Time to Explore

Eventually one has to leave the campus cocoon, no matter how pleasant and snuggly it is one can’t spend 9 months not leaving a campus that only takes 15 minutes to walk end to end. I’d be intrigued to see someone try though. So on Thursday evening we got the bus - yes, the bus! - into the city centre in search of Tianyi Plaza. Fortunately ours is the first stop en route so no trying to vacuum pack yourself into the tuna can that Beijing buses were so very reminiscent of. In fact despite the time - around 5 - it never reached peak squish, only a couple of people had to stand. Now the bus didn’t go directly to Tianyi, it dropped us off nearby and little did we know that it takes an hour longer than in a taxi. However we only paid ¥2 for the privilege (20p), so it wasn’t the end of the world. 

We got off definitely in the city, but without a map it was hard to pinpoint exactly where, after a bit of nervous (and probably incorrect) Chinese we ended up with a general direction and headed that way. As we turned our first corner we saw this:

Tiantong Tower, a 13 floor Pagoda built between 695 AD and 696 AD - turns out the Chinese always been efficient and quick builders - and is 51.5m in height. Unfortunately it was closed but we wandered around the gardens and took some photos, general touristy behaviours. Down the street then and we came across an indoor market in the most beautiful classical Chinese buildings.

There’s also a Mcdonald’s inhabiting one of the traditional buildings, in a city brochure it would probably say something about the dynamic city blending the new whilst retaining their classical heritage. As a tourist I find it quite disappointing, but I don’t live there so can’t really comment too much. It’s probably similar to the McDonald’s smack dab opposite the castle at home. Anyway we walked through the covered square in search of our plaza.

A few dark streets vibrantly lit by car lights and neon restaurant signs later we came to our plaza! By the way we passed somewhere selling ‘Cheese Tea’, Yeah apparently that’s a thing…. 

WHY?!?!?

TianYi plaza is a mecca for high end shops and international stores, there’s Zara, Armani, Haagen Dazs and plenty of watch and jewellery shops alongside Chinese brands. After our extended bus journey though we were all rather hungry so went in search of food. We found a restaurant serving ‘3 sauce sizzling pots’ that cooked on the table in front of you. It all looked very tasty, only one issue there wasn’t an English or picture menu! Dilemma. So we could make out the main ingredients of each pot type of meat, whether there was fish  or not etc, the issue was once again with the vegetarians. Our initial plan was one meat pot and one veggie pot, but it turns out veggie only pots aren’t a thing. After a prolonged period of miscommunication and trying to explain the situation we eventually realised we could only order a pot with meat or fish in it, and then add extra vegetables. Thankfully the veggies in our group were happy to do that, we were all pretty hungry by this point. Then the food arrived, and it was awesome. 

A river fish, maybe something like a catfish surrounded by lots of veggies with flavours typical of the local Yongbang cuisine (apparently), soft and salty with original and delicate flavours generally steamed or braised. Also lots of fish and seafood. The paste was full of flavour and when they came and added water halfway through to turn it into soup, the steam smelt delicious. I ate the edible bits of the fish head and if you ignored the eyes and whiskers it was pretty good. All in all a good example of order and hope!

We carried on our wander and stopped in Haagen Dazs for ice cream that cost just as much as the meal we’d just eaten, then we found Tesco’s. What must be one of the few remaining in China, and yes they have a Clubcard scheme. 

That’s where the similarities end though, as Charlie and I found out in the noxious smelling dried fish aisle. There’s a selection of foreign goods, crisps, french biscuits, Ricola and Western alcohol, which’ll be handy when the homesickness kicks in. Personally I bought a pillow because the utilitarian one provided by the uni gives you very little in terms of a peaceful nights sleep. I know, I’m a crazy spender!!! Then hometime, because shops here stay open till about 10pm, which is actually very sensible because what worker has time to shop in the day?

In the homeware aisle I saw this coat hanger bike and Teddy. Love IT!

On Friday we had a group dumpling night, the Chinese students showed us how to wrap dumplings, which is really pretty easy to do a basic one. You take your disc of dough and lay it on your palm, 

grab some meat and lay it in the centre, 

wet the diameter and then firmly push the edges together. 

You need to make sure there aren’t any gaps in the edge so as to prevent any leakage, also don’t overfill the dumpling otherwise the dough will tear. The hardest bit however is making it look pretty, you need clever fingers to twist the edges appropriately. Personally I went for a cornish pasty style, not sure it’s amazingly authentic but I thought it looked good. 

My favourite part about the whole thing was when they cooked all the dumplings and then brought them out to everyone one tray at a time. This resulted in everyone forming scrums to fight for the food, as if the Rugby World Cup was really taking place here.

Dangerous stuff.

