Dongmen Shopping and Modern Toilet Restaurant

Today, Mel and I finally had the chance to take the subway into central Shenzhen and do some awesome exploring! We’d been so busy getting things for our apartment and training at our school that we hadn’t had time to get out of Shekou yet. So, this afternoon, we went to Laojie (“Old Street”) Station to check out Dongmen Market. 

 Forget what you think “market” means. This place was like a dozen malls and 20,000 stores and restaurants all crammed into a couple of pedestrian-friendly blocks in downtown Shenzhen. We shopped for 4 or 5 hours and barely scratched the surface of the things to see in this area. It was so cool. Well… actually, it was hot. So far, Shenzhen is a lot more bearable than Taiwan was the August we lived there, but it’s still 35 degrees with 100% humidity every day.  The streets in Dongmen were kindly lined with cool water misting machines, which we made a point of walking through every time passed by. At least I hope that was water…

 Our first stop was Modern Toilet restaurant, a chain that we’d visited many times in Taiwan, but never thought we’d ever see again. I read that there was one in Dongmen, but I wasn’t sure we’d be able to find it. Luckily there was a lady with a poopy ice cream sign standing out front to get our attention.

 The menu promised that the food would be both delicious and happy. It didn’t lie.

  The décor was wonderful. Your seat is a toilet, urinals stuck to the wall.

 

Looks like this poor guy is worried about his weight.

 Someone very nicely left a flower on our table.

There were some very soiled-looking toys to play with, like this guy.

 

And this guy.

  

 And that guy’s bum, with a poop hanging out of it, which you can shove at your wife’s face.

The food was actually excellent!! The menu was much better than the ones in Taiwan. Mel got a sizzle platter of 3-cups chicken and tom yum soup with a chocolate milk tea served in a urinal.

I got lemon chicken served in a bathtub, coke served in a urinal, and beef quesadillas served, lamely, on a plate. Everything all together cost about $20. Pretty fair, considering the fine ambiance.

I made a friend on the way out. Some kids were beating the crap *ahem* out of him earlier, I felt kind of bad for him.

 Oh, in case you were wondering, this is what the actual toilets looked like at the restaurant.

After lunch, we set out to explore Dongmen, and it took exactly 15 minutes for us to start eating again! We found an outdoor, but covered, food court full of Chinesey foods at Chinesey prices. Everything looked AWESOME, and even though we were stuffed we had to get some strawberry shaved ice. This stuff is amazing- we used to get it all the time in Taiwan. It’s like shaved ice cream- it’s so good.

 

They also sell baked potatoes. Choice of toppings include: chocolate and meat floss.

The food court.

 The food court was connected to a huge multi-level mall. Inside it was just a maze of small shops, stalls and boutiques. I saw SO MUCH STUFF that I wanted!! I really had to restrain myself. I think we probably shouldn’t come back here until we get paid first LOL. One of the first stores to hit up: Astroboy.

Looks like H&M has got a little competition on its hands.

Pronounce it.

Don’t worry, you can get your Chris Brown hats here.

Bulk candy! I have never seen anything like this in Asia. And it was all western-style gummies, too. The bag you put your candy in comes with free little tongs for eating your candy with. We got a big sackfull and it only cost $1.

We went to another of the malls, too, before heading back outside to look around. Do you think this is a Nike ripoff store?

Found this old bell near the McDonald’s. It looked slightly cultural, so I thought I'd take a picture of it to balance out all the Annil I'd been photographing.

 Ever see a McDonald’s that looks like this?

Or a KFC that looks like THIS?

 After getting something to drink (and some AC) at McDick’s, we took the subway to Children’s Palace Station. Please note that absolutely no balloons are allowed on the subway system.

We went to Children’s Palace Station because there’s a huge bookstore called Book City there. We read that it has a small English section, and Mel wanted to pick up a Chinese phrasebook. Unfortunately the English section was basically just 2 shelves. It was the smallest English selection I’ve ever seen in a major Asian bookstore- the books actually looked like they were second hand because they’d been picked through so much. And they were all like the “Shopaholic” series kinds of books. Luckily, Book City redeemed itself by being connected to a decently interesting mall. We picked up some things we’d been looking for at cool stationary store there.

