Chengdu & the Wild west

More to tell than time to write, so a short post today about some places I visited the last couple of days. To start with Chengdu, were I visited Bernhard, who’s studying Chinese there this year, and since the 10th of July was his birthday, my timing of visiting couldn’t be better. Apart from his birthday party he also showed me around Chengdu. Chengdu is the biggest real Chinese city in Western China. So my first impression was simple that this was just another big Chinese city. After visits to the famous teahouses, eating Sichuan hotpot outside and last but not least a look at China’s famous animal the Panda’s, I admit that the city does have its own character.

After Chengdu I took the bus more westwards to Kangding, which should be the unofficial start of Tibet. There were many Tibetans on the streets, but still a lot of Chinese as well. When I arrived, I first got a big disappointment. At the bus station I tried to buy a ticket to Litang, which is even more West and which was my purpose of going in this direction. At the bus station however the woman behind the desk simply told me that this was not possible. I could only understand that it was not possible, but my Chinese travel buddy (who I met on the bus) was kind enough to translate her words for me, “the situation in Litang is too complicated to allow foreigners”. So I just sat in a bus for about 7 hours, only to hear that I can buy a bus ticket back to Chengdu?

This disappointment aside I decided to make the best of the rest of the day and to decide at night whether to take a black minivan or not. Outside the bus station one of these cowboy looking guys already approached me, with the offer of bringing me there in his minivan. These black taxi’s are all over China, and their usually a bit annoying, but sometimes they are a good alternative. In Kangding I went to a big Buddhist temple with my new Chinese friend. This was a good idea cause it was nice to see the big temple and we even got a free diner which we could eat with some visiting monks together. Afterwards we walked through Kangding which is not really a special city in my opinion. Most Chinese know it because of the love song of Kangding, which I haven’t heard. What was interesting though was the amount of army guys on the streets. Chinese soldiers who are making sure that the situation is stable. It does make you wonder why there is a need for them. In Chengdu I also saw a couple of soldiers in front of the big Mao statue, but here there were a lot more, and at places which didn’t really seem to be that sensitive.

It did make me wonder about the situation in Litang, who was said to be too complicated for me to enter. It simply made me want to visit the place more, cause Kangding was apart from the presence of Tibetans still a Chinese city, in the sense that there are more Chinese people than Tibetans. After talking with some other foreign tourists who just came from Litang I decided to take the offer from the cowboy and to go to Litang next morning at 6.

The next day I arrived in Litang after a long bus journey on a horrible road. This place was really different than Kangding, and it felt like I had left China. Almost all the people in this place didn’t look Chinese. Their skin was darker, they were bigger, their noses were almost my size, their hair was thicker and the clothes they wore were exotic. It was also clear that Mandarin Chinese was not their first language. Most of the time they didn’t seem to understand what I said to them and the other way around I mostly failed to understand them as well. Some also seemed to dislike to speak Mandarin, so instead they used all their English to have a conversation. This was usually not more than hello, one girl who really tried looked it up in here schoolbook and managed to say goodbye. The architecture of the buildings was also very different than that of normal Chinese cities, here they had beautiful Tibetan houses. The last thing which makes this city special, is that it’s more than 4000 meters above sea level, this makes the sun very strong and the night surprisingly cold. Finally I didn’t saw that many soldiers here, only a few at a government building, but that’s quite normal, so why the official bus refuses foreigners is still a big question for me. It was easier to spot foreigners in this small city than it was in Wuhu, which is mainly cause the city center only consisted of a main street and some small streets around it, but still.

After Litang I moved on to a similar city called Daocheng, where I met another Dutch guy and an American couple, who were travelling the same direction as me to a place called Shangri-la. Quite a touristic town with a lot of Chinese and foreign tourists. This is where I’m now, tomorrow I will move onwards to visit the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and after that Dali and Kunming.

Goodbye Wuhu

My last post from Wuhu. Tonight I will be on the train to Chengdu. For more than 30 hours! I’m really looking forward to travel again, but ouch, thirty hours. Two nights, and one day, in a train. Guess I’m going to get back on a lot of missed hours of sleep… Apart from sleeping and reading, I really have no idea how I’m going to pass the time. Let’s hope there will be nice people in my cabin.

