Suzhou

Hello everybody!

As you probably know, we are currently living in China. I thought it was finally time for an update and that is why I am posting this first story on this website. With these stories I will share some of our experiences with you all. I have switched from writing in Dutch to English, so that more people can be able to follow our adventures, and, most importantly, Yaiza can enjoy reading them back as well!

After a lovely time with our friends and family, we left the Netherlands on the 27th of July 2018. We arrived in China with 10 suitcases and 4 pieces of carry on. My parents helped us getting all our luggage to the airport with a little carrier behind the car. It was quite an adventure! We were wondering how we were ever going to be able to move so many pieces of luggage once we were in China, but it all worked out. The agent that helped us find our apartment, Tony, came to pick us up with a van. He quickly showed us our new apartment, our home for the next period of time, which looked really great. We dropped our suitcases and were brought to the Howard Johnson hotel. Here we would stay a few days and Yaiza’s school would organize some events from there. It was a very nice and comfortable place to stay.

The first impression of Suzhou was positive. It is very big and green, there are a lot of parks and waters. There are a lot of tall buildings, things are quite spread out so it doesn’t have a super busy feel to it, even though there live a couple of million people. The people are friendly and helpful, although they usually don’t speak English, which can be a little bit challenging. It definitely is a whole other world. The first feeling, although positive, was also a little bit overwhelming: this is our new home!

In these first days, sleeping in the Howard Johnson hotel, we explored Suzhou a bit and met some nice Chinese people in a little coffee place that gave us some advice about Suzhou.
On the third day Tony picked us up, we saw the apartment a little bit better and arranged everything in our new house. After this we went to a big mall for the whole day, where we went shopping for all the things we needed in our new apartment. It was a very big mall called the Aeon mall. The mall sold a lot of different things and was nearby our apartment. It was tiring. Here the language barrier was quite difficult. Even buying shampoo was a mission, because we can’t read the Chinese symbols and the staff couldn’t speak English, so you were not sure if the bottle in our hands was conditioner, shampoo, body wash or something completely different.
In the supermarket they sold lots of yummy Chinese snacks, we bought some sort of dumplings. Unfortunately they also sold turtles and other living animals in the supermarket, which we found a bit sad to see.
After the shopping we took a taxi filled with all our bags to the apartment and made it ready to move in. We wanted to take a taxi back to the hotel around 23:00, but then it started to pour down. We waited and had another beer. Around midnight it stopped and we went to find a taxi, which we luckily found easily. Getting out of our apartment complex was a mission, it is so big and we didn’t know our way very well through the dark. We got back to the hotel and had a beer and a snack in the nice craft beer bar across the street.
On the fourth day Yaiza’s school picked us up. We met some of the nice colleagues of Yaiza and together we went to get a Chinese sim card. Unfortunately the internet on the Chinese cards doesn’t work well in every phone, including Yaiza’s phone. At least it does work slowly and she is able to call. Mine just works fine, and having internet makes life in China a lot easier.
After that adventure we went to the bank. Here we filled in and signed some forms that we couldn’t read and waited for a while. Then they decided it took too long and we should get lunch, so we went to the school and had lunch there and met some more friendly people. After that, back to the bank and wait again. We opened an account for Yaiza and then we had to go to another bank for another account. Unfortunately they didn’t allow us to do that since we don’t have our residents permit yet. By then we were very tired and were happy to go back to the hotel.

On the first of August I flew to Hong Kong. On the airport a random guy tried to sell me an iPhone, which was pretty weird. There was also a smiling foreigner who shook my hand in the line and said; ‘good to see you again’, but I don’t think we have ever met before. He kept giving me knowing smiles like we shared some great memories.

I arrived in Hong Kong and asked the information point about the best way to get to my hostel. I needed to take the bus, for 40HK dollars. I wanted to pay for my ticket in the bus and the driver pointed to the deposit box. I put a 100 HK dollar bill and after that was told by the driver that I don’t receive any change! Very rude. The driver should have informed me before paying, then I would of course not pay more than double the price. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to speak English or to be interested in my complaint. I wrote the company an email, they wanted to give me a refund, but by the time I received their message I had left Hong Kong already.

Hong Kong was a very cool, big city. It had a bit of an Asian New York feeling to it. I have never been to New York but that’s how I imagine it;, a lot of shops, big screens, people and lights.
The next days I had to go to a big fancy hotel where the face to face introduction of my course took place. It was very interesting, but also quite intense. The speakers were very knowledgeable doctors and professors and I met a lot of nice people that were taking the course. After a full day of learning we usually went out for a few beers, which was very nice. It felt like a group of friends. It was a fun international group. We learned a lot and the lunch buffet in between the course was really awesome.
After five nights the introduction part of the course was finished and I went back to Shanghai. We had a few beers the last night, it became quite late and my flight left very early, I had not slept. I was very tired but everything went well and after a while I was back in Suzhou and had my first nap in our apartment. It is a very comfortable place! I have made a little video to show the apartment so you get an idea. It is a great spacious place and we are very happy with it.

