It’s the evening of my one week anniversary of my time in Sanxiang, the passing of time is a strange thing, on one hand I feel like I have been here ages, on the other – it’s just gone by so quickly!
Friday night there were 12 of us out in the town - a mixture of English, Danish, Spanish, Polish, German and Chinese, and a few of us ended up playing dice with some local guys. Every time you lost you had to down half your drink...I lost a lot!!! But at least now have a fairly good grasp of numbers, hand signals and just had a wicked time watching everyone communicate in different ways. Love the people here, they are just so welcoming.
Yesterday, some friends of my flatmates got the bus to visit. They had all trained together on the 1 month teaching programme in Beijing and were placed not too far away. I ended up going into the city with them to meet up. I got to see my friends at the bar later on, they are living and teaching in Zhongshan. We ended up staying out very late and chatting to all sorts of new people – a Chinese guy started talking to me, asking if I was married and about how he needs to marry a girl from the UK to live there, he went on to offer me 40k to marry him so he could move, but that I wouldn’t have to live with him or sleep with him or anything...just a legal document...needless to say I still politely declined the offer. We then went on to a club afterwards. I ended up staying with Martha, her apartment is lovely! Today we have been wandering the city; I think the strangest sight I saw was a man riding his motorbike, with a pig carcass draped over the back, hanging down each side...Mmmm. Nice. Funnily enough, most of our time was spent eating lots of great food (hopefully NOT that pig!) We had some interesting choices on occasion however...I’ve found that you are not always quite sure what it is you’re eating, but have to try it anyway! We did have our waitress pointing to body parts to help us figure out the dishes...you almost just don’t want to know though to be honest!
Back at the flat now, just planned some activities for next week. Very tired so need to sleep...
Night xx
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I just read this now and I am a bit envious you got placed in Sanxiang （三乡）, of all places. You see, part of the reason I am learning Chinese and went to China, was because my grandfather was Chinese, from Sanxiang, as a matter of fact. I really have a desire to learn about my family history. He spoke the local dialect, which I'm sure you now know is way different from Mandarin. My cousins, aunts, and uncles still speak it. Even though my Mandarin improved greatly from being in Zhejiang province, I felt almost like a traitor to my family for trying to speak Cantonese in Guangdong and then haveing to resort to Mandarin when I failed miserably. I know it's silly, but that's the way I felt.
Anyway, always a pleasure to read about your experiences. I miss China very much. I hope you're doing well back in the U.K.
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