Today I’m also exactly 4 months in China. Which makes the perfect day for a new adventure. Wuhu was a nice city to live in for the past 3 and half month. It was an easy city to live in because it’s quite small, but still feels like a city and has most conveniences of a city. It has also been a great place to save money, cause live is so cheap here. Finally it has also been a very good introduction to China. I saw the fast economic development, the big contrast between the few dirty rich and the rest, fake copied Western brands, of which the best one has the slogan “Anything is Possible”, and of course the strangest kind of food. My Chinese improved drastically as well, mainly cause there are no people who speak English, except the other foreigners. I experienced the hospitality of the Chinese, some welcomed me to their home and offered me their food, for little in exchange. Dutch people could learn from their hospitality and hopefully I did. On the other side I also experienced their strong hierarchical society, which is in my opinion the biggest difference with my country, and something I will (hopefully) never get used to. Because it leads to very rude behavior towards people with a lower social position, and sometimes that's just not the right way to thread other people. In this aspect the Chinese can still learn a lot from the Dutch equalitarian society. Ironically the country is still lead by Communists.

Although I mostly enjoyed my life in Wuhu, it’s the first city I lived in which I wouldn’t recommend for a visit. This is simply because, despite Wuhu being an good place to live, it is an ugly city compared to places like Amsterdam, Enkhuizen and London. Of course this comparison is a bit unfair since Wuhu is a poor city without any places of interest, and there’s simply a lot more to see in the rest of China.

Evan, (the new American teacher) who is replacing me, turned out to be a really good guy, it’s too bad he didn’t came earlier. Although of course if he had come earlier, my point of being in Wuhu would have been gone. His situation is almost frightening the same as mine three and half month ago. Same apartment, same job, same misunderstandings with Chinese people, the same lack of a schedule, and finally as good as the same motivation of going to China. What’s not the same however is the salary. He’s going to do the same work for a thousand Yuan less! Ridiculous since he’s the native speaker with the real American accent, which is the kind of English all the Chinese want to learn, and which is why foreign American teachers are usually paid more. He’s also not promised a raise, and this suddenly makes me understand my boss, her decision of ending my contract completely. If she continued my contract she needed to pay me a thousand more each month, which would be two thousand Yuan more than what she’s now paying to Evan. I would have done the same in her situation, it’s crazy to pay so much more for a non-native teacher, if you can also get a native for less.

So tonight I’ll start my big trip, with a long train ride to Chengdu. Where I plan to stay for a couple of days. After I plan to go even more west, to a Tibetan town (Litang) outside of Tibet, but at more than 4000 meters above sea level, (according to my Rough guide it’s even 300 meter’s higher than Lhasa) so it will be very similar to Tibet. After this I’ll move on to the South, to see the Tiger leaping gorge, Kunming, and on to Guilin to take the river cruise on the Li river to Yangshuo. After that it will be about time to move onto Hong Kong to get a new Chinese visa, it expires the 2nd of July, so I really need to arrive there the 1st of July, which is coincidentally the day that the UK gave Hong Kong back to China. Hong Kong should be an amazing metropolis, even more so now that I arrive there after traveling for 2 weeks through the undeveloped, more isolated wild West and South west of China. In Hong Kong I will have a break for about two weeks, and after that I’ll continue my travels with a convenient only three hour flight to Beijing. Not sure if I’ll be able to update my blog every week from now on, but be assured that I’ll try my best.

Chinese kids

Last week I finished my teaching career in China. I had the last class at the middle school and thought this would be a good time to write something more about those students. These kids are about 14 to 16 years old, so they are right in their puberty, which is everywhere an very interesting period. Although they are in their puberty, they look like they just started it, the first time I saw them, I guessed their age at about 12 to 13. It’s not only the way they look, it’s also their behavior. They behave a bit childish. I’m not sure if it’s just my perception, but I got the general idea that most Chinese students grow up a bit slower than those in Europe. I guessed the daughter of my boss at 15, she turned out to be almost 18.

My theory is that they grow up slower because of a lack of freedom, and responsibilities. Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for them, cause they have almost no free time, and they never have to decide anything. For them there’s simply no choice, they already have been told what to do. A normal day in the life of these students, starts with their first class at 8am, then they have a break and have lunch at 12, class starts again at 2pm until around 5:30, then they go home to their parents, have diner, which is followed by their homework, and then finally they can go to bed. In the weekends they usually have some other classes, or their parents put them on some kind of language or music school. And of course there is still homework to be finished for the next week. All in all, they have about one afternoon left of free time. Which made my question on the spoken examination, “What do you like to do in your free time?” a very difficult one to answer.

