random pix: wending photos

Being an island with beaches all around, Xiamen is perfect for awesome wedding photos. The way Chinese do them is a bit different though... They take professional photos of just the bride & groom waaaaay before the wedding, wearing clothes that aren't theirs (a few costume changes' worth) and in places they aren't actually getting married. It's phenomenal to watch. Often times with beers. Free entertainment!

Yes, "Wending" photos for everyone!

More than 20 couples on the same stretch of beach taking photos? No problem. At this beach, it happens every day.

Not going to lie, I want to do this.

Ignore the cute animal meeting, there is actually a couple in the background.

Same goes here. Why is he on a horse? Don't you want to be on a horse?

The junkyard wedding photos I do find a little strange. They're 100 yards from a beautiful beach... are they lost?

visa lording: yep, there seriously was more

My school in Xiamen began working on my visa paperwork (to the best of my knowledge) in July when I committed to work for them beginning in September. They were asking me for pictures and copies of things, so I was thinking I'd get here and it would be ready. Once you already have a work visa in China, paperwork can just be transferred over, so after the first Hong Kong embassy visit, you never need to go again.

When I got here, the paperwork was all still in the works, but after a few weeks they told me they needed a "recommendation letter" from my old school (it's actually just a standard form they need filled out and stamped). With that, they could transfer my Foreign Expert Certificate and viola, I'm an expert and can get my Residence Permit and be legal again.

When I left Songyuan, and all of SAGE English School's terrible bullshit, with my visa finally in hand, I assumed that their influence on my life was over. I was still careful though; a coworker of mine there was planning on leaving (due to the usual bs with visa/hours/pay/etc.), so I had talked her into moving to Xiamen as well since she was leaving anyways. She made a midnight run and left the school with no word, which didn't help matters. I made sure not to post any pictures of us together on facebook (I'm friends with a few of the Filipino teachers that have been there forever and are friends with the VP), so as far as tangible proof goes, I had done nothing to harm their school and was actually the only person in the past nine months that had successfully completed a teaching contract.

Unfortunately, my new school didn't tell me about the recommendation letter until two days after I felt safe enough to post the first picture. Eek. So I emailed the owner and the VP asking them for the letter and crossed my fingers.

To my surprise and delight they said it was no problem and told me one of the school's errand runner guys would help me out when he got back from holiday. I emailed the guy and cc'd them and sent him messages on QQ as well and then waited. And waited.

I emailed the VP a few times to ask when the guy would be back to help me, she told me to contact him directly and gave me his phone number. I called and texted him and still nothing. Finally, after three weeks of runaround, he messaged me back on QQ saying that he wouldn't help me because I said something bad about the school and everyone knew. When I answered that the school owner had actually told him to help me, I got this email from the school's owner.

What?!? Leaving out the random std and criminal bits (again, what???), SAGE Education Group has quite the negative reputation to begin with without me needing to say anything, both in Songyuan and online. Aaaaand this was the point at which I actually threw up my hands, exaggerated cartoon style, and said screw it.

I told my new school that the old one wasn't going to do the letter. I had told them from the start that I was concerned about the old one saying no, and I kept updating my boss, so she wasn't surprised and had found a way around it by the time I broke the news.

Yay new school, yay being away from crazy town and yay being legal right out of the gate!

the hunt

Cost of living in Xiamen is much higher than either Songyuan or Tianjin, both due to the easy availability of more entertainment options and more western establishments, but also just because of the aforementioned size and economic factors of the city. This made my initial move here a bigger financial burden than expected. If I'd known about all the up front moving costs and been prepared I'd have been fine. I was not, soooo, it was not the most fun thing ever. I definitely had to get an advance on my salary to make it work, which is actually pretty common, but still, not a thing I think any westerner likes the idea of.

My school here didn't give me a fully furnished apartment as part of my contract, which had its pros and cons (and ended up proving to be the biggest struggle, naturally). My salary was theoretically higher to compensate, but now that I know all I know, it's just plain harder to save money here than Songyuan. Salaries are lower relative to cost of living. I'm really happy I got to choose my own apartment though. It has Chinese quirks, but quirks I'm comfortable with. It's a place I'm ok calling home (for a year), and I really like the area I live in. That said, it was definitely challenging to find and settle in to.

