Bear necessities.

Wie immer: Falls ihr die deutsche Version dieses Blogposts lesen wollt, einmal HIER klicken.

Of course I did not keep my promise and wrote a blogpost about the summer but… ain’t nobody gonna judge after you all have the knowledge now, am I right? So instead of warming up something that’s already happened months ago and in the spirit of the fall equinox past Saturday I am going to jump right to the present.

I’ve been back in China for 6 weeks now and as some of you might know, the reason why I am in China in the first please, the lovely woman on my side, is back in Poland finishing her Master’s thesis. I would like to take this opportunity for a shoutout to you, Kasia! For being a warrior and finishing your studies at home while studying abroad. I don’t know many people that are crazy enough and certainly none that have enough willpower, perseverance and energy to do so! What you have done is incredible and you have every reason to be so so proud of yourself! Can’t wait to spoil you rotten when you get your ass back over here!

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Since I hate being alone and I also happen to have a huge case of FOMO (that is the fear of missing out  for you non-millenials out there) I have tried to keep myself as busy as I can and meet people, new and old. For the new part I decided to host as many Couchsurfers as I could during the last few weeks. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of Couchsurfing a quick explanation: You create a profile on a website called couchsurfing.com, offer your couch or guest bed or whatever you have to offer and have people stay over. Or if you don’t have enough room you can also choose to just “surf” and stay with other people while you are traveling. All of that for free! To some, inviting a stranger into your house, possibly even giving them a key and letting them use your amenities might sound super fucking weird. Granted, you have to have quite some trust in the good side of people and I am sure some might have worse experiences than me. However  personally, every experience – surfing as well as hosting – has been absolutely rewarding in my case.

Every single person I have met through Couchsurfing has brought something interesting to the table. They have either shared their views and philosophies or let me share mine (#spreadtheknowledge) and I believe it is a great way to meet like-minded, adventurous travelers.  So over the last weeks I have hosted or showed around people from the US, Canada, France and Israel. Taken them to trivia quizzes, cooked together, showed them some cool spots in Beijing and over-all had a really good time. Also I have been invited to come stay in Vancouver, Auckland and Jerusalem which is pretty fucking sweet!

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For the old part, I have had two reunions over the last fe weeks. The first one is already a few weeks back and took my to Qingdao. A coastal city in the eastern Shandong province and a good 4.5 hours by bullet train away from Beijing. It also happens to have the same name as one of the most popular beer brands in China: Tsingdao. That is not a coincidence as this brewery was founded by German settlers in Qingdao in the early 20th century. The also happen to host the annual Qingdao International Beer Festival. Which was indirectly the reason I went there for just a weekend. The direct reason was a good friend of mine, whom I have met during my time at University in Graz, Selina. So two Austrians meeting again after two years all the way on the other side of the world in China. What are the odds? Well, Selina was over here for most of the Summer and performed over 30 shows with the so-called Phoenix Fire Dancers at the Beer Festival. Now, going there I wasn’t really sure what to expect of this weekend but I was certainly not disappointed. The Beer Festival itself could be described as a flashy, tacky Chinese take on the infamous Oktoberfest in Munich. Upon arriving there my cab driver almost ran over a group of drunk Chinese men and a good minute after getting out of the taxi a guy fell over with his e-scooter while furiously honking at me to get out of the way. But it’s not only a complete shitshow of drunk Chinese. They actually have a really good mixture of huge beer tents, smaller breweries that offer their beer (a lot of them German actually!) and more food carts than any festival I had ever been to. I guess Chinese don’t believe in the concept of “eatin’ is cheatin’” (shoutout to big daddy Steven O’Neill, you would have loved this place btw!)

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And of course they have multiple stages for performances of all sorts. Among these performances the daily acrobatics show of the Phoenix Fire Dancers. I was lucky enough to see their very last show and it was not only absolutely impressive but also happened to be slightly “tweaked” compared to all the other shows which made it even funnier. To shortly summarize the performance: 120 artists dancing, tossing around flaming wheels, cones and what not, a heart-wrenching duo performance by a girl that flies away with a helium balloon. Add an insane light-show, a pounding soundtrack with 6 live drummers (all from Austria as well interestingly enough!) and lots of beer and you get a really entertaining night! Of course all of these amazing entertainers were already quite the close group after being together more or less 24/7 for 6 weeks but they still accepted me “as one of them” for this short but really awesome weekend!

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The second reunion just happened this past weekend when my Chilean homie Alejandro came to visit me in Beijing. I know Alejandro from my time in the US when he went to St. John ’s University where I was doing my Teaching Assistantship. We kept in touch over the years and since he now lives in Cambodia he took the chance to visit China. Since I work during the week he had to entertain himself on Thursday and Wednesday during the day but on Saturday we took part in one of the countless organized trips that you can find on WeChat. Since Ale really wanted to see the wall we decided to go to Gubei Watertown which is just next to Simatai great wall, a particularly steep and impressive part of the wall. Accompanied by two of my new colleagues, Julian and Katy, we got on the coach bus. Without traffic it takes you roughly two hours to get to Gubei but of course there is always traffic in Beijing so it took us around three.

Gubei itself is very interesting town. If you didn’t know you would probably not be able to tell that this town was only build a few years ago and is a replica of Wuzhen, another town further down south in China. It is stunning and absolutely picturesque but at times feels more like a China-themed amusement park. They have loads of restaurants and little shops that offer anything from traditional instruments to jewellery and clothes. In order to get to Simatai Wall you need to walk, or optionally take a boat ride through the whole town. To get up to Simtai you have two options: hike up or take a 7 minute ride on a cable car. Originally we were going to be sporty and hike but since some us did not bring the correct foot wear and some of us were also slightly hungover we went for the lazy option and took the cable car. Unfortunately larger parts of the wall were not accessible when we were up there so we could only walk between three towers but it made for a breathtaking view nonetheless on a gorgeous day with extremely blue air (air has been really good and regularly below AQI 30 lately!)