The students are also extremely competitive, which is stimulated by a list, which shows the best student of the class all the way to the worst students of the class. This list is based on the students performances on all the important examinations they have to do. Maybe I haven’t been a teacher for long enough at this school, but I do have the impression that the students don’t learn how to work together, or the value of cooperation. Which could be more important for some of them than the English language will ever be for them.

The teaching at the middle school reminded me of my own time at school. The contrast however seems to be quite big, cause at my Dutch school we had a lot of afternoons free, and the homework was often voluntary. We could usually decide for our own if we wanted to do the homework or not. After all it’s for our own good to do the homework or not right?
Because a lot of those students don’t want to learn English it also reminded me of my French classes at school. I really disliked those classes and in the end I failed the subject, and apart from about 2 sentences I am not able to pronounce or understand anything of it. Which I now think is a shame cause it would be nice to speak another language, but also proves me that it really doesn’t make sense to teach something to someone who doesn’t want to study it in the first place.

This last point shows that there are similarities as well, I’m just pointing out the differences in my post. The kids attitude towards school is more or less similar, both the Dutch and Chinese kids dislike some subjects. Like me not enjoying my French classes, a lot (most?) of Chinese students dislike their English classes.

Parents

After last week’s frustration this time a much happier post about a nice small holiday with my parents. Off course it was really good to see them again and besides that we had a very special holiday.
My mom was happily surprised by China, I guess that after a lot of critical stories from me and my dad, her expectations might have been a bit low. But she found most Chinese people very friendly, despite having very different attitudes towards social customs, like spitting on the ground, not saying hello in the supermarket to the shop assistant and so on. They also enjoyed the Chinese food more than they expected. But for my dad this, might also because he was in much better company than he usually is in China.

I showed my parents around the city of Wuhu which took some more time than expected, cause for them there were still a lot of interesting things to see. Maybe that’s not really because of Wuhu, but will be the same with every smaller Chinese city, when you come from such a different country like Holland. My mom really loved the old traditional street markets, and both my parents were amazed by how fast the Chinese destroy old buildings and build some new ones. I remember that in my first weeks in Wuhu, this was also one of the things which made the most impression on me. For example the hotel they stayed in wasn’t even a year old, and the number of buildings being destroyed on the way from the bus station to the hotel were too many to count on one hand, or two. Maybe with the three of us we could manage. But simply said, in these smaller Chinese cities it just feels like there demolishing and building everywhere. It’s also because the way they destroy a building is very different than in Europe. In Holland they usually try to repair old buildings, but here they just destroy it and build a new one. It’s probably because it makes room for more jobs, and limits unemployment a bit. In Holland building like this would be impossible cause it would be way too expensive and there would not be enough people as well.



For the trip to Huang Shan, the Yellow mountain, I really need to figure out how to upload pictures on my blog. Cause this was definitely the most beautiful nature I’ve seen in China so far. Although I have to say that it was also the first time I’ve seen nature in China. However there are a lot of Chinese who believe this is the most beautiful mountain in China. We went two days to this mountain and we were extremely lucky with the beautiful weather those days. The weather was very clear and sunny which made up for a really pleasant trip to Huang Shan. The first day we were there was on Thursday, and it was not that busy (not for China that is), but the next day on Friday it was really busy and walking around was a lot less relaxed with all those big groups of Chinese tourist walking in front and behind us. So for anyone thinking of going to this mountain, I advise you to go between Monday and Friday.

Apart from the beautiful mountains we climbed, we were amazed by how the Chinese made this national park. They build stairs all the way up to the mountain, which might sound easy, but these mountains are very steep, and it should have been impossible to make those stairs using machinery, without destroying the original landscape. So that means it’s all handmade. How many Chinese people have worked building this park? The result is very impressive, it’s possible for the oldest Chinese people to climb this mountain, thanks to those stairs and cable cars.

All in all a really nice holiday, and now my last days as a teacher, before my big holiday. I’ll put the photo’s up as soon as I found a solution. Or as soon as, China lets me access this site in the normal way. I hope that will be after the 4th of June, although the first of October might be a bit sensitive as well, cause at that day the Communist party will celebrate its 60th anniversary.

