“May your colorful life be decorated with happiness and your beauty be immersed in joy.”
Tag Archives: China
Teacher’s Appreciation Day
14 SepFor Teacher’s Appreciation Day, the University gave all of the foreign teachers a massive Fruit Basket 😛 It included grapes, apples, Asian pears, dragon fruit, mangoes. Yum!!!
Dragon Fruit
First Trip to Zhengzhou
7 SepLast Thursday we took our first trip into Zhengzhou,
a large city about 1 hours drive from Xinzheng, my new hometown. Xinzheng is considered a rural farming town out here in China, but it actually boasts of about 600,000 people living here. While it has a ton of normal shopping, the prices can be a little high and the variety of items is small. Consequently, a lot of the foreigners and students prefer to go into the much larger Zhengzhou (8 Million Inhabitants ~ the size of New York City) for a greater selection of products and more opportunities for bartering prices down.
One of the things Zhengzhou offers that Xinzheng doesn’t is a far larger number or walk-in clinics, including one that works solely on Job Physicals or Physicals required by Visa Applications. So this past week we were sent into Zhengzhou to visit the clinic to have our physicals for the Permanent Residency. This was really our first major foray outside of the College Campus, since we have been so busy moving in and settling down. It didn’t help that classes were starting last Monday and we had to instantly jump into lesson planning. But all that aside, this was really our first adventure and we soaked up every minute of it. I’ll post more about the physical itself later, but here are a few things we noticed in our drive through the city:
The Traffic is INSANE!
Two lane roads that suddenly have five lanes of cars, scooter and taxis driving down the sidewalks, huge poles holding up the overpasses above suddenly appearing in the middle of a driving lane, no merging lanes, and a complete disregard for any road signs contributes to what seems like absolute chaos. It’s truly amazing that there are not more accidents than we saw. There are NO traffic laws ~ at one point we had a four way corner with cars going from each corner all at the same time, crossing three lanes of traffic in any given direction. The only exception is that you are responsible for everything in front of you. Conversely, you don’t have to look behind you at all, whoever is behind you is responsible for not hitting you. It’s pretty confusing, but they work it out. Makes for a lot of butting into lines.
Crazy Drivers ignoring the lanes
I couldn’t snap fast enough to get the hold picture, but these two lanes meet at the bottom.
It doesn’t help that they tell you how long til the light changes. All the cars just get impatient and jump the light.
Scooters and bikes take up a shocking amount of room!
Arrived at Last!
6 Sep
Sorry! I started writing this back on the 25th, but I only just finished it. 😦 Many Apologies!
Well this trip was quite the fun experience. . . ~ Murphy’s Law was working in overtime throwing things in our path! If one more thing had gotten screwed up, I’d have just screamed. I probably should have known that was how it was going to go when my first photo of the trip was of the Jack Swigert (coined “Houston, we’ve had a problem) 😛
As I mentioned before, my mother and I were part of a group of four people who weren’t going to fit on the original flights arranged for everyone else ~ they ran out of seats for us. So instead, they decided we should leave the morning after the rest of our team. Which would have been fine had Sias not wanted us to pay for the hotel up front. They agreed to re-imburse us later, but with hotels around the Denver Airport as expensive as they were, this was a lot of money that we didn’t really want to spend out-of-pocket. Who knew how long we were going to have to wait to be re-imbursed? . . . it just didn’t seem worth the risk. Continue reading
Waiting in line for our Chinese physicals
27 Aug
All part of the process of getting our Chinese resident permits 🙂
Average China Teacher’s Salary
26 JunThis page from AbroadChina.org offers a really great list of average salaries in the different areas of China. The list of local resident and teach salaries tells you at what level you can expect to live, while the list of foreign teacher’s salaries lets you know if your pay is the equivalent to the Chinese Standard in the area. Admittedly, it was based on 2003-2005. Still, Great Resource!