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Back down in Gubei there is not much to do besides strolling around in between the historical-looking houses, line up for food and wait for the sun to go down. Because once it gets dark Gubei completely transitions its look and becomes the so-called “town of stars”. There is little lights and lanterns everywhere and the whole town seems to glow. Even the artifical church on top of a hill (which btw was the most awkward I had ever felt in a church with Chinese being on their phones and eating snacks inside) is surrounded by LED deer. With the day being so clear the moon and the stars also decided to make an appearance and offered the perfect setting for a romantic boat ride. No homo.

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Before we had to hop back on the bus and head back we were able to see a “lantern show” which ended up being roughly 100 drones carrying lanterns to the sky and forming different shapes in the sky. I had already seen a similar but even more impressive show in Qingdao but it just gave Gubei an even bigger amusement park feeling.

After sending off Alejandro back to Cambodia on Sunday I am now all by myself again (insert Eric Carmen meme here) and also switched my Couchsurfing profile on “not accepting guests” for now. The reason being that, I was meant to go to Indonesia on Saturday for our Golden Week holidays. Unfortunately authorities denied that by deciding to temporarily put a travel ban on me. But that is another story for the next Blog! All I’m going to tease is: Do you remember me being in an accident a year ago? Well, it has come to haunt me…

Until then, stay fresh and spread the knowledge!

Peace and love,

Your neighborhood bear

Hier geht’s zur deutschen Version des Beitrages

After coming back from Golden Week the daily grind get me back right away. But living in Beijing, that luckily doesn’t necessarily mean being bored. Due to long work days normally there isn’t much time or energy left for doing fun things but that generally makes the weekends more fun and there are definitely enough opportunities to have a good time. Specifically Beijing night life is very diverse and offers activities to anybody’s liking.

First and foremost there is, of course, infamous Sanlitun (pronounce sunleeturr) road has bar next to bar next to bar and there are daily live concerts and other entertainment shows (if you kno what I mean..). Until two years ago there was also even more infamous Dirty Bar street where you could get dirty cheap Mojitos on the street (Yiaaaaau Mojito man) but it was pretty much stomped to the ground and replaced by Sanlitun Village, an open air shopping center. Just a few blocks away is the Gongti. The Worker’s Stadium of Beijing – until the 60s home of public executions but today only a concert venue and home of the local football club, Beijing Guoan. Scattered around the stadium you can find the big night clubs of Beijing: Mix, Vic’s, Circle, Elements, Sirteen (no, it’s not Thirteen, it’s Sirteen) and the newly-opened 1/3 (obviously owned by the same guy) try to match for the most costumers by trying to get the best Djs and organising the most insane parties overall. What is very interesting and also a little bit offputting is the fact that there is basically segregation going on in Chinese clubs. Most business in these night clubs comes from wealthy and influental Chinese that are enjoying the high life. Tables and couches are being booked by them and are stacked with bottles of (allegedly) expensive alcohol, nice-looking snacks etc. If you order 6 bottles of Belvedere Vodka or Dom Pérignon Champagne at Sirteen it is being delivered by Chinese waiters dressed up as Roman soldiers in a freaking palanquin – laser halberds included. Behind these tables barely-dressed Chinese girls are frolicly dancing. Everything is packed and everybod’s wasted. And who profits from this spactacular parties? Of course us white people. Because while the Chinese visitors pay good money for all their perks, foreigners can technically get everything for free. Every club emplys PR’s – public relation managers – whose task it is to bring as many foreigners to the club as they can, which on the other hand attracts more wealthy Chinese customers. A grotesque party symbiosis. And how do we profit? Usually free admission, free (shitty) alcohol all night (although even me, with my iron stomach have to spend all Sunday on the throne if I have more than 3 glasses), being rubbed by 1000 people in one night and even a tinnitus in your ear from the epic soundsystems if you are lucky enough. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea but surely fun once in a while. I was told that most of these clubs don’t live any longer than 4 years on average because new clubs open every year and replace old clubs which are replaced by new clubs and so on. You get the point.

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Beware of the sound on these Vids (RIP Headphone users)!!

For people who don’t enjoy clubbing that much, there is an uprising Chinese microbrewery scene. Nowadays there is more to Chinese beer than Tsing Tao or Harbin. Many microbreweries brew their own beer and it’s quite delicious. Just last week there was an event hosted by 8 Chinese breweries and 8 breweries from the US West coast where each bewery presented their signature carft beer. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend this event since I had already engaged myself to different drinking event hosted by the very popular Great Leap Brewery – which has 3 branches in Beijing. The so-called Carl Long Challenge! For 300 RMB, so roughly 45$, you get to drink 15 pints of 15 different craft beers with an average of 6.7% ABV and even a t shirt on top of that if you make all 15. An absolute bargain and along with to colleagues from work (Hi Ian, Hi James) I tested my drinking skills last Saturday. Starting with IPAs and Stouts to Wheat beers and a Porter you had to consume everything a beer lovers liver needs. Helped by pizza and a little powernap in between (#sleepingjakobcollection) I was able to finish all 15 and am now a proud owner of a Great Leap t-shirt. My personal favorite of the night: Banana Wheat beer!

