A long story...

I promised a nice long story, so here it is. I actually tried to post this before but it didn’t upload properly so I had to rewrite it.

Plane

The flight actually went pretty well. We had just enough time at each airport to do the things that we needed to do without having to wait around too much. The layover in Vancouver was short and they’ve made a lot of upgrades to that section of the airport, so you can actually walk around and get something decent to eat. I had Subway. And Tim Horton’s.

The flight was on time and though long, not too bad. They didn’t lose any luggage and it all got unloaded together. Customs took a while, but no big deal.

Chris was supposed to meet up with people from the kindergarten he got a job with. They didn’t show, so our sneaky plan of grabbing a ride with him fell through. So, from the airport, we took the MagLev train, which has a top speed of 431 km/h and takes about eight minutes to get from the airport to downtown. Now, there is a bus that is much, much cheaper and takes about an hour and a half but I wanted to take this famous train at least once. I enjoyed it. From there, we had to take the subway to the train station, which involved a transfer at People’s Square, which is always busy. That was a bit of a hassle because we had a lot of luggage and we were fairly tired, but very achievable. At the train station we bought tickets to Wuxi and managed to get seats on the new high-speed express. That got us to Wuxi in under an hour with no stops. When buying train tickets in China, you don’t really get a choice. You just kind of accept what they give you. Generally, they assume that since you are a foreigner, you’ll always want first class. The difference in price is not that much, though. Anyway from the train station in Wuxi, we went to Starbucks to meet our friend Sabrina, who had booked a hotel for us.

The Hotel

After grabbing some much needed caffeine, we headed over to the hotel. At the hotel, we were informed that the hotel was not licensed to serve laowai and as such we could not stay, despite having a reservation. Now, at that time of night – 10 pm – it is difficult to get a hotel because most people are already asleep. Also, there isn’t really such a thing as a phone book so you pretty much have to try the ones you or the people in the immediate area know of. Sabrina called around the hotels to see what we could find but it wasn’t looking all that cheap. Then she called some foreign friends of hers from the same kindergarten that Chris was supposed to work for – the school that forgot about him. They offered to have us stay with them in their apartments and came and got us from the hotel. That was awesome. The first night Randall and I stayed with Jenny, an American who has been here two months, Alex stayed with Jordana, a Canadian who has been here about ten months and Chris stayed with Thomas, an Australian (no idea how long he’s been here).

We were able to make contact with the school Alex and I are going to be working for the next day, and were going to go apartment hunting, but that didn’t really work out. So we stayed at Jordana’s – Alex, Randall and I – again that night. Chris was able to make contact with his kindergarten and apparently the job offer never existed and that’s why they didn’t pick him up… Somehow it worked out though and they got Chris an apartment and he started working right away.

So, the next day, we were supposed to go apartment hunting, but we didn’t. However, the school did spring for a hotel so we didn’t have to spend another night on Jordana’s floor. That was nice.
The next day we finally went apartment hunting, which apparently means going to see two apartments owned by one woman and choosing which one we wanted.

The Apartment

The apartment is a fourth floor two bedroom place in the same complex as the rest of the teachers at our school and it’s fairly close to the foreign bar, the school, the bank, a department store, a grocery store and the temple market. So, it’s convenient.

It is not, however, cheap, clean, new or well furnished. We do not have gas, a stove, a microwave or anything for cooking other than a kettle that we found in the cupboard. We were able to get a washing machine, which we had to carry. We do have a fairly decent fridge, now that Alex has cleaned it. We also do not have telephone or internet.

Now, I shall tell the tale of the apartment…

We came to the apartment thinking that we would see a lot of them. We had two translators and the real estate lady with us. We looked at two apartments. Both were owned by the same lady and both had not been occupied for quite some time and, hence, they were filthy. One was a one bedroom, the other was a two bedroom. The difference in price was about thirty dollars, so we opted for the two bedroom, which also smelled better and seemed slightly nicer. We pretty much had to make a decision on the spot. In any case, we negotiated and were able to get a slight reduction in the price. We gave her half the deposit right then and there and we basically moved in fifteen minutes later. The rest of the day was spent cleaning everything. In fact, the apartment is still not as clean as I’d like it. But it’s a lot better now.

The next day the landlord, the real estate lady, the HR rep from the school and a translator were supposed to come to collect the rest of the rent – it’s common to pay three or even six months rent upfront – and the rest of the deposit, deal with the lease, the washing machine, the second bed, the microwave and all the broken things in the apartment.

Getting all that money was a bit of a challenge, especially considering I locked myself out of all my accounts and the maximum amount you can withdraw – about $300 – is lower than what I needed, but we managed to get the money in time.

