An Italian in Wuhu with a Green Hat and cooking with Friends

PICTURE OF LUCA WITHOUT THE INFAMOUS HAT !!!
This week saw the arrival of our new Italian colleague Luca who is to share the apartment with dong dong and I.
As I am working European time I'm not about when Luca arrives Tuesday evening but have arranged on Wednesday morning to take Luca for some food and show him the route to the office. Luca is not too comfortable in the upstairs of our apartment have to say I don't blame him as it is very basic with a window at above head height and no decent storage.
Anyway we head off towards the office and for food we go to a place near the apartment called a Little Flavour which is some sort of franchise but is always good very fast and approx 16 rmb or approx one pound sixty pence don't you just love a place that will feed you good food for under two pounds.
Decide to walk to the office down walking street to show Luca a little of Wuhu in daylight.Luca is not due to start work till tomorrow but will spend the afternoon with Kit who has arranged to show him around Wuhu and let him recover a bit from the jet lag.

Luca has however a GREEN HAT which attracts quite a bit of attention (Consider the green hat. The phrase "wearing a green hat" in Chinese sounds like the word for "cuckold," so a green hat on a Chinese man is said to mean that his wife is cheating on him) However Luca takes all this in good spirit and is totally unfazed by the attention paid to his hat. Not that we need to attract attention as we do tend to stand out a little from the crowd as it is.


Saturday we have been invited to Lydia Echo and Christas apartment for some food and we all end up helping a little with the cooking and I get to cook two dishes with lots of help from Echo Lydia and Christa Luca did a superb job of chopping vegetables and meat as directed by the three girls.
The food is superb as usual and a very pleasant way to spend Saturday lunchtime.

Saturday evening is good we meet up with friends for a drink and go to the new club is busy and we enjoy ourselves without consuming too much alcohol.
Sunday we have been invited to visit the weather centre in Wuhu by the retired gentleman we met at English Corner on Sunday a few weeks ago.
So Sunday morning we grab a pancake from the stall on the corner which is 1.5 rmb bargain for breakfast then get picked up by Ginny & Kit to go to the weather centre. After guided tour of centre we walk back towards the amusement centre in Wuhu Fangtewild Adventure park we then head for a restaurant advertising good Chinese food don't suppose they would say anything else would they.The meal is as usual good lots of different dishes have to say the food here is always tasty and varied.
After Lunch to English corner with Luca which is a little busier than normal Luca it turns out also juggles which is an added attraction for people to enjoy not just the conversation.
I wont post anything else regarding Luca as he wants to publish a post on this blog so you will have to wait for Lucas guest blog.

Nanchang recruitment and train journey and shopping.

Off to Nanchang for a recruitment day on the Saturday. Nanchang is located 60 km south of the Yangtze River and is situated on the right bank of the Gan River just below its confluence with the Jin River and some 40 km south of its discharge into Poyang Lake.
Nanchang has a population of 3,934,445 people and a metropolitan area consisting of 4,990,184 people.
So Friday morning at 10.30 meet Jacob and head off towards the train station for the journey to Nanchang the train is delayed by 45 minutes which in my limited experience for trains in China is rare they are normally on time, any way we board the train we have seats in one carriage but it looks busy so we sit in another emptier carriage and hope no one has the seats booked.
The journey should take 6 hours 30 minutes so we should get to Nanchang about 6.30 pm Friday evening.
The train is clean comfortable and the views of the countryside are interesting and varied. My only problem is i have had no breakfast so need to find something to eat on the train.
The food options on the train are fairly limited but manage to buy some snacks to get me through the journey.
I am amazed at the amount of cotton growing in the fields as I have never seen a cotton field before its a strange sight to me.Also the amount of people beavering away in the fields is quite something to see.
After a couple of hours on the train a guy starts a sales presentation for a metal puzzle maybe he thinks the captive audience have left common sense behind on the platform. Later he tries again with socks apparently this is normal on trains and the brand of socks is famous in China now and they have the monopoly for trains.
Hopefully Richard Branson wont take up the idea or God help the travelling public if he does.
Arrive in Nanchang at 7.00 pm on Friday have to say the journey was good one thing i wanted to mention was that every ones id cards were checked and I was asked in perfect English where I was travelling to and from.
Book into the hotel a Jin Jiang Inn nice room clean comfortable.
Jacob and I meet up to go for some food and eventually settle on a hot pot restaurant near to the hotel. Food was fine a little spicy but very nice although we did not go for the hotpot and ordered various dishes.Afterwards we go into a jazz club adjacent to the hotel for a beer a and to chill out a little.
Saturday morning early start we have to be at the Job Fair at 8.30 so quick breakfast in the hotel of coffee and toast and jump into taxi to the job fair.
The job fair is similar to one one I attended in Wuhu but a little bigger.The job fair is fairly busy but as we do not Fresh Graduates the amount of potential recruits is limited.
At 1.30 we call it a day and pack up and head off into centre of Nanchang Jacob is off to see his friends near to his old university.So I decide to wander around the shopping area I have plenty of time as our Train is not till 9.45 Saturday evening.
Grab a quick coffee at K F C the coffee in KFC is reasonable and always available so a good option if you are struggling to find some coffee in China.

