Marie in Shanghai

it´s hard to belive, but over half of my stay is already over! I´ve been here for 9 weeks now, which means there are 7 more to go and I am almost certain they will fly by.

After recovering completely, things went back to normal: class, studying and doing things with friends. Last week, I started an internhip at Nielsen Online, where I´ll be working 2.5 days a week in addition to my classes. It´s a lot of fun and I have already learned a lot. This way, I can also get insight into the Chinese working environment and business world. And I can discover Chinese metro during rush hour. There´s only one word to describe it: cosy. If you´re lacking body contact to other human beings, the metro during rush hour is the place to go! It´s incredible how many people can be jammed into one train. There have been situations where I didn´t have to hold on to anything, because even during an emergency braking, I wouldn´t have been able to move even one inch. I have never in my life experienced something like this. And I surely hope, none of you ever will. Also, I am usually the only foreigner in the whole train, so as always there´s a lot of blatant staring and photo-taking.

One thing about Chinese working moral: As widely known, Chinese create great things. Turns out, yes, they indeed produce a lot of great things, but that doesn´t necessarily mean that they have a high productivity. In Germany, we usually work productively for 8 hours a day. Here, that sounds like a dream. Even in my internship, they requested me to work at least 9 hours a day. I figured out the Chinese get things done, because they work a lot. And by a lot I mean all day. They often take the last metro home (which is at about 10:30pm) and it´s not unusual to add some working days on the weekend if a job hasn´t been finished. There has been construction in front of my dorm and they start working at 7 in the morning and don´t stop before 10pm. Even on Saturdays and Sundays. The thing is, they have to work a lot, because they usually aren´t the fastest. So they make up their slowness by working 24/7. Also, workers here don´t profit from national holidays, since they have to make up the "lost" days on the weekend prior to the holidays. Thank you, Germany, for not making us do that!

Last Sunday, I went to the Formula1 race here in Shanghai with two of my friends, Kiki and Christoph. I had never been to  a Formula1 race before, but I enjoy watching them on TV. And that´s what I´ll stick to in the future. The day was a lot of fun, but it also was very, very loud and even more confusing. After the first round, I didn´t know who was who anymore, I wasn´t sure if the driver with the big gap in between him and everyone else was the leader or the last and if drivers had been lapped, I didn´t even notice. There was one small screen that had the standings on it, but it was too far away to be able to read it. Still, it was a great memory added to my stay here.

Do you think Chinese are polite? Before I came here, I would have answered this question with a clear "yes". Now? Not anymore. All of us had this realization after a while. Chinese people are usually nice and if you have a question, they will try to help you, but the problem is they will even answer it if they don´t know the answer. I have heard stories, where people wanted to take a cab to a store 5 minutes from their place and they ended up at the airport, because the taxi driver didn´t know where they wanted to go, but just wanted to be helpful and assumed they wanted to go to the airport since they were foreigners. Trying to be polite, but unfortunately not too helpful. However, daily life looks a little different. I would have never believed this, but China is starting to turn me into a rude person! I don´t apologize anymore when I bump into someone, just because I´d be doing nothing else all day. People here don´t watch where they´re going, they don´t apologize if they run into you, they push you away and they couldn´t care less about others. So I started to join: I push into the metro, if I want to keep the spot I´m standing at in the bus, I am staying, no matter how much the others push and if I run into someone (or usually it´s someone else running into me) I don´t say anything, but just give them an annoyed look. This is totally against my nature, but there´s no other way to let out all the built up anger and frustration than to join the rudeness and ignorance of everyone else. Really, this country is nothing for the polite and shy. 

Of course, this is a city with over 20 million people, but a little politeness wouldn´t hurt, would it? That´s one thing I really learned to value: Germans are able to form a line when entering a bus, they watch their step and they apologize when accidentally hurting someone else. I have to make sure, I turn off my Chinese rudeness as soon as I am back home, but I´m sure that will happen naturally.

Today, I will leave you with a short Chinese lesson: in Chinese, some English words were adopted and turned into a somewhat Chinese equivalent. Can you guess what the following words mean? (It might help if you read them out loud)

- ham bao bao

- chi si

- chi si ham bao bao

- mai dang lao

- ke le

And here´s an animal (not an English loanword):

- mao

Have fun guessing :) If you want to, you can post your answers in a comment.

See you soon,

Marie

...yes, I did miss posting a new blog entry last Sunday. As you know I have had some health issues ever since I came here. They now resulted in an experience I would have been glad to miss out on: visiting a Chinese hospital. First thing about Chinese hospitals: bring a Chinese! Sticking to this rule will immediately speed up the process, since they know what to do and where to go. Luckily, one of the language buddies, Sissi, accompanied me there, so I avoided the language barrier and a lot of confusion. But let´s start from the beginning:

Ever since I came here I have had a cold (which has been for 7 weeks now) and I felt more and more tired every week. Last Thursday, my ears suddenly started hurting a lot and I lost my hearing almost completely within 2 hours. Thanks to google I got confirmation of what I had been suspecting: an inflammation of the middle ear (in German: Mittelohrentzündung). The pain was getting so bad, that I couldn´t take it anymore and my friend Kiki and I decided that I´d be better off at a hospital. Long story short: I went to the hospital, the doctor at the ER confirmed a severe inflammation of the middle ear and I was given three bags of infusion, some eardrops and medicine to take home with me. Although I spent six hours at the hospital, the whole process was pretty fast (also, because I got a special treatment as a Westerner) and the longest part was waiting for the infusion to be over. Luckily, my hearing has almost returned completely, the pain vanished and today, 4 days later, I left my bed for the first time.

Kiki has been taking care of me 24 hours a day, bringing me breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, cheering me up and leaving her cell phone on in case I´d feel worse and needed to go to the hospital again. You see, there´s no need to worry about me!

Some more interesting facts about my stay at the Chinese hospital: The only thing I needed to fill in was a small slip of paper with my name and telephone number. I didn´t even need to show my passport, health care card or anything. Next, they handed me a credit card - like plastic card that was to be my "patient card" for my stay there. They swept it through a device everytime I was charged for something, adding up the overall cost of my treatment (which was 50€, including the infusions, medication and examination). Next: the infusion room. To be honest, it strongly reminded me of the departure area of an airport. Long rows of chairs (about 200 seats) were squeezed in a room and people were getting infusions, nurses were running around and cleaners swept the floor every 30 minutes. It was quite a sight and if I hadn´t felt so horrible I would have probably noticed even more interesting facts about it. Now, the only thing I remember is Chinese patients staring at me, because I was the only Westerner there and I probably didn´t exactly look my best.

Anyway, I hope to be able to tell you about more pleasant happenings again next week,

All the best and take care,

Marie