1st Day, 1st Trip, 1st Week

Since I have to speed up publishing posts to synchronize with real-time, I will write about the 1^st Day, 1^st Week and 1^st Trip in China here all together.

When I landed in Yantai Airport, Mr. Liu RuiYang, my direct teammate, who has a Masters in Chemical Engineering, was waiting for me holding a poster that said ‘Chehade’. I felt like a VIP when I saw it! Here, family names are written before given names as I noticed in almost all situations, and the labels are at the end. If written in Chinese you would say RuiYang Liu Mr (but I will be writing their given names first as we are used to). I did not know if I had to call him Mr. or not, but he looked so young like less than 22 years, but turned out to be 28! So I just started calling him Liu without the Mr and it flowed with everyone who appeared to me to be young. Also, the Chinese like to give themselves western names when dealing with foreigners as to ease it on us when we want to call them. Liu named himself Jerry but I told him that I would prefer calling him in his Chinese name. Liu and everyone else have been always helpful anytime, anyhow and anywhere. People here are all selfless and would offer help eagerly. Throughout my coming posts I will be including more about the Chinese people and their lifestyle, habits and so.

On our way from Yantai Airport to the dorm, which took around 40 minutes, I felt like I have landed in Beirut airport and I am going to my village, Insarriyeh, in the South. That was because the weather, nature, scenery and even the taxi felt all so similar. On our way, the sky was cloudy and the temperature was 22C. It was drizzling rain and the breeze coming from the windows of the taxi was so refreshing. There is good deal of greenery and there is a river. The taxi car was old like the taxi’s in Lebanon, but had a counter like the ones in UAE. Instantly, besides recalling Lebanon’s weather, I said to myself “at last I am away from the grilling weather in UAE!! (I thought it in Arabic though :P).” We reached to the dorms and had an hour of napping and went to check out the company where I met our team leader Dr. Chen Haibo who is an organic chemist. In the adjacent lab, I met Lauren (from Scotland) who came two weeks before me also through IAESTE, and works in the same building but with a different team. Later I’ll post more about my work and team, and also about the accommodation.

At LaoHu Shan (Tiger Mountain)

My team had invited me to a trip that had happened the next day, Saturday 11^th June, and I definitely went with them. Our company, Wanhua, takes its employees every 2 months for trips free of charge, so I was lucky to reach exactly on one of those trips, and I would also be joining them in the next one.

This 1^st trip was to LǎoHǔ Shān (Tiger Mountain), which is famous for two things, its history as it was a battlefield in the 1920’s between the Japanese and the Chinese, and more importantly it is known for the plenty Cherries! We picked up lots of juicy red fresh cherries directly from their trees. Moreover, related to the war history, I realized the hatred between China and Japan from the plays they showed and from what the people told me. The plays were surely in Chinese but they were understandable. The outdoors play had real houses and some horses. They actually used fireworks to imitate rockets, mines, and fire. It was so lively and vivid.

Cherries!

Some friends. Liu is directly beside me. Guo is another teammate (Middle, white t-shirt with no hat).

I had my first Chinese lunch during this trip. The food was different but nice. It was all sweet. The tomatoes had sugar on them not salt! It is delicious..try it! It was the first serious time I try eating with chopsticks (the few passive times in UAE do not count, and chopsticks are actually used for ALL the kinds of food you have in a meal like rice, peanuts, noodles, chopped vegetables and even the tiniest beans, and sometimes you pick them peice-by-peice!). It was tough for me. They were teaching me how to hold it and
 I tried doing it systematically. It slipped and I couldn’t catch anything. I stopped for a while and just decided to try without ‘thinking’ of how to use the chopsticks, and yesss, it just works intuitively!

In this trip I met Ana (from Spain) who has been here since 6 months. She got used to life in China which made things easy as she helps us in everything. We had a long chat and got along very quickly.

The next day, Sunday, I unpacked my luggage, went around the neighborhood, got some stuff from the supermarket and learned how to use the all-Chinese washing machine. Next day, Monday 13^th June, I started work. And in few days, the employees around me mentioned that a guy from UAE is coming soon, and luckily it turned out to be Saeed (he will tell you sometime what the Chinese call him :P)!

Worth to mention now, the Chinese do not have “proper” forms of a noun. They hear a proper name and try to find its closest equivalent from the pronunciation aspect. For example, Youssef is YōuSùFú (优素福). More clearly, Yōu is a specific word in Chinese, Sù is another and Fú is another. So this was the closest to my name, and think of the other weird names you would get for other Arabic names! Still I get called by other names that would also sound similar but are composed of different Chinese words.

Indoor Play. They created a pyramid. We had lunch there but no pictures of food :(

Outdoor Play. They actually can fly in KungFu as you see in movies!

Also, Dorothee from Germany came a day before Saeed which made us 5 (the only 5) foreigners in the company. We all are getting along together very well which is making the stay in China much easier and filled with different activities.

A non-working water mill.

I’ll try to organize the later posts in a better way as not to include many overlapping topics together! And fortunately Saeed will join me in writing posts.