When I left Songyuan to travel in August, I was headed to Xiamen at the end with intentions of crashing on a friend's couch here until I found my own place. About a week before I was to arrive, my friend skype'd me to tell me he was moving back to the States and he'd be gone by the time I got here. No bueno. Luckily, his roommates were still fine with me staying on the couch, but of the three people in the apartment, I'd only met two of them before moving in with them, and only met them once at that.

Their apartment was great, and they were really nice people, but there were some obvious drawbacks. It was the hottest month of year and their apartment had ac everywhere EXCEPT in the living room, so sleeping was virtually impossible. They also all kept different schedules from each other and different schedules from me, so people were coming home drunk at 4am and ordering McDonald's delivery while others were getting up at 8am to go to make breakfast and go to work. It was exhausting.

View one direction from one of the balconies of my friends' 30th floor apartment. Not bad, not bad at all.

Finding an apartment on your own here is virtually impossible, not being able to read or speak. Most people have to use a real estate agent to find a place. Agent commission is half of one month's rent. Otherwise, there are a few local websites for English speakers where people post roommate wanted ads, sublets, "will" down apartments when they leave and things of that nature. As part of my contract, my school had to help me find an apartment, but after three weeks of searching and no dice on one that I was comfortable with, I went on a local forum and found a Chinese woman offering her apartment hunting services for less than an agent.

While she was looking, I decided three weeks on my new friends' couch was more than enough; it was time for another temporary move. I moved to an area further away from things (like my school) than I wanted to be (15 minutes commute instead of 5, boo hoo, woe is me), but I had a room with a bed and ac (yay!), and a bathroom and all that. I paid a pretty cheap rate to live there for half a month while I kept looking for my own place. The guys that lived there had actually both come to Xiamen from Songyuan, so we had a lot of friends and experiences in common, which was great.

I shared my room there with a friend from Songyuan that I had talked into moving to Xiamen around the same time I did. My school had been screwing with her visa, her pay, her schedule, etc. and she wasn't happy. We both discovered that moving into apartments in Xiamen was going to be more expensive than we had anticipated, so we decided to split the temporary room costs and share till we found our own apartments.

The woman I found on the forum ended up finding my current apartment after a little less than a week of looking, so we weren't there for very long anyway. She also negotiated the rent down a little bit for me, which was of course awesome.

In China, you pay rent quarterly, so to move in to an apartment you have to pay four months' rent right off the bat (three for the first quarter you live there and then one for the security deposit). On top of that, you probably have to pay your agent fee. You need to pay to change your locks when you move in since so many agents have the keys to one apartment. Then there is something akin to HOA fees that you also pay quarterly. You have to put a deposit on your utilities if you don't pay them directly each month, like me. Then there's internet, you pay for the entire year of service at once, you pay for setup and then if you have to buy wireless router that's an additional cost as well. There's drinking water, to get a water machine with the large jugs you have to pay for a large quantity of jugs up front and then they just deliver them to you as you use them up. And then, even for a furnished apartment, you need to buy normal house-y things, like plates and chopsticks and bedding and towels.

All said and done I paid more than two months' salary to get myself set up in this apartment. Eek.

I ended up in the below one bed, two bath, loft apartment on the eleventh floor of a large building that's also home to a somewhat bizarre variety of businesses. My boyfriend was moving to China to live with me at the end of December, so I got a bigger, more expensive apartment than I would have if I'd planned on being alone. The friend that shared the room with me while we were looking ended up staying with me here too until December so we could split costs and she could save money to tackle getting her own apartment.

I feel the need to stipulate that the below photos are pre me moving in a giving the place a serious deep cleaning.

my lofted bedroom

Yes, that IS a seriously random low bit hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the bedroom that I constantly hit my head on.

living room

This is my master bathroom. "Complete" with three walls, one being frosted glass. I did mentioned apartment quirks, right?