I wander into a shopping mall with no real idea of what I'm looking for just mostly to browse around on the 3 rd floor is the luggage section and as I want to replace my bag which I carry my day to day stuff and camera in. Find a bigger bag which will hold everything comfortably priced at 675 rmb before discount.Eventually agree price of 425 rmb, the one thing different in China is you don't pay in mall at the point of sale you have to go central cash desk and pay then return to the section and collect your goods.

In this mall we go from the 4Th floor to the first at one pay point i pay 300 rmb and then at another 120 rmb not sure why and how complicated can you make paying for something!!!.
Anyway I'm delighted with my purchase so much that i empty my previous bag and start using the new one immediately.

Leave the mall and head off towards a central square called Bayi square the second largest public square in China, after Beijing's Tiananmen Square. please see attached pictures In 1937, it became famous when on August 1, Zhou Enlai led an uprising against Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist army at Nanchang before retreating to the nearby Jinggang Mountains to form one of the first armed forces of the Chinese Red Army. Today, the anniversary of the uprising is celebrated each year in China as the day the People's Liberation Army was founded.
Wander off down main road to see what else I can find spot a monument on the opposite side of the road but can cross without using the underpass which aren't just for getting from one side of the road to the other in China they are full of little shops and what I would call cafes you could spend hours under the roadway shopping and eating to your hearts content.
Eventually make my way to the monument and take a picture please see link to Nanchang pictures on the blog.Continue along and spot a shop selling ipods which is of interest as i want an ipod to load some Chinese lessons on to after much bartering agree a price of 1,500 rmb includes charger and leather case for an Ipod Nano which i am delighted with.
By this point its late afternoon and i decide just to go down some side streets and see where i end up unfortunately it decides to rain so spot a coffee shop opposite a park area which sells coffee so settle down in a seat at the window to watch the world go by and enjoy my coffee.
After several cups of coffee i decide to do some more shopping and find somewhere to eat before my train journey towards the centre spot a belt shop and as my belts no longer fit me decide to buy a new one try unsuccessfully to barter and end up paying 99rmb which if I'm honest is OK belt seems good quality.
Decide to go for the safe option of Pizza hut however as usual a packed waiting area suggests this may not be so easy but as its just me reckon i can get a table for one quite easily.After 15 minutes and having seen people come in from outside and be seated i give up and head back to the coffee shop of the afternoon and eat there.
Later meet up with Jacob for the return journey to Wuhu which means we arrive in Wuhu at 4.45 am Sunday the sleeping section is fine and i do get some sleep.

Sunday get up late and go to English corner nothing really of note chill out Sunday night then back to work Monday.

Random observations and More shopping

My second week of European time passed very quickly still not keen on Friday but its worth it to get back on normal time before the weekend.