The next days we started to get used to our life here and getting a little bit of a routine. I started studying at home and Yaiza started working. We made some nice friends through her school. Yaiza became good friends with a lot of her colleagues, and Friday night became the usual hang out day. We usually go to a place called ‘Nine Degrees’ or ‘Naughty Beer’, which are both nearby our house and serve a lot of imported Belgian, German and sometimes even Dutch beers! They have some of my favourite beers, like Kwak, Duvel and Leffe. I can get used to living here ;-). The staff in Nine Degrees (especially the owner, Lisa) is extremely friendly and they usually give us some free drinks or snacks, which is very kind of them. One of our first weekends we had a funny experience when we went out. We went to a few bars with some of the new friends and ended up in a club, where they gave us drinks for free! All the foreigners received free drinks and fruit platters. Really absurd, but very nice for us of course. I also discovered a place called Lock bar, where they have open mic nights on Tuesdays. I went there with two friends, Dederick from the US and Tony from the UK, and jammed with some people, which was very nice. Dederick played the drums, someone joined on the bass and the host joined rapping in Chinese. His name was Conor, he is half Chinese and half Canadian and he is a rapper as well. Cool experience! After this visit I have returned several times and met many talented musicians. My raps were appreciated and I usually went with Kishore, a very nice Indian man, the husband of one of Yaiza’s co workers who was in a similar situation as me (a stay at home partner) so we could go out on a Tuesday night. Besides this we became good friends with Nick, a funny English guy and Yaiza became friends with a Russian girl called Lana, a Colombian girl named Marietta, Celia from Australia, Fernanda from Brazil and Kathy from the Philippines. We made even more friends but I will spare you all the names, I just wanted to share how international the group is.

All in all our life is Suzhou has been pleasant so far. It has been very hot in the day time until November. After that it cooled down, but it was not extremely cold In winter it did become very cold and our heating is not the greatest. To do fun things, you have to travel to other parts of the city, but public transport works very well. The metro station is nearby our home and the metro leaves every 5 minutes. We have visited some pretty Chinese streets with canals and fun typical shops and foods, big malls with western stores, and beautiful gardens. Being unable to speak each others language can be difficult sometimes, but in general the Chinese always try to help you if you ask them. There are of course also cultural differences that we have to get used to. Some things and habits are quite different to what we are used to. I don’t want to seem like I’m saying one thing is right or wrong, they are just things we noticed and are different to what we are used to. I will share some examples. Many of the local people tend to spit a lot and that’s not our favourite sound to hear. Waiting in line, or for other people to get out of the metro, is something that people don’t always seem to do. A lot of people smoke and it’s often allowed to smoke indoors in a lot of places. Toilets always smell like smoke. Cars drive through the red light and cut you off on the pedestrian path, even if it’s green for you. Children sometimes have a little hole in their pants, for when they have to go to the toilet, so you can see their butt. Although it is difficult to communicate, there are apps on the phone that translate well from Chinese to English and the other way around. We often use our phones to type a sentence, translate it and show it to each other. You can also take a photo with your phone if Chinese symbols and the app translates it. The locals are usually welcoming and kind. They will try to help if they can, so that’s very nice. The one thing we really dislike is the air quality. On certain days the pollution is very bad and you need to wear a mask outside. The most harmful part of the pollution is called PM 2.5, which are little particles in the air you can breathe in and which can cause damage. We have an app that shows if the air is good or not, and sometimes the PM 2.5 can reach 150: 0 - 20 is ok to breathe, after that it becomes bad. We have also bought an air purifier, a device that ensures the air in our apartment is clean.
A lot of things work via apps here. There is WeChat, which is the alternative for Whatsapp. But besides chatting you can also use it to pay or translate. It’s very handy! Most apps we are used to are not blocked in China. For example Facebook, Whatsapp, Google, and Youtube. When you receive water in a restaurant, it’s usually warm. Beer is also not always served cold everywhere, in Chinese restaurants you have to ask for it to be cold. Another different thing, is that in restaurants, they often put plastic dishes in the front as examples of how the food looks like. We like to go to the cinema, but most movies are in Chinese. They usually play only one English movie at a time, and we read that only 20 western movies a year are allowed to be played in China. I’m not sure if this is true. They don’t have salty popcorn, only sweet, which makes me sad because I love salty popcorn. Sometimes people want to take a photo with us, but not that often. We do get stared at quite a lot. People sleep in public places, like shops, and hang out in furniture stores. They also do a lot of dancing or kungfu like moves in groups, mostly at night. A lot of activities take place in the big malls, which provide you with everything you need. There are shops, bars, restaurants, bowling areas, ice skating, you name it. There are a few western supermarkets that have imported products. Dutch cheese for example! You can buy good bread at nice little bakery’s, but they do charge much more than in Holland, about 1,50 - 2 Euro’s for half a bread (usually thick slices). A lot of bars have great beers, even Belgian and German beers. I was surprised that there is such a big beer scene here, I like it. The food is different but very tasty. It’s nothing like the Chinese food in the Netherlands, but it can be quite tasty. A lot of rice. Instead of drinking water, a soup is often served. Some of the things that are normal to eat here, are quite strange to us, like chicken feet. The meat sections in the supermarkets are usually not very appealing because they sell a lot of stuff we usually would not eat and it doesn’t look very tasty to us. But hey, we are on the other side of the world in a completely different culture, so of course things are different! That’s part of the adventure.