Access denied

This week I wanted to write something about the Chinese students I have. Last week I gave spoken English exams at the middle school, and it was interesting to talk with some of the students individually. However something else came up so I’ll leave the Chinese teenagers for another time.

This week someone decided that blogger, (which is a really nice site helping people like me host a blog for free on the internet, allowing for photo’s and video’s with as good as no advertisement) should be blocked. This means that I now have to use proxy sites to view my own blog here in China. Although I’m still able to read and update my blog, it does bother me. I don’t like it that someone just decides from one day to another that a certain blog-host is unwanted. Because on one of the blogs someone wrote something bad about China? It stops other bloggers to blog, and so there are less interesting things to read on the web. Besides that, it does stop a lot of Chinese people reading the blogs on blogger. This definitely doesn’t improve the understanding from China of the rest of the world.

The first time I experienced China’s authority on the web, was at the site hyves.nl, which is a Dutch social networking site like facebook. It’s really strange that they blocked this site cause, one it’s in Dutch and two there is nothing political about it. It would make more sense to block facebook, since there are a lot of support Tibet, Taiwan is not China and similar groups on it.
Since the end of March China is also blocking Youtube, and this one is really annoying me. This was (is, in most countries) one of the most useful websites of the internet in my opinion, and although I can access the site using the same proxy sites, somehow I can’t view the videos anymore. So this does make it impossible for me to view anything on Youtube, which indeed makes the site completely useless. They probably blocked Youtube because in March it was 60 years ago that China “liberated” Tibet, and Youtube has a lot of videos about protesting Tibetan’s being….. (I’ll leave that one to your imagination, oh no wait maybe you can go to youtube, if you’re not in China.)

Other sites which are most of the time blocked, include the BBC, CNN, Amnesty, independent critical political blogs, and pornographic websites. The last one is because pornography is illegal in China, although you don’t really notice that apart from the internet. Dutch news websites are not blocked, the Chinese seem to have forgotten that there are smaller languages as well. Or maybe they think that Dutch websites will not be harmful for the Chinese citizens cause they don’t speak it anyway. For me it’s an advantage though, cause it’s nice to be able to read the more critical Dutch news sites without having to use a proxysite. So far the only Dutch site, which I couldn’t access was Hyves, and I’m sure they made a mistake with doing so, cause I can’t think of one reason why they could have blocked it. It’s nice to appreciate my native language again and it does show me that it can be a real advantage to know a smaller language as well. The English and the French in China are forced to use those proxysites if they want to read news.

They’ve probably blocked Blogger because, another sensitive date is approaching. The 4ht of June. This year it will be 20 years ago that the Tiananmen demonstrations were cracked down by the Chinese government. I don’t want to be another foreigner complaining on the internet about China’s policy regarding the freedom of speech and the freedom of press. But briefly said, I think it’s sad and disappointing that China after the Olympics is still not able to allow for a more liberal policy on the internet and more important the media. Maybe now that China’s power is still rising they’re even less influenced by the West and will be even more strict about things like this. I’m not able to understand the Chinese media yet, but looking at the topics they are definitely avoiding some more sensitive topics.

A topic they are definitely not avoiding though, is the swine flu. I guess it’s because it’s only a couple of years after the SARS epidemic, but they really seem to be afraid of it. It really makes me wonder what is written in the Chinese newspapers. What are the newspapers telling them? The new American teacher is suddenly not coming, cause the boss thought he could have swine flu. He comes from a country with the most people infected, so it didn’t seem to be a good idea to hire him. I’m not sure to believe this though, cause it does sound a lot more realistic that the American just changed his mind, and doesn’t want to go to Wuhu. But since they are really afraid of the swine flu somewhere it does sound possible that the kindergartens don’t want an American teacher who just came out of the US.

Since the American is not coming the boss has asked me to keep working until the end of June. Since I already made travel plans for June, and I don’t want to change them, I told her I could work for her until the first week on June, but not longer. She was not very happy to hear that, but well it was her decision to end the probation period wasn’t it? The good news is that I keep my apartment in these last weeks in Wuhu.

So let’s hope that China stops blocking internet sites as soon as possible, cause using the proxy sites, is a lot slower than usually. Apart from that I'm not able to change the lettertype or to post images... I like to keep this blog, but I'm afraid I do need to find a better proxy site, else I'll have to move to another bloghost.