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Another very fun highlight of the last weeks was the British ball, hosted by the British embassy. A very popular and not inexpensive event. Being a teacher at the British school of Beijing we were lucky enough to get discounted tickets via our school’s ball committee. I even decided to have a tuxedo tailored for the event. I had thought. I ended up with a swallow-tail coat but thanks to amazing genes I even look good as a penguin. With a bomb-shell of a +1 (buziacki Kochanie ;*) it was truly a magical evening – not only due to the fact the theme of the night was Harry Potter. No ball in Austria I have attended could even come close to the attention to detail and the great entertainment of this evening. A few highlights include: an open bar with potion-themed cocktails (Felix Felicis with Rum being my personal favorite), chocolate frogs and snitch-toffee for the little treat in between, a delicious 4-course meal with the only genuinely good steak I’ve had so far in Beijing (medium rare yumyum), a performance by our school’s choir, a silent auction and a survivor’s breakfast at 3am including bacon, eggs and hash browns. Another very important part of the night was of course the socializing with my colleagues, which was truly delightful. And btw, for once I was not the one passed out in the foyer for a little nap! #proudofmyself

PS: Of course I was put into house Huff le Puff

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Now.. who is under the impression that Jakob is only partying and getting smashed, is mostly wrong (somehow I am having a deja-vous to my time in the US)! Of course, during the week there is also a lot of stuff going on. After almost 3 months at my new job I have definitely settled in and am starting to enjoy work. My most ambitious reader – of course my Mom, who else? – asked me for more information and stories about my new school and the daily routine there. Of course I can hardly ignore that request. (I did purposely put you through reading the weekend stories though ;*)

Actually you can’t realy speak of a daily routine at this school. There are just too many different things and events happening every week.

I have already told a few things about my school two blogs ago but just to recap: The British School of Beijing, Shunyiu is an international private school. The celebrated their internationality with an International day in October. At this point I really have to say: Chapeau! To organize an event like that definitely needs a lot of planning and budget. And nonetheless the support of the parent association. So how does an International Day with 900 kids look like? It started off with a opening ceremony for the whole school, kicked off with a Chinese dragon dance show and followed by a parade across the whole school field. Every of the 50(!) present nations was specifically mentioned and was able to wave their flags and smile in the cameras. In the meantime parents had set up the national booths of their respective countries in the foyer and in the gym. Each booth offered authentic national food and games from the respective countries. Every student got an “International Day Passport” and each year group was assigned certain countries and booths that they had to visit to gather information about the countries. . Of course, you can’t really let 900 kids have roam around at the same time so every year group had a designated hour of running around at the international fair. The rest of the day every teacher offered a certain activity for their year group to entertain the kids and have them learn about other cultures and countries (e.g. Irish dancing or a yodeling course). The whole event was accompanied by several dance performances. The German Primary for example proudly presented the Zillertaler Hochzeitsmarsch (you can tell 3 out of 4 teachers are actually Austrian), some Korean girls did a spectacular fan dance or two sisters from Slovakia stunned everybody with their rhythmical gymnastics routine. Overall it was a really cool event that obviously also looks nice to prospective parents and companies.

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Generally the whole school year is supported/interrupted by such events – depending who you ask. Two more such events was the so-called STEAM Week and the Curiosity Challenge that took place back-to-back just a couple of weeks ago. STEAM is an abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths and is strongly supported by a cooperation with the MIT in Boston. Like the name probably told you, it puts an emphasis on sciences in school around the world. In our school that project is implemented for one week in our lessons in form of every teacher of a yeargroup offering an activity for one lesson every day and the classes taking turn and visiting a different teacher every day. For instance, I had the students build rockets out of paper and launch them 150ft in the air with an air pressure launching station that I had borrowed from the science department. Colleagues offered activities such as building paper bridges or STIXplosions with popsticle sticks.

Curiosity Challenge on the other hand was a project where the goal was to spark each students curiosity by letting them choose and research certain questions on a given topic. Our topic was mind and body and students had to find answers to questions and present them at a science fair for their colleagues and parents. The outcome (PowerPoints and posters) were quite alright but if the students actually learn much is a different question.

Such events are certainly very memorable and fun for students and probably are a very good marketing strategy to attract more students but put many teachers in an awkward spot because you lose quite a bit of time for teaching your actual curriculum.

Since reports for the first term are due at the beginning of December, just before our well-deserved Christmas break the next few weeks are for learning and studying and next week I am writing two tests with the little rascals in Math and German. But because all of that isn’t just enough yet, every teacher has to set so called “professional learning goals” with their Leadership team (5 goals minimum) which ultimately should be achieved by every individual by the end of the school year. In the German blog I followed this with a political quote of Viennas mayor about teachers having not a lot of work but this is certainly not true in my case. There’s not a lot of time to catch a break during the week, hence the weekends being used for one or another drink (or 15 craft beers). But you definitely have to take these breaks on the weekend to do something, relax or take a trip because otherwise I am pretty sure, most people would burn out faster than a christmas tree in the easter bonfire.

And that’s how the Chinese circle of life looks like. Or the Fortune Cookie crumbles. Or whatever stupid metaphor you want to use. But the time in the Year of the Cock flies by superfast and I actually can not believe that it is only 5 weeks until the Winter holidays. Until then there is definitely a lot to do still. Next weekend we’re (hopefully) off to Shanghai and in the beginning of December we are being visited for the first time. Not only by one but three freaking people at the same time: Javier and Erika are coming over from Tokyo and by dear brother, who just started his trip around the world, are going to stir things up in the big B! It’s definitely not going to get boring in the middle Kingdom! The next blog will probably follow when our guests are gone again just before Christmas.

Until then, treat yo’self! Kisses on the belly, your friendly neighborhood bear! <3

Die deutsche Ausgabe dieses Beitrages findet ihr hier!