And here are our takings from the day: his and hers domo underwear ($8- “no discount,” the vendor said to our unimpressed faces), totally authentic "beats by dre" earbuds ($2), a kitty t-shirt for me ($12), a domo wallet ($2), and his and hers canary keychains that sit in a little birdhouse that sticks on the wall ($3). Should’ve bought that “shopaholic” book.

After we got home, we took a walk along the boardwalk next to our apartment. Our place is right on the water, right on this boardwalk, and we’d still never had the chance to go down there for a stroll. It was really nice. Except for the massive holes in the boardwalk. With a view that nice, who’s looking down? I wonder how many people fall through every day?

Let's Get Physical, Physical!

On Tuesdsay, we went on our first school field trip! Unfortunately, it was to the hospital. Yes, despite spending hundreds of dollars on tests back home and submitting them to the Chinese government, foreign workers have to have the tests done again when they arrive in the country.

All of the new teachers loaded onto a bus and drove for about 45 minutes to one of the two hospitals in Shenzhen permitted to run these tests on foreigners. The department didn't open until 2pm, but luckily we arrived a few minutes early, because a truck-load of local ESL teachers arrived to line up after us. They reminded me of Mel and I a few years ago, and they looked closer to our age than the staff at our school now does. We used to be them! Now we're professionals, yo.

The tests were assembly line-fast. In the first room, I was weighed, my eyesight was tested and my blood pressure was taken. In the next room, they did an ECG. Then I had an ultrasound (good news- no baby!). Next they took some blood (and tested it immediately, right in front of us) and then I peed in a cup (tricky in a bathroom with no ledges to place the cup when you're "done" and the squat toilet floor is covered in poo- picture of unguarded tray of pee above). Last, they did a chest x-ray, which was quite different from home- you don't even take off your shirt. That was it. At the rate they worked, it would have taken less than 5 minutes if no one else had been there, but it took about an hour this time.

Also- #1: the hospital smelled like thick cigarette smoke

and

#2:

no cats are allowed :(

Next, we'll have interviews with local police before our visas can be issued. Then we can leave the country to go explore Hong Kong! So excited! We can see HK from our bedroom, which makes the fact that we aren't allowed to go all that much worse!

I (eee) Got an Ayi

Yesterday we hired a part-time ayi (maid). Or she may have hired us... I'm not sure exactly what happened haha.

We had dropped into our school for a minute to set up water delivery to our apartment but we actually walked into the middle of an ayi interview hiring session! We'd been following an outdated schedule that the school gave us and totally overlooked the interviews. Luckily, we'd already gone through the resumes and told them which potential ayi's we'd like to interview (all the ones that said they like pets). We were sat down with the first lady and we liked her from the get go. She just had a really kind face. There were supposed to be people there to translate the interviews, but they were busy, so we set about interviewing her alone- us using broken Chinese and her using broken English. At one point she pulled out her phone and her friend Bobo translated for us, which was quite helpful. Thank you, Bobo.

In the end we agreed on a price that is less than 1% of our monthly wage, and she'll come twice a week to do laundry, dishes, scoop the cat litter, and clean a bit. We hit a snag at the end of the interview when it came to discussing the training time. We needed to be home for her first visit to show her around the apartment and how we'd like things done. She decided that she would get our school's housing liaison, Jack, to translate for us. The only problem is that Jack was already helping a line of about 5 other foreign teachers. Our ayi didnt' care- she stormed to the front of the line and forced him to translate for us. I was seriously too embarrassed to speak, and a couple of the teachers in line were being dicks about it. "I've got a wife and kids here. Hurry up" and rolling their eyes and shit. So, yeah we're already making friends, but if something like that bothered them so much they're not going to last long in China anyway.

So, tomorrow night, after our first day (!) of training we are training our ayi. She'll be coming in the mornings when we're at work, so we probably won't see her much, but I have a feeling she's going to make a huge difference in our lives.Oh, and the water arrived yesterday too. And an oven. And now I have someone to clean them. What more could a person want?

