive item on their menu is 4 Yuan. I want to save money to take pipa ... read more

The past few days and today were spent exploring the city. There's so much to tell that I'm not sure I can remember it all, much less in one cohesive, chronological series of events, sohere are some excerpts from the past few days and today. Two nights ago, a small group of us ventured to a park on the river. It's obviously a very popular place as it was packed with both the young and old. We watched Chinese youth (two boys who were roughly my age and two little girls who were about ten) do amazing tricks around an obstacle course while wearing rollerblades. We were really excited, so we decided to go rollerblading the next day. As we had learned, you can rent roller blades there for 5 Chinese yuan a day. None of ... read more

Two nights ago we went to a park near the Tianta - the tall TV tower we can see outside our window (2nd tallest in Asia)- and we found this great park where Tianjinians go to rollerblade! And there was this rollerblade team there and these two young men (20ish) and two young girls (12ish) were practicing and they were AWESOME! It was truly like figure skating but to dance music - there was fancy footwork, twirls, jumps, everything! The Tianta tower is surrounded by a lake (look it up on google maps - also if you want I am at the International Golden Bridge Hotel in Tianjin) so after watching the inline skaters for a long time we went down the boardwalk and found another plaza with older people dancing. They looked like they were ... read more

I am finally getting out a bit and have found some interesting things about China that are very different than in the USA. I do not want to give the wrong impression though, overall Tianjin is relatively clean and the people are very nice, but within the limited area that I have explored you begin to realize that this place is an OSHA nightmare. My favorite hazard was the pile of white hot embers sitting on the ground just around the corner from Nankai University (where I am staying and having classes) - Yep, a 1 foot diameter pile of smoldering embers right on the sidewalk. I want t stress that Tianjin is China’s 4th largest city (over 8million people) and I am smack in the middle of it and I could have burnt my foot ... read more

Some of the great things so far have been the really good food, they extremely nice people, and the fun cartoon drawings plastered on everything. There are cute kitty, bunnies, mice, etc. on pretty much everything. And I love how they translate things! They like to write in English but the translation is hilarious - unfortunately I can’t think of anything right now but I bought a cute notepad with Moni mice on it so from now on I can write down the fun translations with my equally adorable Mikky bunny or kitty pencil. We also looked around a huge Karaoke club called KTV. It was great! It looks like it came out of a Chinese/Japanese techno video - all black, shiny walls and neon. The people who work there are dress in fitted white suits ... read more