Later that evening we went to Laowaitan, the area on the river with lots of bars and restaurants where all us foreigners like to hang out, apparently. It’s nice to have a designated area to go to, someone just saying to you ‘don’t worry you’ll like it here, you’ll be very comfortable’. I digress, it was a fun shish bar with free beer, I’d like to go explore around there a bit more, find somewhere to satisfy my craving for bread which has hit 6 days in. Yes I know China does bread, but it’s weird sweet plasticky stuff, not crusty and soft and smelling amazing…. Ah bread daydreams… Anyway onto Nova! I can’t believe I’m saying this about a club with such plush decoration, flashy light shows and giant DJ stage, but it’s so over hyped China. I mean it’s amazing, but in the same way that clubs with cheesy music and sticky floors are ubiquitous across the UK, they’re ubiquitous here. They’re cookie cutter clubs, but the Chinese just have higher standards. They do amazing fruit platters, efficient and pleasant service but, barely anyone dances (apart from the Westerners), and everyone just sits at their tables sucking on their light up lollipops (yes that’s a thing). It seems as though people are just there to be seen there opposed to enjoying it, or maybe they enjoy it for other reasons than us Westerners dancing and drinking on the dancefloor. However you do get free drinks, this week in the form of cold red tea with whiskey… Not really a fan. I left about 3 because I think all the passive smoking reduced my lung capacity (yes you can smoke inside :( ) and jumped in the mercifully cheap taxi home. 

On Saturday after catching up on Bake Off, I went solo exploring/ off to find a Bank of China. You can’t change money at just any Bank, it has to be a Bank of China. However I didn’t realise this until I was well on my way to a bank near the uni, the directions for which I had had to memorise as at this point I was without 3G or a map. That in itself wasn't the tricky part, in fact I was enjoying my walk, the problem was I was heading towards the wrong bank. So I got there and had all my Chinese sentences prepped in my head ready to change my money, aaaand was promptly turned around out the door. Now I’d received enough information that I knew I was looking for KFC - international fast foods are directional saviours - and I had an inkling we’d driven past one on the bus past on Thursday. So I went back and turned to the left, I realised when the pavement ran out that I’d gone the wrong way. It’s always a pretty clear indicator that. 

So 40 minutes later I reached the Bank that’s 10 minutes from the Uni, only a slight detour. Walked through the door, approached the empty counter, the teller looked at me, shouted to the security guard, then turned away. Was slightly worried at this point that I was seen as a security risk, but it turns out the security guard just wanted me to take a numbered ticket. You know the ones you use when there’s a giant queue to make sure no one pushes in front. The bank was empty… So with my queueing ticket, surprise surprise I’m the next number to be called, they actually called my number. At this point I was on the verge of suspecting it was some elaborate prank, something along the lines of how long will the foreigner go along with this insanely bureaucratic system!?! But no, the teller now addresses me very politely in perfect English. Ah China how I love you, It’s often only when I’m writing these incidences down that I realise just how bonkers the systems are here. 

I went in search of lunch in a collection of shops and restaurants by the bank and KFC called ‘Sunday Plaza’ and found my favourite kind of Chinese restaurant, small, unobtrusive and not covered in bright plastic decoration and lighting. I entered just as another guy was leaving, the old chef was standing by the till in a smart white jacket. A true noodle ‘shifu’ (chinese honorific for master of the field or expert), there was no picture menu or English translation just wooden slats on the wall, which were turned over when the dish had finished for the day. I recognised the characters for noodles and deployed the classic ‘point and hope’ order (copyright pending). He then headed into the kitchen and made the dish from scratch, including the noodles, he hand pulled the noodles in front of me, very cool. 

His restaurant was immaculate and sparsely furnished, but it suits the theme. without trying to sound cliched it was obviously all focussed on the food of which he was evidently very proud. As he should be, it was delicious I had fish noodle soup, very delicate and filling, just what slightly hungover Alice was after. So Thank you noodle Shifu, I will definitely be back! (Especially because I passed one restaurant kitchen where a guy was cooking topless.)

I went for a post lunch walk through the local park, which centres on a pretty lake, with traditional arching bridges, beautiful flowers wide grassy spaces and classical music pumped though tinny speakers. Ah bliss. Genuinely it’s a less crowded and more pleasant space than my local park in Beijing which you also had to pay to enter. Fortunately grass is free here. 

It was a lovely stroll and I ended up walking back along the far road to the Uni, however the bridge was closed for repairs so i had to loop back around to the other side. Not the best day for directions it seems. However it gave me a chance to observe a couple of quirks, the first was the guy picking vegetables from the river bank and the second was the two girls fishing under the river. It seemed to add a sense of history to this seemingly modern city, especially where we are in the suburbs, well not really the suburbs, more the 3rd CBD. Not a bad day of solo exploring, it’s always good to get just a little bit lost.

Now I'm going to play the 'my campus is prettier than yours' game. Here are some pics of the Chinese garden which is slap dang in the middle. 

For Sunday I’d done a bit of internet research, I was looking for a traditional market as some of wanted to get room decorations. The Internet gave me Chenghuang temple, which trip advisor described as a traditional market with authentic Chinese goods. Turns out it’s where we’d been on Thursday night, ah well this time we’d get to look around properly. Now I guess it is authentic and traditional if you think that it’s been used for the same purpose for hundreds of years, selling clothes and goods, the clothes and goods themselves are now just slightly more updated. I don’t believe phone cases and fake eyelashes were a thing in the 18th Century. We entertained ourselves sufficiently looking at the tiny clothes, and I wondered what I’d ever do if I ever need to cut some new clothes. I guess buy two and sew them together?