Saturday September 22th we went to a Shanghai for a long weekend. It’s a very big, international city. The metro takes you everywhere and is very cheap and convenient. On Saturday we arrived and visited the French concession area. This is a beautiful area with lots of cozy hang outs and pretty buildings. Of course we had some beers and we also visited the Bund, a famous area with a viewpoint which provides an amazing view of the Shanghai sky line. Really cool! We tried visiting the museum, but there was an extremely long line, so we didn’t go. (When I say extreme, I mean really extreme). We visited a nice street instead with many shops and little bars, fun but very busy. We also ate some local yummy snacks, like dumplings etc. Dumplings are perhaps my favourite thing about China, they are so yummy! They have them in many different shapes, colours and tastes. Can’t get enough of them! We also visited the Jing’an Temple in Shanghai, which was a beautiful temple, filled with big Buddha statues, paintings and praying people. Shanghai is an impressive city and it’s nice that we are living quite nearby. After our first visit we have been a couple of other times and always enjoyed it. Once I went with Conor and we rapped together at a hiphop party there, a cool experience!

In October we had our first holiday in China.
Monday October 1st, we took a DiDi (Chinese Uber taxi) to Suzhou railway station at 5.45 in the morning. We had a flight to Kunming, in the west of China.
After a pretty long journey, we arrived at Lost garden guesthouse. It was a nice cozy hostel filled with other travelers and the staff spoke English, which was a great surprise.
We explored the area a bit and had some Chinese jasmine tea. It was a lot colder in Kunming and we liked warming up a bit with something warm to drink. The tea was nice, but they kept on bringing new jars even tho we had enough after the first or second jar. We walked through the park and saw some local people dancing and joined them. We had dinner in a nice place in the park where we had some Tibetan craft beer and really good Belgian fries! One of the owners was Dutch.
The next day we had brunch in a nice French cafe and here we arranged our flights back home for Christmas, yay! After that we visited a beautiful Chinese temple where we prayed along with the locals with candles and incense. The temple was really impressive and beautifully decorated. We walked through the nice green park where the local people were dancing again in different groups to different kinds of music. Yaiza joined the big dancing circle for a bit. We found a nice place to halve some beers and dinner, called Salvador, and called our family to inform them of the good news of the upcoming December reunion. They were happy to hear it and we are all looking forward to seeing each other again.
At night it was a bit difficult to sleep, there were some loud young Americans and the place was quite noisy, but after a while we managed to catch some sleep.

The next day we took the train to Dali. Here we stayed in another little hostel near the center. It was a very cute, fun city laying in between the mountains. We really enjoyed it. There were many streets filled with shops and restaurants. Yaiza has a Puerto Rican friend that lives in China and he recommended to meet a friend of his here in Dali, a very nice Belgian guy who, of course, had a little Belgian place which sold yummy food and, you guessed it, Belgian beers. We had fun here! We also tried some typical food and bought some little gifts for our family and ourselves. We also visited beautiful temples. It was a very good holiday.

After our holiday we went back to Suzhou. Yaiza continued working and I continued studying. I also substituted and had a successful job interview. I got hired and in January, after the holidays, I would start working as a teacher!

Before leaving to our home countries we wanted to take some money in our own currency. It was possible to take money out of the bank in dollars or euros, but it was quite an adventure. We needed to bring Yaiza’s contract, payslips from the school, passport and sign several documents. They took a photo of her and took copies of her contract. After that we received the cash.

Before we knew it, it was December and we both visited our home countries. We had a great time at home and celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve with our family and friends. Of course we missed being together, but it was nice spending time at home. In the new year we met again in Suzhou and started working.. this time both of us! I will tell you more about that next time. Hopefully the next story won’t take such a long time, but let’s see! I’m busier now than before, but I can already tell you that, although it’s hard work, I really enjoy it!

I have also made a little video with some of the highlights of Suzhou. I think it gives a good image of our life here, you can see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjnUvZmP4PE

And if you would be interested in seeing our one year trip in 4 minutes, I have also made a little video (with my own song) with all the highlights of our trip. You can watch this video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXkKNY1niFE&t=9s

All in all we do enjoy living in Suzhou, China. It has ups and downs of course, but it definitely is a great experience and fun adventure! More stories will come in the future!

All the best,
Joerie