As announced on my last blog, this time is going to be about our trip for so-called Golden Week. Overall there are three national holidays in China: spring festival, also called Chinese New Year in January/February, labor week -which nowadays is only one single labor day on 1^st of May and the week of China’s national day, which practically enough is also at the same time as the Moon Festival. Traditionally, Moon Festival is a family holiday. Many people travel to reunite with their families somewhere in the country and everybody gets together and has a feast and enjoys the time together. People give each other moon cakes, which come with different fillings and actually nobody ever seems to eat. I couldn’t resist and had 5, I believe.

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Especially people in Beijing use this opportunity to catch some fresh air and visit their families. According to an article I stumbled upon on WeChat, more than 700 Mio. (in words that is seven hundred million!!!) trips were booked over Golden Week in China. That is an incredible, yet very possible number because everybody seems to be on the move for the time.

Since Golden Week is Kasias only holiday until the end of the semester we also decided to make a move. Unfortunately she is also only holding a 1-entrance visa and can only go abroad with that once, which is we we were looking for an alternative in China. A lovely colleague of mine recommended me the travelagency FCN, which organzies bus trips from Beijing to many parts of China. In Golden Week they had offered a 7-day roundtrip along the ancient Silk Road all the way to Western China. Since Kasia is also writing her Master’s thesis about the Silk Road we decided to book this trip.

FCN is an abbreviation for Foreigner China Network and our trip leader Sabrina mentioned that it is not a travel agency but more a Social Netowrk. And the whole trip really felt like that. The tour was organised for the first time in that form and Sabrina called it “a mission impossible” and at times it wasn’t perfectly organized. On the other hand the fellow travelers on the trip were a colorful bunch from 18 different countries (AUS, AUT, POL, CH, GER, DEN, USA, CHN, FRA, THA, KOR, PAK, IDN, CRO,JPN, SAU, RUS and UK represent) and everybody was between the age of 18 and 35. This specific mixture of people made it a really cool and enjoyable trip!

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The first leg of the trip was also the longest and most strenuous one. The 19 hours that were estimated online made us consider flying to our first stop called Xining directly but for financial reasons and more importantly because there were no trains or flights actually available anymore, we had to take the bus anyways. Unfotunately, it was not a comfy sleeper but a very ordinary coach bus that felt like it had less leg room than a ryanair flight or a Polskibus (not sure if anybody can actually relate to the latter). What was even more unfortunate was the lack of an on-board toilet. With 50 people and 50% female bladders (I’m teribly sorry ladies, but you do have the smaller ones…) we soon realized that 19 hours are not going to do the trick. After a short introduction game, where everybody had the chance to explain how to say “How are you?” in their own language and the first pee- and snack break most people tried to pass the time on the bus by taking a nap. That was until the lights turned on at 2:00 effing AM. First our Chinese travel guide (roughly 25 years old and a pretty impatient fella): No clue what he said! Then Sabrina, Chinese as well but relatively good English: We are taking a 3-hour break at this gas station! Leaving at 5:00am sharp. Since there were two drivers on our bus, there were quite a few confused looks at first but soon we learned that by law there are no coaches allowed to drive on Chinese roads between 2:00 and 5:00am. Since there were approximately 10 other coaches at the gas station with us we had a spontaneous midnight Instant noodle party with 200 other hungry Chinese people. When the stomach is rumbling, the stomach is rumbling. Chinese are not going to win a medal in cleaning a way trash BTW. Shortly before 5:00 the gas station looked like this:

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After countless games of Uno, a lot of sleep, some shy small talk with our travel buddies, way to many pee breaks (which are an adventure on their own: catchword hole in the ground) and a traffic jam due to an accident we finally arrived 30 hours later in Xining. Checking in at the -admittedly very nice – hotel and straight back to bed. Xining is the capital of Qinghai province and is situated in the Northeast of the Tibetian Plateau.

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Not very far away lied the first attraction of the next day: Qinghai Lake is on of the largest salt lakes on our planet and lies 3200m above sea level (that’s about 9600 feet for my American friends). On our 1.5 hour way to the lake we were already able to see herds of goats and yaks. I made it my personal goal for the day to take a picture with a Yak. Thanks to a lovely highschool colleague of mine, who most likely does not read this blog anyways, I had the awesome nickname “yak with a tampon” in the first few years of high school. I realized English speakers are not going to get this joke but we call a tampon „OB“ in German

So while the majority of our group played tag on the lakeside (Sabrina constantly tried to motivate us by starting “fun” little games), Kasia and I darted off to get some yaks in front of the lens. A mere 5 minutes later I found the first, really mangy looking yak and snapped a few pics. Apparently we were talking so loudly about the smell of the bovine that we attracted the attention of the family who lived in the tent behind it. I was about to take off when Kasia, with her amazing Chinese language skills, figured out that they were inviting us to try some Yak in their hut. Of course we couldn’t decline that offer and followed the mother and her 5 children into the warm and cosy hut. The family seemingly didn’t only live there they also ran a “little” restaurant. Yak intestines, thast everybody was already chewing on, were already sitting on the table and after having a look at the illustrated menu we decided to only have some “tea”. The big portion of Yak meat would have been way too much for me and a little bit too exotic for Kasias taste. Two minutes later there were two cups of a soup-looking liquid. Tea in the Tibetian Plateau apparently means watered down Yak milk (really fatty and nutritious) with an unknown, vanilla-looking spice in it – my verdict: surprisingly delicious! After a little bit of “small talk” in Chinese I was even offered to chew on some intestines. My verdict: unsurprisingly disgusting. It tasted a little bit like the Yak outside smelled. I can imagine that not many white people make it to this corner of China and most certainly not into this specific tent. After our travel buddies Jessi (AUS), Nicolina (DEN) and Emily (USA) entered the flat, the whole family was more than stoked.

