Well it was with great joy that I met up with Graham at Hong Kong airport. Getting on the plane you could feel that you were getting deeper into a mono-culture that was totally Chinese. I think there were four ‘foreigners’ on the plane. On arrival in Fuzhou we were met by Smile, one of volunteers at the University, that we had both met before. He matches his name very well, with a big smile all the time and has been incredibly helpful.

Our apartment

Our apartment is a nice size with a bedroom, study, lounge, bathroom and kitchen. I have to admit it was initially a shock as although clean, it needed a fresh coat of paint. However, two days later, I’m now used to it. On our bedroom wall are newspaper cutouts of exercises to ‘Banish that belly’ and ‘Stretch yourself young’. I haven’t pulled them down as both these things are very much needed – you never know! Miracles can happen.

Day 1 Sorting out sim cards etc for our phones. I would have been having panic attacks by now if Graham wasn’t with me to sort out these things, especially the computers with there being no google in China. I had ONLY used google before.

Fuzhou Hot Pot Restaurant(Haidilao restaurant)

Chef making noodles

Dinner. In the evening Jim (my past mandarin teacher in Durban who has returned to the University) took Smile and us to a beautiful restaurant in the city, a hot pot restaurant. Jim was an inspirational mandarin teacher and an important part of my ‘Chinese journey’. Back to the hot pot. A pot is recessed into the table which contains a sort of clear flavored soup. The meat and vegetables are added to the pot and you use your chopsticks to take out whatever you want when it’s ready. This was a very special treat at a very fancy restaurant. There were tanks of live prawns and squid to choose from for your meal and we also had a demonstration of a dancing chef stretching dough out into noodles. It looked more like the ribbon dancing we saw during the Olympics.

And then on to the supermarket at the RT Mart Supermarket. It was a bit like the Pavilion’s Hypermarket but much bigger and a few stories high – a floor for each section. The first sight on entering the food floor was the fish, masses and masses of fish. Beautiful fresh fish not like the smelly and not so fresh section at the Hypermarket. When I say fresh, I mean very fresh, wiggling fresh, still being oxygenated! There were large troughs of crabs and on closer inspection these, too, were also alive, awaiting their death and ‘burial’ in someone’s stomach. Sorry – getting a bit carried away here!

We just bought some basic necessities for starters: two plates, eggs and bread for breakfast.

Day 2 Come breakfast, I discovered that the gas cooker was without a gas bottle – oh dear! We’re used to load shedding in South Africa, so was this gas-shedding? A quick solution was needed as hunger was rapidly approaching. We boiled eggs in the kettle- it worked. I since learned that the gas hob can’t be used as gas had been made illegal in the apartments because of safety precautions. I think I was too tired to notice the one plate electric cooker because all the instructions were in Chinese (as are the directions on the washing machine).

Graham spent the morning sorting out the computers and then… we did as only mad dogs and Englishmen do… we went out into the midday sun. Fuzhou, the city where we are, is known as the hot pot of China. Remember the boiling soup at the restaurant? Yes it is hot and I was told that Fuzhou is the hottest city in China. The temperature was 28 degrees C but the humidity factor was extremely high and I never go out here without my sun umbrella. I was worried I would faint. From Taiwan I already have a ‘sandal tan’.

The FAFU (Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University).

I have been told that this University is the 3rd top university in the Province of Fujian, so it is a highly sought after university. All 40,000 students live on campus. The campus is beautiful as the principal is a landscape artist and has landscaped the campus. There are four lakes in the middle of the campus with beautiful wooden walkways and pavilions to sit in and enjoy the surrounds. The lotus plants are nearly finished flowering and the seed pods remind me of Zuma’s shower head. At the moment President Zuma is in China meeting with President Xi Jinping.

As we were sitting in one of pavilions near our apartment I was reminded of the extreme contrasts in  a fast-developing China. When the university was build it retained some old apartments on the outskirts of the campus. The University actually displaced three villages (40 hectares)  These had been occupied by families for a long time. The last time I was here, I walked through the outskirts and noticed how poor and unkempt it was. So while we were enjoying eating our moon cakes, soaking in the beautiful surrounds an older man, wearing a traditional Chinese hat walked past and after having a good look at us, came and sat in the Pavilion. He took out his lunch and threw the plastic on the ground. I felt quite outraged at him littering this beautiful place. Next thing I heard deep rumblings from his throat and out he spat a very large blob of trailing phlegm. Looking the other way our eyes fell upon lots of eager young well-dressed students pushing their fancy Cellini type cases to their apartments. Quite a contrast. It was time to move on….

Tea tasting Later in the day Jim took Smile and us to visit and have a tea-tasting with his friend who has his own tea company. Tea production is a much more complicated process than we in the West realize. This friend sublets a factory and sells very high quality tea from his home. He has a Phd in tea production from FAFU university. He was very hospitable and very welcoming to us.

 

 

Dinner at a noodle restaurant

 

 

and then a walk along the side of the MinJiang River.

Dancing along the MinJiang river

What an amazing introduction to China!