David's Big Adventure in China

I have been here more than a week now and I have survived without any big difficulties. Whenever I need help someone is there to give it to me. In general, the people here have been very nice and friendly. My flight arrived 4 hours late around midnight Thursday night May 10. It was too late to catch a bus to Shenzhen but there was a van taking some of the airport workers to the immigration station in Shenzhen and I was able to catch a ride with them and one of them helped me get a taxi and told the taxi driver where to take me to get to my hotel. I stayed in Shenzhen until Monday and while I was there my friend Lily helped me open a bank account and get a cell phone. We also did some shopping and I bought a webcam to use to communicate with my folks.
Then on the 14th I went to Guangzhou by train. It was a very nice train and went up to 120 miles per hour. I spent a couple days checking out the city. Both Shenzhen and Guangzhou are very large cities with millions of people. They remind me of a gentler version of NYC. I say gentler because the drivers are more courteous. At first glance it would seem that they drive crazy here but they are actually very skillfull to navigate the traffic and not cause any accidents. There are lots of job opportunities in these 2 cities but I think I want to live in a smaller place.
On the 16th I went to Nanning which is about a 1 hour flight. When I got to the airport I found that my flight had been cancelled and they put me on a flight a couple hours later. I think they cancel flights when they are not full enough and just bump everyone to a later flight. Nanning is a city in south central china with about 1.2 million people with florida like weather. I am still in Nanning now and have enjoyed it so far. It feels more comfortable although the weather is quite hot. I had 2 job interviews here. The first at a private school and they made me an offer. It’s a good school but I think I would prefer a university position if I can find one. A university would have weekday daytime hours for the most part and the private school has mostly evening and weekend hours. Also, the university would provide more vacation time. I had an interview at the best university here and will find out in a week or so if they will make me an offer.
In general, I’ve been able to find my way from place to place with occasional help from strangers. Sometimes my Mandarin (Chinese) language skill is enough and most of the time it is totally inadequate. My biggest challenge is ordering in a restaurant. Most of them do not have english on the menus so if I am dining alone I sometimes just close my eyes and point at the menu and hope I like whatever they bring me. Some of the menus have pictures which make things much easier. I have enjoyed the food even though I often don’t have a clue what it is I’m eating (maybe it’s best that way…lol). It’s amazing that the people here stay so thin given how much they eat. The foods that I don’t find too much of or when I do the quality is not very good are dairy products, beef, and bread. Cost of my meals have been from $.60 to $12. I’ve had some very nice meals for $5 or $6.
Well that’s the update for now. I’ll post again within the next week. I’d be happy to get news updates from my friends and family via e-mail.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 5:38 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.