A few days off

The sign in the elevator of my apartment. For 3 months I saw this sign every day.

Last week I asked my boss for 4 days off. My parents will come to visit me next week and they will only be here for about 5 days, it will be nice to show them around Wuhu and to travel with them to the famous mountain, Huang Shan, or in English the Yellow Mountain. Showing them around Wuhu won’t take too long, cause I have to admit that there isn’t that much to see here. Although on the other hand it’s so different from Holland that there is actually a lot to see and I’m sure this city will be full of surprises for my mom. My dad has probably been too often to China to be surprised. My mom has never been here, so I’m curious what she will think of it. She also doesn’t really like China, so I can be sure that they don’t use me as an excuse to have a far away vacation, but that they really come to see me.

Back to asking those days off. My assistant informed me, that she couldn’t arrange 4 days off. This would be impossible because those 4 days are normal weekdays, and our school has contracts with the middle school and the kindergartens. This means that they have to send a foreign teacher to these places on those days. I understood this problem, but that didn’t really change my situation. Cause I’d still rather go to Huang Shan with my parents than teach in the middle school. My assistant told me that the boss would probably be very angry with me if I would insist on those free days, and that she would not accept this.

With this in mind, I went to my boss and explained to her that I needed four days off. I was very proud that I could already explain this in Chinese, and looking at her facial expression she understood completely. Her first answer was simple “bu keneng”, I also understood this, “No, not possible”. Then she asked my assistant to come and translate for her and I heard the same story my assistant had told me before. It affects the image of our school if we can’t send you to the middle school and the kindergartens, so it’s not possible. I insisted on having those 4 days off, and revered to the contract, cause this worked before in an argument with my boss. Somehow she really respects the contract, which I think is a bit odd, cause the contract only exists on my computer and she hardly knows what’s written in it, besides the contract is only in English so she’s not even able to read the contract. Since I insisted on those free days, my boss understood that it was impossible to deny me those days off. So she gave me 4 days off, just like I asked. However she did warn me that, I should be aware of any consequences this might have, since I still am in my probation period.

This Sunday I had a formal meeting with my boss, in which she told me that she decided to end the probation period. She found a new American teacher and he will arrive in about one week, and will take over all my classes. I can’t say they didn’t warn me for this and I was not surprised to hear this because my assistant had already told me this in advance. Can’t say I’m too disappointed with her decision either, cause I was planning on working until the end of June and now I’m working until the end of this week. The boss has been kind enough to offer me accommodation for a longer time, so I’ll probably stay in Wuhu for about 3 more weeks.

It depends a bit on the accommodation though, cause I will now have to move to the dormitory room in our school. The new American teacher is going to live in my apartment, he really is replacing my live in Wuhu. I offered my boss to help him settle in the first few weeks, to give him some advice and to introduce him to some other foreigners. She appreciated that and I think, I can leave this place on good terms with her. I don’t like my boss, but she always paid my salary on time and the apartment she rented for me has been a very good place to live. Apart from that I do appreciate it that she offers me accommodation for the next couple of weeks, cause she doesn’t really need to do that.

So a long story short, I’m fired after 3 months already. Which is a new experience for me, cause I don’t remember ever getting fired before. Although let me put it differently, after a minor conflict with my boss, she decided not to prolong my probation period. This week is already my last working week here in Wuhu. My summer holiday is starting early this year. So I will stay in Wuhu to see parents, to travel with them to Huang Shan, to say goodbye to the friends I made here, and to prepare my travel plans. Planning to go traveling for almost 3 months around China, and then finally arriving in Xiamen at the end of August to enter university. Xiamen should be a really nice place, I’ve heard really good things about this city. It should be a bit bigger than Wuhu, but still not a big city (not for China), and it should be a lot more developed than Wuhu. I want to go there cause it’s supposed to have the best climate of China and it has a beach. Which made someone describe it as the Barcelona of China. Which sounds attractive right? Even though I’ve never been to the real Barcelona.

One last thing I have to tell about my very soon to be ex-boss is that I have no idea what her name is. Everyone calls her headmaster or boss, unless they use some bad word to describe her. Which they now do quite often, cause she also decided to cut down the salaries of my Chinese colleagues, which already wasn’t that high. She did introduced herself to me when we first met in February, but since then I never heard her name, so I guess for me it’s just the boss.