UPDATE: Our ayi quit before she even started! Wednesday night, just before she was supposed to come over for training, another teacher we hadn't met before called us. She can speak a little Chinese and our ayi also works for her. She said that the ayi felt like she had taken on too much work and wouldn't be able to work for us too. She said the ayi knew another ayi friend she could introduce to us so we agreed, and they both came over last night.

New ayi is nice too (anyone willing to wash my dishes is nice). We went over what we needed done and showed her around the apartment and she's going to start this morning. Can't wait to come home to a spotless apartment!

Oh, and the original ayi also revealed to us why she is so overworked. After cleaning for the other teacher who called us, she then works the rest of the day for our principal. She said that his family is "too tall" and she has to cook so much food for them that she's exhausted. Oh, the life of an ayi,

UPDATE #2: As of September 1st, Ayi has been bumped up to 4 times a week and now she's cooking for us too. It's just way too nice to come home to ironed, folded underwear to only do so twice a week :)

Orientation

After you land in a new country, finding your way around and getting your bearings is always the funnest part. You seriously learn more in your first few days abroad than you might for the entire rest of your stay. Of course, this is always easier with help, and this time around we've relied on a mixture of our own research, and assistance from our more seasoned co-workers to find our way around.

After we got to our apartment, we were still feeling alright (despite the long trip), so the people that met us from our work offered to walk us to the school and we took them up on it. It's about a 20 minute walk, but very simple- just straight up one street then turn left- and they were able to point out a number of useful places along the way. The best places along that route are Sea World, a landlocked ship full of restaurants, and a subway station. Afterwards, on our walk back home, we strolled the grounds of our apartment complex. The bottom floor of all the apartment buildings near the road have little restaurants, massage parlors, pet stores, and foreign food shops that were good to explore.

The next day, on our first full day in Shekou, we walked back to the school and met all the other new teachers who had arrived so far. There was about 8 families in total (our school mainly hires couples), and we were taken around to register for the internet, get visa photos taken, buy bus/subway passes, and get cell phones (we'd unlocked ours from home so we just needed cheap $8 SIM cards). It was really helpful to be walked through these things by someone who speaks English! In the past we've had to take care of most of that stuff ourselves, which can be frustrating to a newcomer.

A sign at the shop where we registered for internet.

Our school also gave us a bunch of laminated cards for places like the hospital, Wal-Mart, and the school to use in taxis that say "please drive me to ______" on them in Mandarin. Each card also lists the buses that take you to the locations, so after setting up our phones and internet, we went to Wal-Mart to buy some things for our apartment. Of course, we caught the bus on the wrong side of the road the first time, but it wasn't a big deal- we just got back on the right way after a few minutes. It only costs 30 cents to ride the bus here! The Wal-Mart is about 10-15 minutes away by bus, and it's connected to a really nice looking mall that we didn't have much time to explore that day. Wal-Mart is 2 floors and full of some cheap things (25 cent beer) and some overpriced things ($35 for a toaster!), but costings are going to be different here, aren't they?

We bought Smeell brand toilet paper at Wal-Mart.

And I got some Fido Dido flip flops.

The next day we walked to a street one block (5 minutes) from our apartment to do some exploring. There was a lot of little shops, restaurants (a Korean place AND a Taiwanese place!), and two big department stores: A-Best and RenRenLe, which are almost as good as Wal-Mart and so much closer.

The RenRenLe has a "Wine & Emotion" department.

Also, at RenRenLe, something awesome happened.We were waiting in line at the cash, and there were several people waiting behind us. Just as we got to the front and were about to start loading our things on the belt, this guy steps in front of a small space in front of us, puts his things on the belt and decides he is the next person in line. I know that lineups are every man for himself in China, but this was hilarious. Then, Melodie did something amazing. She looked at him, said "no", and pushed his things to the back of the belt and started loading our things ahead of his. Then he actually started helping us pull things from our cart and put them on the belt for us. It was SO WEIRD. Two days in China and Mel's already running the joint.