Not sure how to explain the following but here goes
To offset my tax i can submit receipts and get the money refunded so this month I paid tax then got 500 rmb back so effectively paid no tax.
Did you follow that because the concept to me is strange to say the least.But I'm not complaining its a benefit that in the UK would probably be stopped or abused so much they have to stop it.

Day to day in WUHU
food costs me no more than 40 rmb ie under 4.00 pounds
cigs cost me 3.5 rmb under 35 pence
general food coffee soap shampoo etc etc 70-80 rmb 8 pounds
so my entire week costs approx 400 rmb maximum 40 pounds
I still cant quite believe how cheap the prices are.
The part time work I am looking at pays 300 rmb for the weekend so nearly covers my expenses.
The day to day living expenses include eating out twice per day I have still to cook any food myself and in fact apart from buying coffee have never purchased any actual food to cook.Why would anyone when you can eat out for such a small cost.
The most expensive meals have cost no more than 50 rmb per person for a proper resturant which is superb value.
This weekend i had arranged to teach english at 10.30 sat morning which was ok but still not prepared properly.
The 16 kids all aged 10-12 were hard work for 1.5 hours but good fun i really enjoyed it not sure what the kids made of it.
Sat afternoon flat hunting again this time near to the amusement park in wuhu very nice flats but very expensive so not really in the right price range for me.
Sunday have arranged to go to Nanjing clothes shopping so early Sunday morning meet Ginny and then her college friends who have agreed to drive us to Nanjing.
Only one problem driver does not quite know the route from outside Nanjing to the town centre so we circle the ring road for 30 minutes and stop on the hard shoulder to ask directions from person walking down the hard shoulder!!! only in china.
We follow the directions and eventually end up in the city centre still easier than the bus or train.
The car was an american car but built in China very nice and comfortable,any way we start to shop 4 hours later still no success at finding larger clothes, we meet back up for lunch part of the arrangement for the lift was we pay for lunch. Believe me in China this is not as onerous as in UK or eleswhere very reasonable for 5 of us to eat.
Back to shopping after another 3 hours we are told of some shops elsewhere so Ginny and I head off in a taxi.First shop they have one pair of Jeans with really wide legs not my style so we pass this up and move on to another shop further down the road.
Success trousers that fit so I buy 4 pairs so that makes the trip a sucess get back to Wuhu at 9.30 sunday evening quite pleased with my purcahses and total cost 400 rmb.

Inpromptu English class and random observations

In an effort to catch up i am going to summarise 2 weekends other wise it just becomes difficult to stay ahead on the blogging.
This was my first full week on European time ie
mon- fri 2.00 pm-11pm and Friday 8.30 am -6pm have to say the days when I start late are ok but i still get up too early so its a long day.
The one I Don't like is Friday because of lack of sleep.
Friday evening we go to the eat as much as you like buffet which means lots of meat and some beer.Afterwards we had planned to go to English corner but due to it raining we miss it out.Which is a shame as I no longer go to the one on Wednesday.
On Saturday i met Pearl who had arranged for me to come to an English class she teaches,however when i arrive she asks me what I am going to teach whoa hang on I was coming to observe but anyway we start not sure it was very successful but the kids seemed happy enough.We had an intro section and word skills, then played some games and finished with musical chairs without music had to bang a drum instead not so effective.But a good laugh for all the kids.
Saturday afternoon do some shopping so nothing exciting and then go to interview Chinese teachers. For some strange reason we have 4 candidates but 2 of them come as a group not sure i can cope with that so elect for a girl who really wants the job.
Hopefully that means she will turn up at the right time and wont disappear on me.

