First Day in China: Eating, Hair Straighteners, and Trains

I have now been in China for over 24 hours and what I’ve seen has made me very excited about the next four months. The city feels very vibrant and it has been very interesting trying to navigate not just the city itself but also the language barrier. Stumbling around today trying to buy food and subway tickets made me realize just how rusty my Chinese is! It will be fun to see how well I will be able to communicate at the end of four months. 

The trip started out very smoothly with a great plane right over. Due to the snow in Chicago, most of the connecting flights weren’t able to get in. My flight ended up having only about 30/40 people on it, keeping in that this is a 777 which can hold more than 200 people. Since I was traveling with my dad we were able to be upgraded to business class which was amazing. Our section was even less crowded with only five people. My dad and I were able to spread out and relax quite nicely. I had my own seat for eating and another for sleeping!  You can’t get much better than that. 

We landed at about 5:30 at night in China and got to the hotel around 7:30. While quite exhausted we were also hungry so we decided to try the Starbucks that was connected to the hotel. I am proud to say the first time I used Chinese was to order my dad a glass of milk! I still have to work on how to say skim, 2%, and whole, but for now I’ll just take whatever they give me. It’s hard to be too picky in China. 

So our first full day can really be summed up in three parts: Food, shopping, and train rides.

Breakfast consisted of fruit and pancakes at the hotel. I know, not too original, but for the first meal I thought we would play it safe. Only problem was that in China, pancakes are kind of original. Even though they were on the menu it turns out not many people order them. We ended up waiting quite a long time only to find out that the machine that they use to make them had broke. However, instead of letting us know that there was a problem the waiter just brought us banana chips to try and tide us over while the kitchen tried to figure out what to do. I classic example of saving face. Eventually we did get our pancakes, and they were pretty good, but I’m still not quite sure how they ended up solving their problem. Judging by the uniform size of the pancakes I’m guessing they got their pancake machine to work. I wonder if they sell those in America…

Lunch was also quite the adventure as my dad and I decided to try and find some Chinese noodles. There is this giant 9 story mall connected to our hotel that we decided to explore. After some wandering we found a popular noodle restaurant. My dad played it safe by ordering just a plain bowl of noodles for only 8 Yuan which is about $1.20. I decided to try a dish which I knew had pork in the title. Unfortunately I somehow ended up with clams. Something tells me that I am going to have to quickly get used to eating seafood. My dad’s noodles were great though. They tasted like Matzo ball soup! 

After lunch my dad wanted to check out an electronic store to buy me a phone for my time here. Let me just say, China has every model of phone you could ever imagine. After getting kind of overwhelmed with all the choices and the huge language barrier, I just decided to wait until my program began next week to buy one since I’d at least have someone to help me navigate this somewhat daunting task. 

On our way out we went by the household goods section and I saw that one stand sold hair straighteners. The one I brought from home has a plug that doesn’t actually fit in my converter so I was in the market for a new one. Unfortunately, either hair straighteners are really popular that the stores can’t keep them in stock or they are such a novelty that it’s rare to have them on hand. Whatever the case, I had the staff running back and forth trying to find a model that they could sell me. Once I finally had confirmation that there was one I could buy I had to go to a separate desk to pay. Only problem was that my dad wanted to use his credit card. Cash is really the way to go in China and it ended up taking us more than an hour to finally purchase the thing. So many mix ups occurred throughout the transaction.  The computer had the wrong price, the phone system to authorize the payment wasn’t working right, and of course no one spoke a word of English. Luckily a saleswoman took pity on us and stayed with us to make sure the process finally got completed. 

 

Now it is important to know that my dad is a person who loves to always be in control. This language difference is really hard for him. All day he really didn’t quite understand that while someone might greet him with a “Hello, how may I help you?” they don’t actually speak English. He would then go on using words and idiomatic phrases while the Chinese person would give him a nervous look. I don’t quite expect him to get better at this during his short trip. 

The last part of the day consisted of riding the subway system and the Maglev train. The subway was pretty crowded but not as bad as it would be on a normal day. Due to the New Year, the city is pretty quiet. The Maglev in particular was quite impressive. This train runs a route of about 20 miles back and forth from the airport. It’s really just a giant toy that they Chinese bought from the Germans. This said toy can go up to 420 km/h or roughly 260 mph and levitates over magnetic tracks. Needless to say my dad thought he had died and gone to heaven to ride it!

So that pretty much sums up our first day. Dinner was quite tame at Pizza Hut, which is actually a nice sit down restaurant here. You can even get steak! Perhaps I’ll try it in a few months when I’m really starting to miss straight up beef. 

Thanks for reading and I’ll try and keep you all updated as this trip continues!

-Rachel