The next day I used BING on my phone (stupid phone has no VPN so we can't use google on it. I never thought I'd be relying on Bing in my life lol) to get directions to IKEA. It's actually pretty close- about 20 minutes by subway, then 10 by bus. The transfer between subway and bus takes place at an interesting area called Window of the World (a theme park with miniature versions of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc) that we'll have to go back to. At Ikea, we got some meatballs and then picked up a few more things we really needed for our apartment. Unfortunately, it closed before we could finish so we had to go back the next day to complete our shopping. See HERE for why we were so late getting to IKEA that night.

Then yesterday, we had a meeting at our school to learn more about hiring an ayi (a maid). We'll be interviewing them this week, so they just let us know the ins and outs of employing an ayi. I can't believe I am going to be employing someone. I couldn't even hardly find employment for myself this summer! After the meeting, we were invited out to dinner with a couple that will be teaching ESL with Mel. It was a lot of fun! They showed us an amazing Chinese restaurant that's only about a 10 minute walk from our place. Everything we ate was delicious, and even thinking about it now is starting to make me drool. It was just wicked.

Kind of forgot about how chicken is served in Chinese countries when I ordered the chicken/noodle/potato thing. It came with the head :x

The coolest thing was that these other teachers drive scooters and they took us all over town on them, pointing out interesting things along the way. We even went to a Korean coffee shop and spoke Hangul with the owners. Thanks to this scooter tour, I could literally see a neighborhood map beginning to form in my mind. Everything is starting to sink in. We're getting our bearings, slowly but surely, and I like what I see.

Getting the Internet in China

We've found that once you move to a new place, you don't really feel settled until your internet is hooked up. This goes for anywhere you move, doesn't it? It's so key to finding your way around and keeping in touch. As most people know, the way the internet works in China is very different than at home, so I thought I'd write a little bit about the process of getting it set up.

First, our school took us to a shop where we had to provide copies of our passports, our address, and a full YEAR'S advance payment in cash. This worked out to be about $350 for the year, which is maybe 25% less than at home but with about 50% less useful websites available. This is because the internet in China is heavily censored. Facebook, youtube, google, gmail, even this blog are banned. If you try to go to these URLs you will get a "this page cannot be displayed" message. So, to get around this, you have to subscribe to a VPN, which is a simple program that tricks the internet into thinking you're in another country outside of China. Of course, the sites where you subscribe to VPNs are blocked in China too, so we subscribed to ours before we left home.

 Back to how we got the internet: we were told that the internet guys would show up the next day between 4-5pm, which is a much more specific window than the 9-5 you get at home. We were really pleased, but when they hadn't shown up by 7pm we were getting less impressed. When they did show up, they mucked about for an hour- literally just shoving thermometers into phone jacks and stringing wires up all over the place. They didn't even bring a modem with them, which I should have taken as a sign. Then around 8pm, one of the guys said something in Chinese and started packing up to leave. We got someone from our school on the phone and he translated for us: it was too late, so the guys were going home. They would be back the next day between 9-9:30am. WTF.

The next morning, around 10:30am a different guy showed up with modem boxes in his hands which us feel much more optimistic! After about 15 minutes he had everything hooked up and we were good to go. He showed us how to use everything (we got cable too)and tried to speak English with us, and when he didn't know how to explain one thing (why my ipod wifi wasn't working- you need a router for mobile devices) he got someone on the phone to translate for us. It was sweet.

And then he walked out, leaving all this shit on the floor. But honestly, I hadn't been on facebook for 3 1/2 days so I didn't notice for quite a while.

Our Apartment

After we arrived in Hong Kong, we were picked up by a driver who took us through the Chinese border and onward to our apartment in Shekou. We're only about a 5 minute drive from the border, so no wonder they flew us into Hong Kong! When we got here we were met by Jack (local staff who's in charge of assiting staff with apartments and settling in) and Lisa (an American who will be my director of instruction at the elementary school). 

 

We live in a complex called Coastal Rose Garden and we're on the 9th floor. The complex is really huge, with dozens of apartment buildings, and it stretches all along the waterfront overlooking Hong Kong.