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Not only on the second day of the trip Kasia and her blonde, voluminous curls were a popular object of photos. The whole trip we continuously had to stop and take pictures with Chinese tourists. Also my bronze magnificence of a beard was the center of attention from time to time. Our second attraction of the day was the nearby Chaka (or Caka) salt lake and was extremely crowded with tourists. Salt has been mined for over 3000 years at this lake and according to a legend it was Yan Emperor, who along with the yellow Emperor is one of the ancestors of the Chinese nation. With a green snake in his left and a red dragon in his right hand he carried the salt across the land. After a little bit of posing and walking along the windy lake we were off to our next hotel for the night in Delingha City.

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We finished the night with a delicious hot pot dinner. Very popular all over China, hot pots in the middle of nowhere are of course much cheaper than in Beijing. For roughly 7€ one could choose endless ingredients to put in your personal hotpot (spicy or regular, depending on preference – Kasia had to experience that spicy really means spicy in the hard way) and if that wasn’t enough it included free-flowing drinks. Ingredients included pretty much everything: noodles, all sorts of mushrooms, tofu and even seafood and lamb or pork. I almost felt bad after consuming ridiculous amounts of food for barely any money.

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Day “2” (actually for if you count the 1.5 days of travel) was one of the less well organized parts of the trip. According to the schedule onlie we were meant to travel 7 hours to Gansu province to the famous Mingsha Shan Park (which translates to “echoing sands”) in the desert. After a early wake up and a 6:30 breakfast buffet (slightly different to a classic European breakfast buffet) and a small delay it took us 10 hours through the desert and we just made it in time to miss the sunset. This created some disappointment with some travelers and made the tiny coach even more uncomfortable. Of course we had to share this attraction again with thousands of Chinese tourists and went on to explore the Crescent Moon spring. A natural moon-shaped oasis that even lights up in all sorts of different colours at night. Very cool to watch for tourists and even better opportunites to take pictures from the surrounding dunes.

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The second evening we spent at the night market in Dunhuang City. Accompanied by – bitch, you guessed it – thousands of Chinese we devoured some lamb, chicken and donkey on a skewer. The donkey was expectedly tough, yet surprisingly juicy and – like almost everything in China – very well spiced. Kasia had even brought a bottle of Polish hazelnut vodka and in combination with 3L beer trophies we had a fun night out in Dunhuang.

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The sights of the third day were especially interesting from a historical standpoint. The destination were the famous Mogao grottoes. Over a hundred (partially destroyed) temple caves that monks carved into the rock over 1000 years ago. Today one can only visit a few of these caves since they are also world cultural heritage. Especially the 7 store pagoda and the 30m buddha inside the cave were extremely impressive. After the liquid adventures from the night before I was even more excited about the lamb kebabs and the western toilet seats. No comment.

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The second pit stop of the day wasn’t any less interesting: Jiayuguan passage is the western end of the Great Wall and a huge trapeze-shaped fortification. Of course we shared this attraction with a million Chinese tourists, for whom a visit to the Great Wall is something very special. Supposedly one is not a real man if he hasn’t climbed the Great Wall at least once in his lifetime. Many great generals defended this fortification and even today you can still find actors that mime Chinese soldiers and pretend like it is 900 years ago or even a Mongol slayer jr.

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Outside the fortress the market street was a lot of fun. The haggling and bargaining that is going on there is very fun to watch and partake in. There are similar markets at almost all of the tourist attractions along the Silk Road. With very little money you can get delicous Chuan (meat skewers), Jianbing (pancakish, savory flat bread) or cut up yellow melons.

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The next should be one of the highlights of our tour: the magnificent rainbow mountains at Danxia-Zhangye National park. Different geological circumstances created several colorful layers of sediment that now make for a very scenic natural attraction. Thousands of years ago there were still lakes and rivers flowing through these lands. Algae started growing on the rocks and gave them a greenish colour between the red sediment. For somebody who is red-and-green blind this sight is only semi-exciting. To be honest, I was not very impressed. With 100% eye-sight it would have probably been very cool to see. But even then reality doesn’t even get close to the pictures online since the colors are most intense just after it rains and when the sun sets/rises.

One fun anecdote from our visit to the park: There are security guards EVERYWHERE that ensures nobody leaves the tracks and staircases. As soon as somebody even just steps of them to pose for a picture, you hear yelling from all sides, rape whistles blowing and even bullhorns on “police mode”. When our small travel group of the day (around 10 people) stepped onto the street instead of using the sidewalk one security guard came running, rape whistle in his mouth and just to be sure with a rubber club in his hand (!!!). Chinese don’t mess around when it comes to their national parks!

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The last two nights we spend in Ejina, in inner Mongolia (so basically at the Chinese-Mongolian border) at the foothills of the second-largest desert in the world: the Gobi desert. Apparently there was no more budget for hotel rooms here in Ejina so we ended up staying in a building that looked like barracks on field beds where usually groups of children have a rest. For dinner we found a Mongolian Yurt restaurant about 50m down the road. There’s space for roughly 20 people in one of these Yurt tents. You gather round one big circular table and thanks to a lazy susan it is very easy to share all the dishes that are being ordered. Among other things we ordered camel and mutton, morels with egg, graded potatoes and tofu in black sauce. The camel was surprisingly good as well. Of course very fatty but quite tender. Something that you can’t really do in the West as either: buy drinks at the market (which belongs to the same family to be fair) and then bring them to the restaurant to save a good 1.5€ on each drink. Maybe we should try this system back home as well.