The entourage showed up late, but no big deal. Then they wanted us to sign the lease. This was a bit of a problem because we had been told by the real estate lady through the translator that the school would sign the lease on our behalf. The reason for this is that we are only staying for three months. In fact, we don’t even have a contract with the school yet so I have no idea how long we’re working. The landlady wanted a one-year lease, which I clearly could not agree to, and in any event didn’t want to lose my deposit (security deposits are legal in China). I had been assured the day before, however, that the school would sign the lease on my behalf and just find another teacher to live in the apartment after we left. Apparently, this was not the case and the entourage tried to get me to sign the one-year lease (written entirely in Chinese) for one year, which would leave me responsible for finding someone to take over my lease at the end, else lose the deposit.

To say the least I was not impressed and not willing let myself get screwed, despite five Chinese women talking loudly and excitedly a mile a minute in Wuxi dialect (which I can’t understand), so I told the translator that I wasn’t going to sign the lease, that it was the school’s responsibility to find me a suitable apartment (ie one with a three month lease) and that I hadn’t actually signed a contract with the school and was fully prepared to find employment elsewhere. This brought up a whole new host of problems as they said that I had to move out that second and were going to deduct the rent for two days from the deposit I had given her the day before. Normally, I wouldn’t care, as this is far less than the cost of a hotel, except that I spent all that time cleaning her damn apartment because she refused to have it cleaned, claiming that it was clean already. All of this is, of course, a facing saving problem.

At the heat of the argument, they all left saying they’d be back in a few hours. So, after a few hours, the landlady and the real estate lady came back looking happy and tried to explain in a combination of the four words of English they knew and Wuxi dialect what agreement had been made. If they had just spoken mandarin to me, I might have understood, not that I was prepared to sign anything in the absence of a translator anyway. While we were waiting, we all went down to look at the meters for the water and hydro and agreed on the readouts. At this point I was thinking they wanted to charge me 200 RMB – about $30 – plus the water and electricity we used, or some number based on two days rent and the utilities. Which, again, would have been fine except that we had spent all of that time cleaning… Alex, Randall and I waited.

Once the translator arrived, we realized that they were reading the meters to record on the lease the starting values and the agreement that had been reached was that the school would pay the landlord 800 RMB if they couldn’t find another teacher to live in the apartment and the landlord will give us back our deposit when we leave. I had them write that part on the lease in English as well, and the both the school and I signed the lease. Crisis averted.

We’ll have to wait and see if we get the deposit back. We’ll also have to wait and see if we get a microwave, a hotplate or any of the repairs promised. It’s going to be a battle at any rate.

On the bright side, now that the apartment is clean, we’re quite enjoying it. We went shopping for all the little things like cleaning supplies, towels, mats, toilet paper, blankets, groceries etc. We can get internet at the school. All the teachers at the school seem pretty cool. I got a SIM card for my phone so we can be contacted.

Plans

We don’t start working until the week of the 14th, so we have some time to settle in and do some travelling. However, the whole apartment thing took so long that we can’t do as much as we’d hoped. We are going to attempt some days trips around the area, but with the May holiday, travelling very far is going to be impossible since every Chinese person is going to be going somewhere and it’ll be like Godzilla invading a Tokyo subway. That makes sense if you think about it. Bottom line: downright dangerous. Friday we’re off to Xuzhou for some reason, and tomorrow we’re going to see some things around Wuxi. Possibly midweek some trips to Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai if the weather is nice. Weather has been much cooler than usual. Today it rained.

We were going to go to Beijing the last week before I started working. That may still happen. But I did not include four months rent in my budget for the first three weeks, so I’m finding myself pretty damn poor. We may go to Beijing just before we leave, though I’d really prefer to climb the wall before it gets too hot, as it was painful enough the first time I did it.

arrived!

Ok, so we're here and we're alive. Some nice laowai have taken us in which is great cause our hotel fell through - they weren't certified to have foreigners stay there. More details on that whole story later - after I get some sleep. So, we're going to hang out and find an apartment and meet up with all our friends. My cell number has apparently been re-assigned to someone else and my SIM card doesn't work, so I guess I have to wait and then get that one sorted out.

I will be updating tomorrow, but until then I'm alive so don't worry.

leaving tomorrow

Just an update for everyone:

Thanks to all who came to our goodbye party last night. Also much thanks for not making too much of a mess.

I am in Toronto right now staying the night at a friend's house. We'll be heading out the the airport tomorrow morning around 6 am. Our flight leaves at 8:30 am to Vancouver and then to Shanghai. Out flight info for those who want to check up on us is as follows (please don't mess with my planes):

AIR CANADA FLT:1137
22 APR 07 - SUNDAY
DEP TORONTO ON 0830 (04HR 57MIN)
ARR VANCOUVER BC 1027

AIR CANADA FLT:37
DEP VANCOUVER BC 1200 (12HR 10MIN)
23 APR 07 - MONDAY
ARR SHANGHAI PU DONG 1510

We'll be headed to Wuxi after we land, assuming all goes well and we'll stay in a hotel there. Then when we've slept we'll find an apartment and work out plans from there.

So, if you need to get in touch with me, you can email me or send me a message on facebokok. I will have a phone number in China. It's the same number as the last time I went to China.

I will blog on Monday so everyone knows I'm alive.