 

When we got here there was an awesome gift basket full of valuable items for any newcomer: maps, guide books, toilet paper, chips, juice, wine, milk, water, towels and lots of other things. It was really, really nice of the school to provide these things for us.

My first impression was that the apartment was huge, especially compared to what we were given in Korea. This place is twice the size of our apartment in Ontario too, and it's FREE. So, let me go ahead and give you a tour:

In this picture, our front door is on the right hand side. There's a shoe closet right there and the dining room table on the left. The first entrance on the right is the kitchen and on the left is a weird little room mostly full of stuff from the previous tenants. We're keeping that door shut :D 

 

Example of creepy art left behind in that little room.

This is our kitchen. Pretty normal. Lots of counter space, but not a lot of usable cupboard space. We were pleasantly surprised that there was a microwave (one less thing to buy!), and not at all surprised by the lack of an oven (one more thing to buy!).

This is the living room- it's on the opposite side of the dining room. It came with a sofa (never had one of those before overseas!), a TV and DVD player with surround sound, and (most strangely) a piano.

 

The living room, from the other side.

 

 There's a huge balcony off the living room with a washing machine on it...

 

...and THIS is our amazing view from the balcony.

 

This is the hallway leading from the living/dining room area down to the bedrooms.

 

This is the spare bedroom. Lots of room for visitors *HINT HINT*. Currently being used to store cat things and the ironing board.

 

Across from the spare bedroom is the office. There's a desk and lot of storage space in there.

At the end of the hall is this pretty typical Asian bathroom, but better than we've ever had simply due to the size and the existence of a shower curtain to keep everything from getting wet!

Here's our bedroom! It's awesome! We have a king sized bed, and light switches on either side that control his and hers lamps. There's also SO MUCH cabinet space to store all of our clothes.

 

This is the amazing view from our bedroom. We can see Hong Kong from our bed. Crazy!

 And this is my favorite part. The biggest surprise of all. In the master bathroom we have a JACUZZI. Can you believe it? A jacuzzi! A jacuzzi with a CD player! In our Korean apartment we once bought an inflatable kid's pool just to take a bath.

Also, all the fixtures in this bathroom are glass so it looks really nice in there. We love it.

 

Like I said earlier, the grounds of Coastal Rose Garden are huge. There's a boardwalk that goes all along the water. On the grounds, we're lucky enough to have a pool that we can use any time, a gym, ping pong and tennis courts, and every building has a row of shops in it. And almost all the shops of full of foreign import goods and restaurants. It's literally amazing.

 

Rude statue outside our building.

And we're just a block away from a great shopping and dining area. But I'll post more about that later. It's going to be tough exploring China if we never want to leave our apartment!

How To Move To China

1. Revive your blog.

 2. Tie up loose ends. If you have a job (Melodie), go directly from your students’ graduation ceremony to packing up your apartment to leaving town within 18 hours. If you’re an unemployed bum (me), pack and clean like there’s no tomorrow. Donate everything to the Salvation Army. Hide the stuff they didn’t want in the apartment dumpsters (sorry). Stuff two cars to the absolute brim with about half of the items you moved in with. Then sell the car. Downsizing is good.

3. Go to home # 1 to see friends and family. In our case, we drove 6 hours from Kingston to Quebec City, spent the night, and then drove the last 8 hours to Mel’s parents in New Brunswick. Because of Mel’s job, we had less time than we wanted for visiting at home, but work is a necessary evil. We enjoyed a family BBQ at Mel’s parents’ house, visits with her Grampy, and a bonfire with friends.

