This time in China, I’m going to do things differently. It’s strange to be dropped into a country so entirely different than I’m used to – the farms, the Sunday lunches and the family of Back Creek Valley, West Virginia.
I’ve been here before. Once I went to Taipei, Taiwan, which some will argue is owned by China and some will argue the opposite. It’s better to not mention Taiwan here at all. For another study abroad trip, I stayed in Suzhou. Suzhou is sometimes called the “Venice of China” due to all the canals, but in the summertime those canals draw in every mosquito within twenty miles of the city.
Last time, my husband, Matt, and I lived for a year in Hanzhong in Shaanxi Province. Hanzhong will be one of the most difficult places I’ve ever lived. There were about ten foreigners, “laowai,” in the small city of three million. You couldn’t walk two minutes without someone pointing us out, because we looked different than them. While eating, sometimes they would sit down nearby just to watch and see if we ate differently than them as well. On several occasions we were turned away from hotels or given higher prices, because we were foreign.
Besides that, I’d do it again. I like the experience, and I like knowing that one day I’ll be able to tell someone that – “I did this.”
Now we’ve landed in Nanjing after spending several weeks in Shanghai. More on how this farm girl failed miserably while trying to travel the Shanghai metro later. The first thing I noticed about Nanjing was the green. Nice trees are hard to find in China, and Nanjing is blooming with them. In cities, I always miss the color green, but the trees are everywhere here. There’s still very little grass. Last time I went home from China, one of the first things I did was sit in the grass. Some people here will stare at our hair, skin and eyes, but most are used to foreigners by now. The city is full of contrasts – a three-story mall lit up in neon will stand beside a stone shanty where the average Chinese person will sit on a short stool to eat noodles for dinner. Western food is everywhere, which is a completely different story from the smaller cities of China. In Hanzhong, we had one KFC. (KFC’s in China serve fries, by the way, and egg desserts.)
So this time in China, I’m going to remind myself more often to accept the culture, and I’m going to become that bustling city girl who knows how to navigate a metro. Matt and I are looking for an apartment, but for now, the Orange Hotel is home because that’s where my suitcase is.
