Getting used to living in China takes many days and many events:
- Survived the Chinese New Year handing out many red envelopes and eating out with the families. Sammy has received almost ¥2,000 (~$330) from families and friends, so she’s happy and she’s keeping all her money herself. This is not family money!
- Survived the extreme cold weather. We have been told that the weather this year has been extremely weird. Normally, it would be cold around the Chinese New Year and then soon after that, the weather would turn warm and nice, especially around March. Well, CNY this year had been quite warm (in the 70’s) and very pleasant. However, soon after that, several cold fronts moved in and the weather had been very cold. The last few days have gotten a little warmer but not too much sun still. This has been extremely difficult for us to get used to, especially moving from Chiang Mai. How I miss the sunshine there!
- Getting Sammy to a new school. Right after the CNY, Sammy started school in Zhuhai International School (ZIS). It’s in Zhuhai, a town next to Zhongshan, on an island. The school building was a former hotel. Sammy takes the school bus every day and it’s about 40 minutes from where we live. So far, she seems quite happy there. Her class only has about 8 students including her. At first, we were worried about the quality of the education as it seemed very similar to the Chiang Mai school, but we met with her teacher a few weeks ago and she seemed to have a handle on things so we’ll see how things go later.
- Falling sick and getting better. Shortly after the CNY, Sammy got a fever, and it reached almost 104F at one point. The temperature subsided after a few days but the cough continued for a few more days. A couple days after Sammy fell sick, Gary got the flu too, and his was much worse and it lasted about 2 weeks! He just felt better about a week ago. Luckily, so far I seem to have escaped the flu myself so I am keeping my fingers crossed.
- Surviving a car accident! Yes, another one. We hadn’t had a car accident in the U.S. for many years, and two so far in less than 6 months, one in Thailand and one in China. The new car we bought had barely gotten 200km and we were on our way to get the license plate put on (last Friday, March 14) when we were hit by another car from the right hand side when we were trying to exit the highway. Both car doors on the right side were dented. Even though the driver who hit us were speeding, it was 100% our fault (and responsibility in terms of insurance payment) because we were making an unsafe turn. Gary was not happy about that, but we were thankful that no body was hurt. Again, Sammy was not in the car with us so that was good too, We are waiting for the replacement doors to come in before dropping the car off for repair. Apparently in China, we’ll have to pay for the repairs ourselves first and then get the money from the insurance company. They will deposit the reimbursement into our account directly. We’ll see how well that works. Needless to say, Gary says that he’ll remind himself to drive slowly in China, and I don’t want to drive myself at this point. We’ll have to get a lot more used to the roads and the somewhat manic drivers. In the U.S., student drivers are the worst and one has to look out for them. Here in China, they seem to be the safest drivers and one has to look out for all the other drivers.
- Surviving the air pollution. Compared to most of China, Zhongshan’s Air Quality Index (AQI) is pretty good. Since we’ve been here about 7 weeks ago, most of the days have ratings of “excellent” or “good”, and maybe a couple days were mildly polluted. However, we have found that our car gets dirty and dusty very quickly even when parked underground, so there must be something there still. On the whole, I have been feeling okay and Gary says that sometimes his chest feels a little heavy. I am glad that we are not in Beijing nor Shanghai with their crazy AQI numbers, but we think that we’ll need to get better air filters still. There are just too many cars on the road and too many factories producing things.
- Getting used to slow and inconsistent internet services. We are supposed to be getting 4-6Mb/sec speed but a lot of time things just load very slowly. In order to get to some sites, I have to use a VPN sometimes even though those sites have no political contents. WordPress is a hit or miss and I am never sure when it will work. Just a few days ago, our internet service went down and it took the ISP 3 days to fix the issues in our area. I should give myself a pat for continuing with this blog 🙂
- Buying things on Taobao, the Chinese version of Amazon. You can pretty much find anything there, except for Western OTC medicines. The deliveries have been pretty quick as well. Needless to say, I have become a poster child for them as I have been getting deliveries almost every day for over a week now, sometimes 5-6 boxes a day. I even bought the usage of my own farm land for a year! In theory, we will be getting our customized vegetables and fresh eggs delivered to us every 2 weeks for a year. The first delivery is supposed to start next month, so we’ll see how well that works. However, I bought this on sale so I paid less than ¥600 (~$90) for this, so I figure I can’t go too wrong.
- Finding a tennis coach for Sammy. Zhongshan is a “small” city (by Chinese standards) and finding a good tennis coach is not an easy thing. Tennis is an elite sport in China and it has become more and more popular in the last two years. A lot of wealthy parents pay for lessons and it’s not cheap. We were told that if we wanted to find a professional coach who would be teaching for a pro track would be pretty difficult as most people here were doing it for recreational purposes. Through friends, we’ve gotten in touch with a company who hires foreign coaches and teaches in our development too. We met with the head coach on last Sunday, a Chinese-American coach with pro experience and has been taking kids to pro tournaments. We don’t know whether Sammy can turn pro or not, but she seems to have some promise according to her USA coach so we should at least let her try. The coach really liked Sam and we are starting the first lesson this Thursday.
- Surviving the Chinese hospitals and visiting a Hong Kong one. Gary has been having long lasting headaches and so far he had been through all three main hospitals in Zhongshan and he has not been impressed by any of them. Some of them have better equipment than others, but the technicians did not seem that well trained. Today, we went to a private hospital in Hong Kong to do a more complete check up. Gary felt much more comfortable there and everything seemed normal. Longer term, we think that quality healthcare is definitely going to be our big concern. Going to HK for emergencies is going to be difficult.
While there are still many things that we need to get used to and discover about China, despite a lot of these problems, we like the fact that Sammy is developing a stronger relationship with her grandparents and her Chinese is improving. We also like the entrepreneurial energy here, and the diverse backgrounds of people (local and foreign). Everyone seems to have different stories to tell and it is fascinating to learn about them. I (and Sammy too) also like the ability to explore my hometown specialities on the rare occasions that Gary is not out with me. Most of all, I like spending more quality time together as a family. Even if we can’t achieve much else, this has not been time wasted.
A Journey of Many Thousand Miles 