It's hard to tell, but there is something serious missing here... any type of cooking surface under that large hood fan. And the appliance under the counter? It's a dish DRYER not a dish WASHER.

Major quirk #3: the urinal in the downstairs bathroom. And no, I don't use it.

I'm baaaaaack

It's been a long time since I've posted or kept up with what I've been doing, but I'm back. More importantly, I'm back with the intention of keeping up more consistently. So, where did I leave off? Ah yes, my move to Xiamen, in Fujian province, at the end of August, after almost a month of travels.

Xiamen is an entirely different ball game than Songyuan or Tianjin. A LOT of what I'd noticed and posted about in my previous home cities doesn't hold true here, and I attribute that to a couple main factors.

It seems to me that northern China and southern China are very, very different- the accents (northern Mandarin is more pure), the food (northern food is saltier, southern food is sweeter and spicier), the physicality of the people (northern people are shorter and stockier with potbellied men), the general attitude of the people (southern people seem friendlier toward strangers), etc.

Xiamen also has a lot bigger metropolitan area than Songyuan (not Tianjin, but my time there was limited) with a lot more western influence. There is a huge stone export industry here that draws many foreign business people (no quarries though, explain that one to me) as well as a large, well reputed university with several international programs and thousands of foreign students.

These things, as well as some factors more directly related to my school have made my life here significantly different. Stay tuned for details...

random pix: depressed fox, terrific cops & slomed salads

Why is this children's character about to hang himself?!

Songyuan traffic police are terrific!

If this doesn't help explain plumbing in Beijing, nothing will.

leg #2: travel China, Shanghai (again)

After Beijing, we returned to Shanghai for about a day. We hit the Pearl Market again and went to a British bar for drinks, where we met a man that may have made my trip. He used to book bands, so he filled us in on where the good live music venues were in Shanghai.

My friend and I used to live together in the States, and at one point we were going to see almost a show a week. I absolutely love live music, and I haven't seen any since the day before I left for China. We went to the club that night and saw some great musicians, it was the perfect end to our trip.

Ben Houge

Daniel Hart

At the shows we go to in the States, the universe seems to have some unspoken rule, that there will be some Asian guy (likely the only one at the show) that will try to attach himself to me for the entirety of it. When Ben Houge was on, he said something that prompted me to yell, "You sound like you're from Wisconsin!" at him... and then it happened there too. This guy that was also apparently from Wisconsin, but working in Shanghai and of Chinese heritage, used that as his opening and hung out by us until we left. It cracked us up.

leg #2: travel China, Beijing

After Haikou, we flew up north to Beijing to see the Great Wall. I hadn't seen it yet, after nearly seven months in China, so I was definitely due, and it was on my friend's "must" list.

There are a few different places near Beijing to see the Wall. We didn't really care where we went as long as we saw the thing, so we just asked the front desk at our hotel if we should go in a tour group or just go by ourselves. They didn't speak great English, but they gave us directions by city bus (only one transfer!) and told us it would take an hour. And then they wished us good luck. Never a good sign...

We actually made it there without any problems, though it took two hours instead of one. We ended up at Badaling and actually passed two other spots to get on the Wall on the way. We were talking to ourselves/the driver the whole time saying, "Sir? Um, sir? I think you missed our destination... sir?" I actually would have rather stopped at one of the other places, as they were significantly less crowded, but Badaling had both newly restored Wall and old, decrepit, no-tourists-allowed-Wall, so that was cool to see.

Soooo many people. And it was a Tuesday.

Someone should tell them that this probably makes most Americans WANT to commit a nuisance.

Like so many other things that are really hyped up, it was cool, but still just a wall. Probably don't need to ever see it again. It was a really good hike though. The inclines and steps and whatnot were ridiculous. I managed in flip flops, but sneakers would have been the smarter plan.

Doesn't this look a bit like a roller coaster just before a drop?

Aside from the Wall, we hit 798 (we stayed at the art hotel down the street that I always stay at) and that was our two days in Beijing!

So, bathroom space isn't the hotel's selling point...