Sunday morning had arranged to view an apartment near to our existing office which was for rent at 1500 rmb per month for a one bed flat.The appt is at 10.30 so as is my usual I'm early 10.25 owner turns up at 11.00 typical. The one bedroom flat turns out to be a studio living room/bedroom combined like large hotel room. With a massive flat screen TV in a tiny room thanks but no thanks.
Anyway undaunted the agent suggests another flat 3bedroom for 1600 rmb sounds good so one taxi ride later we get to the complex. 15 minutes later another agent turns up and tells us it has been let OK do you believe because I don't for one minute.
However they have a 3 bed for 2300 which as we are there we go to view. Its massive and has a view of the ferry terminal and river. Very nice but too big and too expensive.
Anyway he also has another flat near to our new office location so another taxi ride and arrive at a very secure location lots of guards and electric gates.
Inside the complex is some fairly new blocks surrounded by gardens and lakes very nice.
The apartment is great nice size just missing one or two items it would be perfect but again the price is 2200 rmb and that means I would have to pay at least 1000 or 1600 myself if no one shared with me.So we rule it out for now.
By now I'm a hour late for English corner and have spent the best part of 4.5 hours on flat search which was not productive.
English corner has 5-6 people plus a few english speakers so not bad at all spend just over an hour there then head off to the appartment for a rest before eating.

My second week of European time is looming so after food go back to appartment and spend some time chatting to Arif in the uk by JAHJAH gt service and so cheap and easy to use so catch up on a few things.Nice to talk to him.

KTV Thai food English corner and job offer

As all my weekend was spent in Wuhu I thought i would add a picture of one of the many signs that are placed in public areas this usually causes me to read it at least twice.But normally it makes me smile Chinese apparently doesn't always translate to well and vice versa.
Last Fridays activity after food in the top floor of Wall mart(asda with attitude) we all went to KTV or Karaoke to most UK people.
The main difference is you book a private room with sound system etc and then sing in private. So none of the public humiliation associated with this in the UK.
Also no body was drinking and they do take it very seriously sensibly i opted not to sing which was just as well for those attending.
On Saturday my boss and his wife invited me out for a meal at a Thai Restaurant to try it out.Very nice decor and surrounding's which explained the prices however the food was superb although not convinced about the Thai part not a lot of Thai dishes but what we had was great.
One dish was fish which was very nice and a dish of Wuhu Chicken which was similar to Peking duck with crispy skin plus one noodle dish. All very tasty afterwards we had planned to play Majong but couldn't get a fourth player so we settled on scrabble.
Which only proved to me how rusty my spelling is (no spell check on scrabble board)
Sunday we had planned to meet near to Mirror lake in Wuhu at
Jiu Zi Square which is a patriotic square is filled with statues, the centerpiece of which is an impressive 20-metre-high bronze pillar depicting Chinese phoenixes, surrounded on all sides by fountains. In the morning the park is packed with old people practicing Tai Chi although i haven't seem anyone yet maybe too early for me.
The idea behind Sunday was to try and establish an English Corner in day time as due to work I can no longer attend the university on Wednesday.Also it was in my mind to do some volunteer work possible with kids at school.I mentioned this to one of the people who came on Sunday called Pearl who teaches English and she invited me to come to the school next Saturday.
Our new English corner had 3 students plus 6 pupils from Pearls school so not a bad start plus Reuben a Spanish guy studying Chinese most westerners or foreigners seem to be either studying Chinese or teaching English.
Any way we will have to see how many attend next Sunday.I mentioned the offer from Pearl to my Boss who told me about another school who was desperate for Foreigners to teach English,Are they so desperate that they want a teacher with a Geordie accent.
Any way after English corner we hopped a cab to the School and met with the Principal and our contact person Amy.
So less than 40 minutes later having been into 2 classes to see what goes on I'm offered some part time work starting at the latest in December and more unbelievable is that they will pay me.
So my weekend draws to a close and due to my new working hours IE I now start work at 2.00 pm - 11.00 pm I have a later night then usual to try and get into some sort of routine.
I have now been here for just over 6 weeks and am really enjoying my time here and as an added bonus I am losing weight so far just over 9 kgs (19lbs) so that is good wont tell you how much i hope to lose but still have some way to go.