| Base Monthly Pay Only |
| Location | Foreign Teacher① | Chinese Teacher② | Urban Resident③ | Rural Resident④ |
| National Level | 1,942.00 (College) 1,108.00 (High School or Elementary School) |
897.56 | 234.39 | |
| Anhui | 3,150-4,050 | 880.83 | 727.11 | 199.15 |
| Beijing | 3,850-4,950 | 2,214.00 | 1445.41 | 627.97 |
| Chongqing | 3,014-3,875 | 994.33 | 907.12 | 188.11 |
| Fujian | 4,030-5,182 | 1,211.08 | 1032.18 | 338.39 |
| Gansu | 3,241-4,167 | 1,038.83 | 737.93 | 123.20 |
| Guangdong | 4,150-5,336 | 1,533.67 | 1283.76 | 362.74 |
| Guangxi | 2,722-3,500 | 900.50 | 790.30 | 192.93 |
| Guizhou | 4,283-5,250 | 813.42 | 704.67 | 126.39 |
| Hainan | 2,917-3,750 | 1,054.08 | 746.62 | 242.44 |
| Hebei | 2,970-3,819 | 873.83 | 603.26 | 251.31 |
| Heilongjiang | 3,617-4,650 | 1,091.00 | 657.90 | 251.59 |
| Henan | 2,902-3,731 | 888.83 | 842.91 | 178.13 |
| Hubei | 3,098-3,983 | 949.58 | 756.32 | 200.78 |
| Hunan | 3,138-4,034 | 1,014.83 | 639.52 | 245.46 |
| Inner Mongolia | 2,917-3,750 | 971.75 | 799.01 | 227.67 |
| Jiangsu | 3,150-4,050 | 1,258.92 | 976.84 | 395.22 |
| Jiangxi | 3,684-4,737 | 834.42 | 731.57 | 207.06 |
| Jilin | 3,135-4,031 | 994.25 | 726.55 | 251.22 |
| Liaoning | 3,650-4,694 | 1,070.33 | 776.34 | 318.12 |
| Ningxia | 2,800-3,600 | 1,130.17 | 672.12 | 224.36 |
| Qinghai | 2,667-3,429 | 1,055.67 | 790.96 | 148.41 |
| Shaanxi | 3,354-4,312 | 931.50 | 746.83 | 168.47 |
| Shandong | 2,975-3,825 | 1,046.83 | 906.98 | 320.90 |
| Shanghai | 4,529-5,823 | 2,057.17 | 1661.96 | 704.08 |
| Shanxi | 2,882-3,705 | 883.42 | 821.54 | 157.15 |
| Sichuan | 3,182-4,091 | 980.75 | 712.92 | 207.92 |
| Tianjin | 2,333-3,000 | 1,421.92 | 1118.86 | 458.34 |
| Tibet | 2,342.50 | 723.59 | 115.83 | |
| Xinjiang | 2,800-3,600 | 1,186.92 | 732.96 | 165.11 |
| Yunnan | 2,333-3,000 | 1,065.50 | 725.84 | 141.43 |
| Zhejiang | 3,911-5,029 | 1,852.58 | 1454.08 | 610.16 |
WOAH! $35 Million Gold Heist in Hong Kong
7 Jun“All that glitters: Businessman ‘Who Bought HK$270m of Gold’ Ends Up with Metal Bars”
by Clifford Lo and Andrea Chin via “South China Morning Post“
“Police were last night making arrangements with a mainland businessman to check whether HK$270 million of gold bullion he bought in Africa was genuine after part of the consignment was swapped with metal bars.
On Wednesday, Zhao Jingjun, 43, opened part of his shipment in front of his buyer in Hong Kong and discovered the gold had been switched for worthless metal.
A senior officer said it would be the city’s biggest heist in a decade if it was confirmed that all the gold had been stolen.
An initial inquiry showed Zhao purchased 998kg of gold bars from a company in Ghana in mid-April, police said.
The consignment, in 14 cases, was escorted by his staff and delivered from Ghana on a chartered flight late last month.
“Officers were told that his employee confirmed the cases contained the gold before it was loaded onto the chartered flight in Ghana,” a police source said.
The source said the employee left Hong Kong after the consignment was handed to the staff of a logistics company at Chek Lap Kok airport. It was then couriered to a Tsuen Wan warehouse.
The businessman arrived from Hebei province on Monday and checked into the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. On Wednesday, he had five of the cases couriered to his buyer’s Hung Hom office. Continue reading
Differences in Taste
9 May
Kelly Dobkin, a writer on Zagat, recently posted an interesting article “Hooked on Acid – Has the American Palate Changed Forever?” While I found interesting her article on the American taste changing from the creamy French to spicier/more acidic flavors in their food, what caught my eye was the fact that she suggests these spicier flavors are predominantly Asian in nature.
As most of my readers know, I have traveled and eaten in several Asian countries ~ China, Korea, and Japan to be exact. The lack of cooking utensils (and a determination to thoroughly enjoy ourselves) led me and my fellow students to local restaurants most nights. Asia is awesome for many reasons, but the cheap food at restaurants is a real draw.
One of the things that I kept running into were warnings about the spiciness of their food. Having been raised on Mexican and South American food, I have always had a preference for the spicier side of cuisine; and I generally order hotter dishes when I eat out. Asia was no different, and I frequently was drawn towards dishes with the cute little jalapeno pepper symbol next to it. Repeatedly, the waiters/waitresses would stop and ask if I was quite sure I wanted something that hot. Over and over, they would warn “very hot. I think that in America you must not eat food this hot.” And just as often, I would reassure them that if they didn’t hand over the beef dish immediately, they were losing a hand to my fork. Continue reading
“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city” ~ Roman Payne
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