My Sexy Box

I have a new good habit - daily aerobics classes. I was delighted to learn that the University offers classes every evening - and even more delighted to learn these were free. I also thought this would be a good way to meet other Chinese students at Fudan in a more relaxed atmosphere. I got a group of foreign students together and we overcame our nerves about taking an exercise class in a language we don't understand. 

 

For me all feelings of nervousness are heightened because I don't "look" Chinese. A lot of Korean students are mistaken for Chinese, and  many of the other students have Chinese heritage - but for me there's no escaping the staring that goes along with white skin and brown hair. 100+ students went to our class on Monday - and I was the only white person. It can be funny when someone trips up in an aerobics class, or turns the wrong way etc - but when the "foreigner" does it - it's evidently a talking point. Those of you who are familiar with my malcoordination will appreciate my additional nerves. I certainly know that one person will be reading this wondering how on earth I managed to do the grapevine in China as I regularly ended up on the floor at the Arnold leisure centre (or worse - tripping someone else up). However, I am pleased to report to you Miss Stretton, that I practised a great deal before going to the class so that I would draw any more attention to myself.  I survived without too many mishaps and after the first 15mins of pointing and starting, it passed and we all just got on with the class.

 

Our teacher is a young Chinese woman - a talented dancer - who must have had some classical dance training . All her aerobics moves are done with poise and slightly over the top hand flourishes. There are evidently a large number of students who take their aerobics moves very seriously - and there's a fair amount of posing and serious dancer-like facial expressions. The first half of the class is very typical aerobic routines - for the initiated - grapevines, V-step, shuffle etc. She shouts the body parts and directions in Chinese - but the names of the aerobic moves are all in English. I am going to resist writing "blah blah blah" as "shenme shenme shenme" is more Chinese....so she's yelling "shenme shenme shenma V-step. Shenme shenme shenme Jumping Jacks. Shenme shenme shenme Mambo".

 

The second half of the class is done in a salsa style and reduced us to fits of giggles. The teacher has devised a series of "sexy" moves that involve a lot of Latino-style hip wiggling. This evidently is not something that Chinese women are familiar with as the rows of students in  front of us looked more like they were doing tinman impressions to the strains of Gloria Estefan. I have to admit that our efforts weren't much better - but things really peaked when the teacher started encouraging us all to be sexier. then all of a sudden she starts with a move called "the box" - I could barely stand when she started shouting "shenme shenme shenme Sexy Box. Sexy Box" and then for my benefit as the only obviously non-Chinese person "Move your Sexy Box".  

 

The exercise and the laughs are worth it - and I think it will be a regular part of my Fudan experience. It had certainly improved my energy levels - I'm off to play football ("soccer") with some American students later this afternoon.

 

 

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Just a little story from last week. I was a little unwell - fortunately this coincided with a lesson all about how to say that different body parts hurt or weren't "shufu" (comfortable) so I could at least explain why I wasn't my usual bouncy self. For the worriers among you, I wasn't really sick - just ate something bad - slept for a day and then felt much better...anyway, I arrived at school and my Korean classmates all told me that I looked extremely pretty and that my skin was so nice and white (this also coincided with another lesson about how to describe someone!). Simultaneously, my Western classmates told me that I looked like a ghost and should be in bed. It made me feel slightly better to learn that when I am sick, I am beautiful in Korea - but now I am worried what they think of me when I am my usual rosy cheeked self!

Getting to know my classmates

I now have some very nice new friends - SooAh, my afore mentioned lovely room-mate

 

Pip, an Australian girl from Canberra who somehow has managed to get a bunch of her friends to all come to live in Shanghai this year while she is on an exchange programme from her University.

 

Marc, a softly spoken Frenchman - who qualifies as a giant in my book as he's about 10ft tall who likes to play games. We've already had a good go at Scrabble and chess and he's teaching me to play poker.

 

Pictures of these three will follow - but the good news is they are all bears!

 

Now, on to the real reason for this posting - a little tale about how I've managed to "make new friends" so far...

 

I was at school yesterday - and waiting for the bell to ring at the end of class so that I could use the loo. I'd had a pretty dreadful lesson - misunderstanding pretty much all the instructions from my teacher and struggling to read anything. I rather absent-mindedly walked in to the toilet - only to find that I'd gone in to the men's bathroom. I let out a loud squeal when I realised that I was in the wrong place - ensuring that all my classmates using the urinals turned around to see what the noise was..let's just say I now know a few of my classmates a little bit better!! Nothing like profuse apologies and all-round embarrassment to bring people together!

 

Food-an' University

I decided that my epicurean adventures to date deserved a posting all of their own.

 

I have a favourite place to eat - and surprisingly it's the University canteen! It's a massive dining hall - with around 20 different stands serving different types of food. My favourite stand is a "create your own" noodle soup place - a nice lady fills an individual pan with your choice of veggies, noodles, 7 types of tofu, seaweed etc and then cooks is for you. You then get your bowl of soup back and can flavour is with your own choice of seasonings. I love it - the perfect place to practise the words for different vegetables - and I can make sure I get enough protein (every vegetarian's dream). I also get very excited that I can have half a dozen quail eggs in there - because they aren't seen as anything special here. This veggie-noodle-dream dinner costs around 60p - so falls well within my budget.