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On the last day of being a tourist we had two more parks on our schedule. The first one was the humongous 30.000 hectare Populus euphratica park. A very popular destination for tourists, especially because of the huge natural colony of euphratica poplars that covers most parts of the park. There is a shuttle bus taking you to 8 different stations to explore this bus. Of course there are plenty of opportunities to have snacks or buy souvenirs at any of these bus stations.

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When we found some traditional Mongolian clothing for rent we just had to take the opportunity to have a photo shooting:

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If you get to the last out of the 8 stops, you find yourself in the “desert kingdom” in the middle of the desert. We used this awesome opportunity for a joyride through the desert on some ATVs. A lot of fun and well worth the money for 20 bucks.

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The second destination of theday was the black city of Heicheng. It was built in the 11^th century and at the time was one of the most important trade cities along the Silk road until it was destroyed by the Mongols in the 14^th century. All that is left are ruins in the desert and a few turret towers. The same park also includes a “weirwood forest”. A graveyard for tons of euhpratice popels, that have died over a 1000 years ago and have a very ghastly shape nowadays. During a normal week it might have been quite scary to walk through the park at dawn but unfortunately we had to make our way through the crowds of people. Or they made their way with us. Anyways…

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Before we made our way back to Beijing in “only” 22h, we paid 10€ entrance fee to see a sunrise at a lake. Not exactly something, that I would do in Austria.

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The way back was not as troublesome and passed much faster than the way there. Well.. almost without trouble if you ignore the fact that I was never so close to literally shitting my pants (besides a little accident as a caroler when I was like 7 years old) and having to stop the whole bus so I could have an emergency break. There’s more pleasant things. The whole travel party had gotten very close over the past 6 days and I believe it is fair to say that some bridges and friendships were built and we have already met up several times in Beijing over the last couple of weeks. So we tried to make the time fly be with several games of “Heads Up”, an open Mic contest – hosted by our own MC from Indonesia, MC Willis – and several stories and anecdotes from previous travels and other adventures.

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The whole trip probably wasn’t the most relaxing one – the times we had to get up early and were sightseeing all day were too many. Over 90 hours and 6000 miles on the road. Still – no regrets whatsoever. It was amazing to explore this part of China. The contrast between a mega city like Beijing and the more rural areas is incredible and I am already looking forward to the next adventure!

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One more little extra special: The prejudice that Chinese tourists take pictures of everything and everybody is not only true for Europe. Even in China tourists like posing and taking pictures of and with everything and everywhere. Especially red seems to be a very popular color. But look for yourself:

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And last but not least: the comment section! 😀 My dear, former colleague Iris was asking last time how expensive life in China is in general. This question is actually not that easy to answer. I guess it very much depends on where and how you live. Beijing is obviously the most expensive area to live in but even within city borders the prices for flats fluctuate a lot. Of course the more central you live, the more expensive it gets. Outside the 5^th ringroad you probably pay less than 700€ for a 2-bed room flat, in the center it can be up to 2000€. This is of course “western style” flats, for Chinese citizens the prices might be very different. However other amenities like public transport, taxis, phone contracts are generally much cheaper than in Europe. For my 8GB and 1000 free credits I pay around 7€ a month. You can get a 20-minute cab ride for around 4€ and a ride on the metro through the whole city is around 80 cents. With groceries and produce it depends a lot on personal preference. Obviously, the more western products you buy, the more expensive it gets. Milk for example is generally not one of the staple foods, since most Chinese are lactose intolerant and therefore a litre is around 2€. On the other hand, products like mushrooms are ridiculously cheap for 30 cents / 500g. The same goes for ordering out or going to the restaurant. The choice ranges from 50 cent for delicious noodle soup up to 10€ for Italian pasta.

In general I would say, that one can easily live a very cheap life in China, assuming that one is willing to change their lifestyle according to Chinese stanards. I hope that anwers your question, dear Iris!

Soooo, this one has been a long one! Cheers if you are still with me! The next one is going to be shorter again. I hope all the VPNs and the internet are still going to work because last week the national congress of the communist party startet and pretty much screws with everybody’s life here in Beijing! But it looks like everything should be fine!

So far, all the best, kisses on the belly, your friendly neighborhood bear! <3

Zur deutschen Version dieses Blogs geht es hier!

!Pictures will follow as soon as the WiFi let’s me upload them!

It’s been 6 weeks now since I have set foot onto Chinese soil. In the meantime a lot of water has come down the Jangtsekiang and even more smog particles have found their way into my lungs. But dear friend, this is it: The first China-Blog is here! But let’s start at the beginning…

The big adventure has begun on August 13^th with a direct flight from Warsaw to Beijing. Already at the airport I had my first minor culture shock since obiously 95% of the people on my flight were Chinese. You could already barely hear a spoken word of Polish, not even to mention English. Announcements already in Chinese and the queue to the check-in rather resembled a mosh-pit. A good 8.5h later (in which I thankfully spent 6 hours in snoozeland) I arrived at the airport in Beijing. Monday, 7am local time. My first meeting should be two hours later and a battle against time had begun. One hour at border control, picking up my 3 huge pieces of luggage and a search mission for the previously organised driver. Just with the help of my human resources manager I was able to find the driver since he had expected to pick up two people and wasn’t able to identify me as his passenger. Now add some „taking the wrong way twice“ and perfect was the late arrival. After finally arriving and my future workplace, the British School of Beijing in Shunyi, the speech of our principal had already started and nobody had a clue where „Mr. Illek“ got lost. By just stowing all my luggage at the reception and straight going from the airport to work, I had already earned some respect by my colleagues. Most of them said they would have definitely gone home and at least taken a shower and a nap. Due to my Jetlag and a severe case of sleep deprivation that actually wouldn’t have been the worst of ideas.