We decided to climb the Pagoda as it was open and only ¥2.5 for a ticket. As I said before it consists of 13 floors, what I didn't realise was that they get progressively narrower and shorter as you climb up, and the stairs get steeper and the width of the steps smaller, until you’re crouching to avoid the ceiling and climbing up on tiptoes. 

The views are pretty great, if you can fit under the eaves to go and have a look. I can imagine before skyscrapers it was the tallest building around for quite a distance, now however there are a few skyscrapers dotted around. 

The market down below.

The descent, as with the drum tower in Beijing, was tricky and steep and just slightly nerve wracking, but everyone made it down safe. 

We searched through our city guides and found a Chinese tea museum just a couple of kilometres away alongside 月湖 (moon lake). 

It all sounds very pretty and authentic. Surprisingly it was, a classical lake with traditional buildings and families wandering along the paths. It was very tranquil, we saw people hiring pedalos and chucked in the tea museum idea for that. 

Watch out for crazy bikes on the narrow bridge!

So we started walking round, admiring the scenery even the design of the paths was thought out with different colours and patterns. (narrow path - bike) 

We crossed over to an island garden and after admiring the layout from the viewpoints (Chinese gardens are designed to be viewed from particular places within them) we came a across a photo exhibition. It was about veterans of WWII, China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII earlier in September, and they were really stunning photos. Even though we couldn’t understand the writing next to them they were still very moving. 

After a while we moved on across the lake and came across some people dancing in a square, whilst we were stood there watching I was approached by a couple of older gentlemen who asked me to dance. I initially refused, I’m really not a very good dancer and I was wearing a crop top and denim shorts which didn’t quite match up to everyone else’s lovely outfits. However one gentleman was particularly persistent so I thought why not, and agreed. We took our places, unsurprisingly getting a few looks, and the music began and so did we. Now I must really emphasise just how bad at dancing I am, rhythm and body coordination are not my friends; my Mum likes to reminisce over how I was asked to leave ballet at the age of 5 or so, because I was better at organising the line than doing the dance. Cut to 17 years later and about 30 seconds into this dance the poor guy had realised his mistakes, He started counting YI, ER, SAN, SI (1,2,3,4) out loud whilst I was focussed on his feet and trying to follow along. I couldn’t judge the music cues, or his signals to twirl or change direction. I was probably akin to a laggy video on a poor internet connection.I would like to add it was a really long song, long enough to loop the square twice. It was never ending!! I haven’t had to focus on something that hard for a very long time. You would’ve thought that I’d get the hang of it by the end, but no, if anything I got more and more out of time. It was disastrous, but just disastrous enough that it was amusing. Fortunately it did eventually end, and it was with much relief that I shook the man’s hand and quickly left the dance floor. 

After a bit of giggling we started to walk away at which point a Chinese Lady spat directly across my face, if I hadn’t have stopped fairly sure it would’ve hit my cheek. She then gave me an evil look and stormed towards the dance floor. Two sides of China’s coin in the space of 5 minutes. Good Stuff.

Onto the pedalos, however we were stumped by the price hike from the ¥50 per boat on the signs to the lady telling us it was ¥190. We didn’t feel that that was the correct or fair price, but quite frankly weren’t capable of arguing with her, so we let it be. 

The next plan was a visit to Wanda Plaza, a shopping mall near the University, for a bit of shopping and I needed a phone because O2 are useless and wouldn’t unlock my phone and I was bored of going to the lobby every time I wanted to use my phone. 

Apparently Walmart is the place to go for phones, and we entertained ourselves walking through the supermarket trying to work out what each piece of meat was, and ogling the live fish and bullfrogs waiting in their purgatory fish tanks. Upstairs I picked a Meizu phone, for a grand total of ¥899. Crazy cheap. It seems to be imitating the iPhone a lot, I am surprised by just how much they’ve got away with, doesn’t seem very legal. However I’m not complaining it’s a pretty decent phone and I can now communicate on the move and I have maps!!! On the way back through Walmart I was very tempted by a little turtle in a vivarium, now it seems quite cruel to buy it and as if it may just grow to real turtle size. If it does how long does it take, and at the end of the year what do we think the policy is on releasing pet turtles into the park by the lake? It all sounds quite sketchy, but it was very cute and teeny tiny!!!

Time for dinner which in itself wasn’t very special, but it was in a Gandalf themed restaurant!! Not a Lord of the Rings theme, not a Hobbit theme, a Gandalf theme! 

I learnt that he’s called Uncle Secret in Chinese, which I quite like and the had the Hobbit playing on TV screens, and rather annoyingly the soundtrack, but they weren’t synced up which was quite irritating. It also gave me a Mandarin goal, get to a point where I can read Lord of the Rings in Mandarin!! How awesome would that be. A rather epic decision to end a pretty great first weekend. I can’t wait to see as much of Ningbo and Zhejiang as is humanly possible of the next 9 months.