Barbecue and look at small Mountain

I really need to post more because as time passes you forget what you have been up to the weekend was started by trip to Hefei and I spent the day with Pavel from work.
Went to Hefei by train in the morning left Wuhu at 8.30 and arrived in Hefei at 11.50 jumped a taxi to go and meet Pavel near to his family home.
Pavel had kindly agreed to show me around and we started the day with a meal in a local restaurant, we were joined by his fiancee his parents and their friends.
Had a superb meal with what seemed like lots and lots of dishes.
Went with Pavel to his home and he was good enough to show me around his 2 floor apartment nice and spacious.
We then went for a walk around the river which surrounds the inner city section unfortunately it started to rain so we headed by taxi to the commercial centre.
Where Pavel was convinced I would be able to purchase clothes that fitted me.
Well 3 hours later and 4 shopping malls no such luck.
So back to his house to rest for a while before the bus the bus was more comfortable than the train but cost 4 times as much although it was only 48 rmb which is approx £4.00 the train cost a pound. Bearing in mind the journey was 2 hours 30 minutes not sure of the distance involved but still a bargain.

Pavel was a star looking after me all day and the hospitality was first class and it was nice to meet his family and fiancee.
Arrived back in Wuhu at 10.20 in the rain have to say China in the rain is no better than UK and I don't have a car so on foot. I know own a much used umbrella.

Sunday some colleagues and their boyfriends had invited me to a barbecue at a local area beside the river i wasn't convinced it would be a good day for it.
We all met at walking street then we caught a local bus a first for me it costs 1 rmb which is now just over 10 pence can you believe the prices.
After 20 -30 minutes on the bus we then caught a small taxi to the scenic area and attempt to light the barbecue eventually it works and over the next 3 hours we eat lots of food cooked by the 3 girls mostly who are by the way all very good cooks and enjoy cooking a rare breed if they lived in the UK.

We then wander around the area and take more photos all in all a very good day for all.

Really enjoyed it my day and got to see more of the area.

Have published some photos of the day on the Picasa link.

Mahjong and Golf (not at the same time of course)

The weekend after the trip to the Mongolian restaurant our Friday activity was KFC followed by board games, So i got to play mahjong which was a first for me.
After a couple of games of mahjong it we decided to go to English corner at AUTS so although the weather wasn't great it was busy with at least 5 English speaking people.
The English corner here seems to be the most popular amongst the students and is always well attended.
Saturday dawns sunny and warm and after depositing some cleaning,which includes my first VIP card VIP card seem to be very popular in china you either get a discount or you prepay 300 and get 400 to spend so the seem like a good deal.
In the afternoon meet up with some work colleagues to play badminton near to the Stadium in wuhu I play for only a short while then decide to go and take some pictures outside.
Over towards the stadium there are a group of what i take to be Freshman students who are taking photos one of the group comes over to ask if they can take my photo.
In the end it takes 3 photos to get all the group on so not sure what the students will do with one random picture of a European.
After the badminton we spot a sign for Golf driving range which appears to be in the Stadium we wander over and sure there are golf driving bays which face down the Football pitch.
Everyone has a go and we get some help from the Golf Professional which does help, I am a bit rusty but eventually start to hit the ball OK. Will definitely go again and may do it one evening after work.
Saturday evening I go out for a drink to a bar called Doors on bar street in Wuhu not too bad nice atmosphere although the beer is 15 rmb instead of 10 at the Overseas students bar but as 15rmb is approx £1.50 its still not expensive.
Afterwards along with an English guy and 2 French people we go to a club on walking street.Very busy but perversely the beer is cheaper at 10 rmb and you get one Free beer for your admittance cost of 20 rmb. After 2 beers decide to head off apparently the dance floor bounces up and down about 12 inches so you just step on and you are moving up and down,Have to admit i didnt try it.
Sunday lunchtime I go to a buffet restaurant which is 30 rmb with VIP card eat as much as you like one hour later and overdosed on meat which included duck chicken beef etc etc all barbecued along with salad or vegetables absolute bargain.
I plan to post about working in Wuhu soon as it is different in lots of ways from UK.