My First Few Days in China

Having travelled before my nerves about visiting a new country weren’t that high and what could be considered ignorant expectations towards the language barriers were conversely through the roof. I was ill prepared for a month in a very foreign country but my excitement seemed to mask all of those issues.

I found my fellow interns and guide, Gogo, at the Airport and off we set to settle into our accommodation and home for the next month. The roads are packed and road rules are optional but this all added to the fun of landing in my new city. We arrived at our apartment complex in the 798 district which, like the rest of what I’d seen of Beijing so far is monochromatic in colour but vibrant in life and culture. After dropping my stuff off in my apartment – a three bedroom apartment looking out onto the main street of 798, I ventured out to get some lunch at a near by mall. Local life, while less traditional than in other areas I’d seen on my drive into the city, was in full swing. I sat at the bar like counter of a noodle/soup food joint and tried to navigate my way around the menu completely in Chinese. With no luck, the waitress gave me an english menu (still in mandarin but with more photos) where I pointed at what I wanted. Lunch was certainly no disappointment – though maybe for the waitress, as she seemed very unimpressed with what I’d ordered and how I ate it (mushroom broth, a single serving of dumplings, and some vegetables all to be put in the hotpot in front of me, simmering away until it over flowed onto the counter). This brief but petrifying encounter cemented my first experiences of Beijing; a wonderful city, firm in their ways of language, culture, and etiquette, with a distinct difference of social personalities from many other countries I’ve visited.

The next few days were as exciting and daunting as the first. Friday was our introductory day with a few outliners about the internship, a brief mandarin lesson, lunch, and then a trial bus run to the areas where we’d be working. Everything is definitely made easier by having a group of interns and I was lucky enough to be with a great bunch of people who were all equally hilarious, down to earth and supportive. That evening we all went out with some of the interns who’d been in Beijing a few months already. Beijing nightlife is like no other. The clubs are loud, smokey, fast, and definitely furious.

Jump forward a few days, and skip over a few details of an Embassy ‘Shiny’ Party I attended on my first weekend as part of my internship with the Embassy of Malta, the wonderful experience of wondering around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden city, crunching down on some scorpion as a means to get the taste of donkey dumplings out of my mouth, and you have me sitting in front of my laptop suffering from a sadness that only comes with travelling. In just seven days I’ve met some truly amazing people, and explored tiny little pockets of Beijing – petting a Lama in the Christmas decorated scenes of the International district was definitely not what I was expecting when I applied – and it seems like I’ve been here for years. Everything is going too quickly, and as much as I want to take everything in so I will remember it always I’m in a mad frenzy over wanting to do everything right now! The sights of Beijing seem to be half in technicolour of the dazzling blue sky I’m looking over now, and the dreary fog ridden days of the last week but in all honesty the ups and downs of the skies, sounds, and smells, give my experience a constant change of physicality that is really thrilling.

 

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