4. Get inundated with errands and paperwork. We had to do lots of little things that ate up a lot of time. For example, I had to renew my license, we had to get a year’s worth of our prescription allergy meds, and we had to take our cat for his final vet visit. The final vet visit was important because, within 14 days of his travel, we had to have some documents filled out by a vet and then have them certified by a government vet. This turned out to be a stressful experience, because our New Brunswick vet was unfamiliar with the paperwork and hesitant to fill it out since he’d most recently lived in Ontario (she couldn’t verify that the area is rabies-free, a key part of the paperwork). They called our Ontario vet, who refused to fill out the paperwork because they hadn’t seen him since his microchipping in April. On top of that, the local vet was hyper-paranoid because his microchip wouldn’t scan and she couldn’t prove that our cat was really who we said he was. We actually got sent to 4 vets over the course of 6 hours, but in the end we got it worked out: his microchip hadn’t scanned because it was American, but the vet was able to verify his identity with the chip company, and CFIA was able to verify that Ontario is rabies-free. So now, hopefully, he’ll arrive the day after us. But there’s no guarantee: the weather is so hot in Hong Kong that there’s been flight embargos on and off all summer. We already miss our little guy!

5. Go to home #2 to see family and friends. After 5 days in New Brunswick with Mel’s family, we went to my parent’s house in Nova Scotia. En route, we stopped to see our friend in Moncton, and Mel’s cousin in Halifax. My brother flew in that night, so it was cool to have the whole family home at the same time. Over the next few days, we went to Upper Clements Park (an amusement park), had dinner with grammy and my aunt and uncle, hiked to Crystal Falls, had a bonfire at the beach, and spent a day in Halifax.

6. Age. I turned 31 when I was home. I wonder if I’ll still be messing about in Asia when I’m 41?

7. Run out of time. Our visit home was over so fast! On our last day, Me, Mel, my brother and all of our parents met in Halifax for a last dinner of- what else?- Chinese food. We all stayed at a hotel next to the airport since our flight (and my brother’s flight) was so early, so we had some beers and swam and tried to relax. I was feeling really tired that night, but as soon as I hit the bed my heart started beating super fast and I began stressing. Mel has revealed that she cried (she always has a travel cry). It was probably 1am before I got to sleep, and we were up again by 5 to head to the airport.

8. Have a smooth trip. I can’t complain at all about our trip. These flights are soooo long (18 hours) and neither of us like to fly, but really, both legs of our flight were smooth pretty much the whole way. We even lucked out with our bags- we’d weighed them a dozen times, but at the airport one of them was underweight and we were allowed to stuff it full of all the “maybe” items I’d had my mom bring in with her. Then when a couple of other bags were slightly overweight the Air Canada lady was totally cool about it. “Who cares?” she said. We’d been stressing those bags! On our first trip to Korea, we’d been allowed two 70lb bags. I distinctly remember packing a frying pan LOL!! Now you get one single 50lb bag. Downsizing sucks. And, sure, an 18 hour flight is boring, but we’d been so busy lately we hadn’t been able to watch any of our favorite shows, so I had a laptop full of good stuff for us to watch. And look, I’ve even killed 30 minutes typing up this blog :D

We’ll be landing in Hong Kong in another 3 ½ hours. We’re almost there! After we go through customs and get our bags, we have instructions to meet a driver with a KEDDY sign in front of *quote* “Burger’s King”. Can’t wait to melt in the heat, see our apartment, and get some sleep! China, here we come!  

Moving Day- From Kingston to Kingston

The current contents of our apartment: laptop, two tent chairs, a desk (bound for the dumpster tomorrow), an air mattress, a half eaten bag of chips, and a cat. And a major echo. Can't say I'll miss the apartment here very much- although it's laid out well, quiet, and sized perfectly for us- there's no AC and the temperatures in our living room have been over 30 degrees for the last 3 months straight. It's kind of sucked!


The cars are all packed up, and tomorrow morning we're moving from Kingston; our home for the last 11 months. Mel's parents have driven up and kindly loaded their car full of our crap. We've downsized quite a bit and thrown out almost all of our furniture. When we moved up here we had 2 cars and a trailer, this time moving back we just have 2 cars.

Tomorrow, we're driving 6 hours to Quebec City, where we'll spend the night in Old Quebec. I've never been there, so I'm looking forward to it. The next day we should be back in Kingston, New Brunswick after another 8 hours of driving. We'll spend about 5 days there, then 5 days in Nova Scotia with my family, before we fly out on the 15th. We're looking forward to seeing everyone... and to spending some time in a home where we don't break into a sweat just from reaching for the remote control :)