Nanjing

Last weekend the Chinese celebrated labor day, and most Chinese had 3 days free from work. In China people are rarely given days off, so for a lot of Chinese this is one of the few times a year, they can visit their family or do some touristic traveling. One of my Chinese friends invited me to join her and her friends to travel to Nanjing, and so I also did some traveling this weekend. Just like the Chinese.

I already went to Nanjing once and I found it a really nice city, although I also thought it was a bit too big and crowded. But I’m afraid I will have the latter with a lot of Chinese cities, cause I guess most cities here are just very busy with people. It was quite exciting to join the Chinese students on their trip to Nanjing, cause the ones I knew spoke very poor English to say the least. It’s a good thing my Chinese is improving a lot faster than I expected cause else communication with them would have been very difficult. Now it’s ok, as long as they speak slowly and use very simple words, I’m afraid they feel like talking to a child though. However I was glad to see that one of the students who I hadn’t met before spoke some decent English.

The first time I visited Nanjing, I went to the touristic old center of the city, a small Buddhist temple in a park and the 1912district to have diner. The 1912 district is a district with a lot of bars, restaurants and clubs, and this is the kind of district which doesn’t exist in Wuhu. Nanjing is only 2 hours by train from Wuhu, but the city feels very different from Wuhu. I think it’s simply because Nanjing is a lot richer and bigger than Wuhu. In Nanjing people dress themselves a lot better, there are traffic rules, there are Western restaurants, there are even a few other foreigners visible, at the train station you hear an English voice and the foreign language bookstore actually sells foreign books instead of English, Japanese and Korean study books, like the foreign language bookstore in Wuhu. Although I was happy to buy a few very handy Chinese study books at this store. Basically Nanjing is one of those big modern Chinese cities, while Wuhu is one of those provincial Chinese cities which desperately tries to be a modern city. They do this with naming everything modern, my apartment is called Modern long river and I work in the Modern foreign language training center. But calling everything modern does not really make it modern.

This Saterday we went to the Zhongshan national park, which is a scenic area in Nanjing. Actually the place consist of three scenic areas, of which we only visited two. Not much to my surprise this place turned out to be crowded with Chinese tourists and even a few foreign tourist. The bus ride to the park was horrible, I had the feeling that we were together with 200 sweating Chinese on one bus. Needless to say that it was impossible to sit. Unfortunately Nanjing is very big and this park is not very close to the train station, so this bus ride took about one hour. Which makes up for the most uncomfortable moment in China so far.

Chinese friends taking pictures.

Happily enough this horrible bus ride was more than worth it. The national park turned out to be a very nice place to visit. The first place we visited, the Ming tomb scenic area was nice and peaceful. It was nice to walk around there and to take photos. Yes that’s something Chinese tourists like to do. This meant that we were not walking that much, cause there had to be taken pictures about everything which looked interesting. And in my opinion also a few times at not so interesting places. The second scenic area we visited included the tomb of emperor Sun Yatsen on a hill, and this one was more impressive. It was a long climb on the stairs to his tomb, but I liked the architecture and it was really good to see something more historical in China. And the view of Nanjing on top of the hill was nice as well. Although this should be better when the weather is less cloudy. Because one of my Chinese friends had some connection with someone who is in charge of this national park, we didn’t had to pay the entrance fee. Which is just one of the advantages of traveling together with Chinese friends.

On Sunday we went to the Nanjing massacre memorial, which was interesting to see, but not really a nice place to visit. I had mixed feelings about the place, it was nice to learn a bit more about the 2^nd world war in China but I found it all a bit too one sided. The museum showed the unsatisfied attitude of China towards recognition of the massacre from Japan. At almost every sign in the museum you could read who was responsible for these cruel inhuman actions, and those signs were in Chinese, English and Japanese. The last one is useless in my opinion, cause Japanese people should know better than to visit this place.

I had a great weekend and I enjoyed my second trip to Nanjing a lot. I like to live in Wuhu, but sometimes it’s good to get out of Wuhu and see something of the more developed China. It was also very interesting to travel together with Chinese students and I got more than enough practice with speaking Chinese for this week. I guess now it’s time to learn some new words, cause my vocabulary level is just too small to get to the real interesting conversations.