After a day filled with meetings, getting to know my colleagues at the German Primary School – which is the subdivision I am officially working for – and approximately 4 cups of disgusting, chinese coffee I was finally able to move into my new home at around 4pm. My new flat had been organised by the school and it is situated in the popular Chaoyang district just next to the huge park it shares a name with. I was picked up by my housing agent Rita who had a driver take my to the new appartment in which two more housing agents had already been weaiting with a care package and a really nice, modern looking flat. HBO was already running on the TV and the beer was chilling in the fridge. Reall couldn’t complain at that point. The apartment itself is part of the so called East Wind Garden living compound, about 40 minutes by car (depending on traffic) away from the school. Apparently this compound is mostly inhabitated by elderly mid-class Chinese and a colorful mix of internationals. Some of you might ask why I would want to live so far away from my workplace. Well the reason has five letters and is from Poland 😉 For Kasia it would have been 2.5h every day to commute from her University to Shunyi and so the school offered to live in a more central location. How Jamie Lannister would put it: „The things you do for love..“

Even on the first two days the way to work was an adventure. I had the plan to drive to the second BSB campus, where the schoolbus would have picked me up. The British School of Beijing has a second campus in Sanlitun (very central and approximately 15min by car from our place) and a company bus leaves from there every morning at 7:20 that takes me to school in half an hour. Well… easier planned than done. After being declined by the first cab driver on Tuesday morning with a little wave of his hand, I got ripped off by one of the unofficial “black cab” drtivers. After being in a little rush I naively accepted his proposal of 5 fingers (which admittedly is way too cheap), believing he wanted 5 Yuan (or ‚Kuai‘ like they say colloquially) and got in his car. Of course he wanted 50 Kuai instead (which is the equivalent of roughly 7€ so still very cheap for a 20min cab ride). Hey, at least it got me to the bus on time. They next day I didn’t feel like getting ripped off and left early to flag down a taxi drom the street, like it is customary in China. Unfortunately nobody had told me at this point, that most Chinese Taxi drivers do whatever the hell they want. If your destination is too far away or there is simply too much traffic on your route, they just kick your sorry as back out of the Taxi and you have to look for a new one. Being the lucky dude I am, it happened to me 8 times in a row and I successfully missed the bus on my second day at work. Consequently I had to look for a Taxi to get me straight to school, which wasn’t any easier because most drivers do not want to leave the city center. With a little delay of 20min I eventually made it to work. Of course the Photographer was at school that day but I look best completely sweaty and with huge dark circles around my eyes anyway…

The next logical step for me was to find an alternative for my way to school. Ros, an English teacher who sits on the bus with me, thankfully recommended me a Bike shop close to our bus stop downtown and so I spontaneously purchased a stylish, red Giant bike to take me through the streets of Beijing. The bike bell was a complimentary gift and a bike bell is a definite must-have in the street traffic of Beijing. As a Graz-native and a street chameleon (that means being on two wheels and – depending on the situation – a cyclist, a pedestrian or a car driver, © by Christoph Suppan) I would like to claim I am usually doing quite fine and can quickly get from A to B on a bike, even in heavy traffic. But traffic in Beijing is at least 3 levels higher. The city center (from East to West that’s about 40km) is split by 4 so-called ring roads. These ring roads are huge motorways with 8 lanes, most of which have sidestreets with 3 more lanes and one side-side street for two-wheeled traffic which you usually have to share with turning cars. I am saying two-wheeled on purpose because besides normal bikes you can find electric Scooters, Mopeds, Tuk-Tuks, rickshaws and several other compact vehicles that you have to share the road with. To put it short, traffic is absolutely insane. Traffic laws and rules might exist but are anything but followed. Car drivers usually follow the rule “who honks the loudest, gets to go first”. The two-wheeled vehicles cross even the largest roads as soon as they find an opportunity. The lights being red or green doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Already the first ride home from the bike shop was crazy. Finding your way through and passing all the other people in traffic and waiting on three red lights because there are so many people can actually be fun. By now I would say that I have been able to optimize my style of driving and am quite fast. Only stopping at red lights at the biggest streets and for emergencies. On of these emergencies happened 3 weeks ago.

On my way home there might have happened a tiny crash with an elderly Chinese man who was also going on his bike. If I cut the guy or he swerved into me not even the surveillance cameras were able to tell. I just dropped my satchel off my luggage rack, the gentleman unfortunately fell. Of course I stopped, like any decent human being would and called the ambulance with the help of a few pedestrians. His nose was bleeding and he was holding his arm. After the ambulance arrived after what seemed like half an hour, dependants of the gentleman had already arrived at the scene and asked me to wait for police to make a statement. Of course I didn’t expect the police to take 2 freaking hours to arrive at the scene. Because of language barriers and one hysterical wife I had to come with them to the police station (at least I had help from my lovely girlfriend and my HR manager Jenny as a translator). The police station was only 30min by car away and afterwards we even had to go to the hospital to check up on the gentleman and to find out what had happened to him. A Chinese public hospital is its own adventure and funnily enough Kasia had been to this exact hospital as a patient before. The reason for this is that apparently it happens quite frequently that unknowing foreigners get exploited and have to pay shittons of money because Chinese citizens fake injuries and get all sorts of medical examinations done to have the foreigners pay for it. Horror videos of accidents and people lying on the streets for hours without anybody stopping are not surprising because simply nobody wants to take the blame. Our gentleman had just sprained his arm and hopefully the bills shouldn’t be too high.