 

Jiaozi (small ravioli-like dumplings) are really popular - and they are delicious - though finding veggie ones can be difficult. I ate a lot of street food when I was staying at the hostel - lots of tofu on sticks and savoury pancakes filled with chillies and spring onions. It seems the way to make money here is to serve a food stuff on a stick - snacking is a national passtime and if you can snack and walk at the same time, then that's even better.

 

There seems to be a snobbery about Western things - Pizza Hut is a fairly high class establishment here, and a cup of coffee at a Haagen Daaz cafe costs around the same as it would in Britain - except people don't earn British wages. I'm considering opening my own street vending operation selling "genuine Western food" - something like a jacket spud van, or mushy peas and cockles like at the seaside....perhaps I should stick with the studying for now....

Wo Shi Yingguoren

So, I've arrived at University - I've registered for my student card, my roomkey card, my canteen card, my laundry card, my TV card, my transport card, my Chinese bank card - I'm a full card-carrying student at Fudan University. So many cards in fact, that I have to buy a new purse!

 

The University is enormous - especially when I think of the tiny Bournemouth campus - it's also very beautiful with carefully planted gardens, small fish ponds with elegant oriental bridges over them and even a few kitties for me to terrorise into giving me a cuddle!

 

It takes around half an hour to walk from one side of the campus to the other - about as long as it took me to walk from my flat in Hackney to my office in the City. I'm sharing a room in the Foreign Students' Dormitory with a lovely Korean girl called Soo Ah. The view from the top (23rd) floor  of our building is incredible - you can see Pudong - the redeveloped financial district of Shanghai with its famous skyline. If I'm honest, I was just excited that my student halls weren't on top of a car park like the delightful Glenfern House in Bournemouth!! Our room is great - it has a bath tub (what student luxury!), a balcony, air conditioning - but the bed is only 1.5" of foam mattress away from being a wooden board.

 

Last week we had to take language tests to see which classes we should take - there are 8 different levels from A (the beginners' classes) to H (for students who are preparing to do postgraduate study). I was really nervous about taking the test - my reading and writing are non-existent and most of the people around my have studied Chinese at school or University. It really puts my sporadic evening classes into perspective. I was surprised (but also really pleased) to be put into the B classes - because my speaking and listening are OK - but the teacher who assessed me warned me that I would have to study really hard to catch up on the reading and writing. She was not wrong!

 

On Monday I was totally mortified when my teacher asked me to stand at the board and write a sentence that he would dictate to me. The board remained very blank until I was allowed to sit back down and he picked on someone else. This was enough to spur me in to action - I've done 3hrs of reading and writing every day this week and last night I managed to read (and understand) my first full sentence (for those who are really interested it was "last night I went to see a basket ball match with my friends") without using the dictionary or guessing at any of the words. It feels like progress - even if it's just teenytiny steps. Next Monday, I have to give a 3 minute talk about a topic of my choice in Chinese. It's so funny spending several hours a day having conversations with my classmates that go along the lines of:

 

"what did you do last night?"

"last night I ate dinner, then I watched TV, and I studied Chinese. What did you do last night?"

"last night I also ate dinner and studied Chinese. Do you like football?"

"Yes, I do like football. Do you like to play tennis?"

"No, I do not like to play tennis but I do like to play basketball"

"Have you ever been to Beijing?"

"Yes, I went there last year. It is a nice city"

 

I've been spending time with a nice group of students (Spanish, Korean, Italian and Philipino) and I'm sure you would all find our excitement at managing to have the above conversation - or something similar - each day very endearing. I shall leave you that thought...

No longer Shang-Shy

A lot has happened since I last wrote. I started my stay in Shanghai at the Ming Town Youth Hostel - not exactly Ming dynasty, but not minging either. I had a lovely few days walking around the city by myself - just getting to know where things are and how they work - I then realised that I was passing each day without speaking to a soul. As if by magic, I had lost my nerve in speaking not only Chinese but English too! Feeling shy has to be the worst affliction for the lone traveller and I needed to shake it off - FAST!

 

It didn't take long - and I was back to my chattering self - the phrasebook came out at every opportunity to use a new word and I even mustered some enthusiasm for the tedium of "backpacker chat" - whose been where, whose had the worst stomach upset, whose got the most horrendous travelling horror story etc, who can better the horrendous horror story with one that cost less money etc etc.

 

I soon found my new friends, Pip from Australia, and Marc from France. We are all studying at Fudan University together - so before we came to enrol in our classes we went to visit a Confucian temple in the city where we could follow in the footsteps of many Chinese students. It's traditional to write studious wishes on to red ribbons and tie them to the trees in the  temple courtyard. This brought out the romantic in me - temple court yard filled with smoke from an incense burner, two large rubber trees and thousands of red ribbons blowing around in the breeze. I was really moved by so much hope hanging from each branch - and it's nice to know that my hope is tied there too to flutter around in the wind (or, as it turns out today, get soggy in the Shanghai rain).