Welcome to Handan

We’ve been in our new apartment for just over a week and in Handan for nearly a fortnight, so it’s time and past to update my first impressions of Handan. The first few days were hard, there’s no doubt about it. What surprised me is that the thing I’ve found the hardest is being back around people all the time again. I’ve become much more solitary than I realised and I’m going to have to get over that. Everything else - the food, the constant stares, the jingle bells tune playing when the shower tank has heated up the water, even the Kindergarten(!) are exciting novelties that I’m relishing because they’re new and different and that’s what I wanted, even if I’m not enjoying some aspects of them. That’s life though, and lucky for me I’m a cup-half-full person.

Anyway, now we’ve moved we are in a sky-high palace on the 6^th floor. It’s Tom’s old apartment and a world and a half better than our old digs! Let us not dwell on the past – the old place is history and it’s onwards and, quite literally, upwards. I’ve shotgunned having a room to myself for the first month – it’s only a 2 bedroom place, so Laura and Steph are sharing the double bed in the big room. Swallow’s sorted out a folding screen and mattresses in the annex of the living room so there are technically three beds and we’ll all move around so that it’s fair. It’s not ideal, and not exactly to the letter of our contracts, but the decision was reached that we’d rather stick together than get a 2bed and a 1bed apartment, or each live on our own, which we were offered. Tom has left us all kinds of useful things, including a full box of Twining’s Earl Grey teabags for which I could have kissed him - I’ve run through all the ones I brought for the train!

I had a very domestic day last Friday (the 3^rd) putting the place to rights watching the cleaners clean, pulling enough gunk out of the drains to make Steph and Laura gag, receiving various deliveries, attempting lesson plans and doing all our laundry in the old fashioned washing machine. I have to say, China takes the idea of ‘wet rooms’ to a whole new level. Ours has the jinglebells shower which to use you have to fill up the tank, plug it in, set the temperature then wait for the music to play which means the water is heated, then unplug it, hide the plug so that you don’t die then wash quickly so that there’s enough water left for someone else to use. The washing machine is in there too and it’s so old fashioned! You put the clothes and powder in one drum, fill it up from the cold tap and a few boiled kettles, turn on to slosh everything around then empty through a hose onto the floor (see, wet room!), refill and empty again for the rinses and then finally transfer a couple of pieces at a time to the spinner. Seriously laborious. I will never take proper washing machines for granted ever again.

I have kindergarten classes this semester at two different schools, Monday and Tuesday at Kindergarten Number 1, Wednesday and Thursday at Kindergarten Number 2. Number 1 is my favourite – I’ve got books to work with, classes are smaller, the kids are keen and I like my teaching assistant Amanda already. Number 2 is more difficult – no books, larger classes and my assistant, is nice but not very good at English which makes finding out what the kids know, what they want me to do and getting the kids to understand what I’m asking of them much harder. I’ll write more on the Kindergartens another time when I’ve had more classes and more to tell – at the moment the smallest ones cry at the sight of me, and that’s not exactly heartwarming! Funny, but not heartwarming.

Handan is a smallish city (pop. 8million or so) with maybe 40 non-Chinese residents, so suffice it to say we are a novelty and non-Chinese residents stick together quite a bit! Our friends in Handan, so far, are Andy, Tom, Dan and Kan (our fellow Lilac Education teachers) and their Chinese friend Charlie – and pool is our new favourite pastime! It takes some getting used to being in smoky atmospheres again as smoking is practically a recreational sport here in China, but despite this and my utter lack of pool skills it’s really good fun and my very occasional strokes of brilliance are hugely satisfying since they’re always so very unexpected! I’m getting better at it too, which is excellent.

We’ve also been out to dine with the guys a few times too as there’s a much bigger dining out than drinking culture, especially when ladies are present as apparently Chinese ladies don’t really drink that much. Two English girls and one Irish one are therefore in the best of both worlds – we’re novel enough as Westerners and guests to be able to drink with the men and recipient of enough chivalry that we don’t have to drink when we don’t want to anymore. I mentioned before about the Baijou guys on the first night (Baijou is the local spirit of choice, paint stripper comes to mind) – that was fun but thank god for the chivalry thing! We also met a local TV celebrity while we were eating out to celebrate the end of our first day of teaching. He insisted on buying us a beer each then once we’d eaten invited us into his party’s private dining room for gambei-ing (toasting eachother and downing your glass of beer) and talking English down the phone to anyone they could think of who spoke the language!

In Chinese culture, before you start gambei-ing anyone individually, everyone drinks together three times. After that, it’s a sign of respect if the rim of your glass is lower than the person you’re toasting when you clink and your glass is always kept full. The first time we did this properly was with the Baijou men, but for Tom’s last night on Wednesday, we had a proper meal with full on gambei-ing – everyone was meant to do a round of individual toasts, but there were twelve of us and we ran out of both baijou and beer so we only got so far. Then we went clubbing! Bizarre! Expensive! Fun! It was really sad to say goodbye to Tom though.

Food wise, like I say, we’ve eaten out a few times with the other English teachers but we’ve also ventured into the food stalls over the road from us for the most delicious (henhao chi – hun how chur) chow mein and egg fried rice in the history of chow mein and egg fried rice. Mr Chan back home, you have been surpassed. Since we’ve now got a fridge without mosquitos and a kitchen that doesn’t make you gag (as long as you don’t look under the cupboards...) we’ve also attempted some cooking but only to the tune of boiling some potatoes and broccoli. So far I’m happy on the Chinese cuisine but Steph and Laura are both missing plain vegetables so we’re inventing some fusion cuisine and will be going to Walmart to find bread that isn’t ridiculously sweet. As well as offering to teach us some Mandarin, Charlie is hopefully going to teach us how to cook Chinese food properly, so that’ll help too. As an aside – things are so sweet here that the teeth of some of the kids who we teach are black and rotting in their little mouths; that could be to do with something I read on the back of the sugar packet in our kitchen which said “it is sweet and delicious and absolutely necessary for to use in cooking.” (!)

I should also mention my two new favourite places in the world – the first of which was a massage place where five of us had the most amazing hour and a half full body massages (clothed and on couches next to each other so it was sociable) for 50yuan a head, which is about £5. The second place is called the Royal Electronic Brain Mansion – HOW COOL IS THAT NAME?! – which is an electronics department store where Tom and Andy took me to stock up on DVDs at 9yuan each (90p). It’s the most amazing shop, but I was definitely glad to be going in with fluent speakers or I’d’ve been hopelessly confused and probably ripped off. There’s a nice park round the corner too with a lake, so once I’ve recovered from my cold I might start running down there as well as using the outdoor gym. I’m starting to make plans to see some more of the surrounding areas of Handan – neither google nor the Lonely Planet are being particularly helpful so it’s a work in progress, but once I’ve got stories be assured I’ll tell them!

I think I’m going to be happy here. Well, actually, I know I’ll be happy here – I’m generally a happy person but how could I not be when everyone we’ve met has been amazing and its only nerves and teething problems that we’ve encountered so far? So, in the best Chinese spirit: Welcome to Handan.