In the second week the school year 2017/2018 finally started at the German Primary School at the British School of Beijing, Shunyi. The whole school has more than 900 students, starting with the 2-year old Teddies all the way up to the 18-year old IB sstudents. The school is perfectly equipped as every classroom has an interactive Smartboard, several Computers for the students and every teacher gets their own iPad. There is a thearer, an amphitheater, a 6-lane swimming pool, a huge sports field, an indoor dome for the winter and two playgrounds for the breaks. In my German Klasse 4 (that’s the equivalent of Year 5 in the UK) I have 9 very lovely kids and the smallest class in the school (#coolface). The workday starts at 8am and the kids start getting to school at 8.15 (most of them on time as they get to school by school buses that pick them up from their compounds). The first lesson starts at 8:40 and primary school teachers eat with their class and are also teaching in the afternoon until the school day finishes at 3.30pm. For the students as well as for the teachers (or at least me as an Austrian teacher who is used to being home at 1pm) it isn’t always easy to have such a long school day. The level of concentration, particularly in the afternoon, is sometimes very low. Some good ol‘ games like Bear hunt, Ninja or other re-activating tasks have to help to motivate the kids. Additionally my classes time table this year is sh****, that most Math and German periods are in the afternoon which clearly doesn’t make it easier.

Even outside of the academic life there is a lot going on at our school. The parents association is very active and organizes many different events for the whole “BSB family”. This isn’t so surprising when you think about the fact that many parents (and specifically moms) are, very frankly put, just “expat add-ons” who come to Beijing with their spouses and sometimes don’t even know what to do with all their free time. Many spend their time at the “Chatterbox”, the school’s café which is also organized and run by the parents association. Moms can come here after school, chat and socialize with each other. In order to keep the parents entertained on the weekends and so that they know what exactly is going on in school during the week, every class has their own class blog. It is written by the class teacher and shows what has been worked on in different subjects and is supported by preferably very demonstrative pictures of life in the classroom, which the teachers take with their iPads during the week. Malicious tongues claim that this blog is kind of unnecessary work since most parents don’t even read it anyways. But a teacher does, what a teacher must do. That’s generally a motto that I have been living after. The work day significantly longer than the one of a primary school teacher in Austria. The kids are in school until 3.30pm but by contract we are still obliged to stay until 4.30 and my first bus back to downtown goes at 5.10. I’m not really every able to catch that bus though because I have too much stuff to correct, plan, meetings, answer e-mails, write reports and prepare for parents meetings etc. etc. At least everything seems worth it wheen you get a small letter on your desk at the end of the month. Somehow it has to pay off, right?

Paying something off is a good transition. China is very advanced when it comes to paying any sorts of bills. Almost everything can be paid by scanning a QR code on the app WeChat. WeChat is the Chinese version of WhatsApp and the center of post-communist, Chinese society. Of course Uncle Sam, or actually Uncle Mao is loving this since only last week it was confirmed that the Chinese government is officially allowed to use ALL private data on WeChat. As a foreigner you are kind of a glass person in China anyway but it is still a disturbing thought. It is definitely practical to use WeChat, as long as you have a Chinese bank account. I had to wait for about a month to set mine up because Chinese mills grind slowly and it takes a while to sort out all the documents. Thank God BSB has a human resources team for these matters that take care of visa, medicinal checks, accounts and so on. Being on your own you would probably be screwed hard and could return back home like a crying baby.

It might sound weird but I feel like I have only started proper life in China last week when I had my account set up and when I finally had money on my account and was able to start using all functions of WeChat. And witch that I mean everything. With only one touch on your smartphone you can pay your electricity and water bills, at the shop, in the restaurant, in taxis, rickshaws and even the public bikes that you can find literally everywhere and of which there must exist at least 10 Million in Beijing. Katie Melua wasn’t lying after all. In some institutions, such as KFC, cash isn’t even accepted anymore or they give you really nasty looks if you try to pay with dirty money. Of course you begin to forget that the government can follow every transaction and knows exactly how many cold milk teas I buy a week (it’s way to many but they are just too delicious..) Even most of the social life takes place on WeChat. You can fnd groups for everything: garage sales, job offers, organised walks, hikes and visits to the club, teachers have their own chat and teachers that live downtown have their own chat. It’s really amazing but also a little bit scary how powerful one mobile application can become.

In the meantime we have settled in well in Beijing. We in this case meaning Kasia and I. Kasia arrived in Beijing 2 weeks after me and is going to do an intensive Chinese language course at Beijing Institute of Technology over the following year. Our apartment is very cozy and homy after three adventurous visits to Ikea (yes, even the Swedes have made it to China). Adventurous because especially on weekends many Chinese families do trips to the arguably most famous furniture stores in the world to lie in the comfy beds, try out the couches in the show-rroms and simply just feel like a European for once. It’s very fun to observe but can get very tedious and exhausting when you have to squeeze through huge crowds for 5 hours and wait in line for half an our at the cashier.

If you want to afford it, you can definitely live a Western lifestyle. There is everything that one could wish for and even more. Our Chinese adventure has definitely been a success so far. It is stressful and there hasn’t been a lot of time for sightseeing yet. One trip to the Great Wall which has been organised by the school but was definitely worth it and a little walk around Olympic Park with Kasia and her sister Ola, who has been visiting us for the first three weeks in China. Nevertheless it has been a lot of fun and I think it ’s best to just let the pictures speak.

We’ve finished 6 weeks of school now and have reached the first half of our first term. It is definitely time for vacation. And that’s exactly what started yesterday. Every year at the end of September/beginning of October the moon festival or mid-autumn festival is celebrated in China. The school also closes down for one week and the whole country travels somehwere. Kasia and I have decided to go on a bus tour to western China for the next week. I’ll tell you more about our adventures on the Silk road next time.

Stayed tuned and kisses on the tum-tum!

Peace out, your friendly neihborhood bear <3