Getting around

I live in the Shunyi District- out by the airport.

It is akin, in Chicago terms, to living in one of the burbs out by O'Hare.....like Irving Park, Bensonville or somewhere out there. You can take the blue line or the metra into the city, but it takes some time. The easiest and most convenient way to get into the city from near the airport is to drive.

The same is true from my place. I can get to the EuroMart (which is this pretty Western shopping mall type place- have lots of stuff you need, pretty convenient)  in about a 20-30 minute walk, or a 10 minute bike ride, (I finally got a bike!), and I can get to school in about 10-15 minute bike ride. I can walk to some local shops and restaurants......but if I want to go anywhere really fun and exciting, I have to get a taxi. I can take the buses or the subway, but I haven't been brave enough to try out the subway yet. I'll let you know when I tackle that adventure.

                                           Cabs/Drivers

So here, it is pretty easy to hire a driver or hail a cab....most of the time. Though, a lot of the cabs in the city don't really want to drive you out here to Shunyi, especially late at night, because they don't think they'll find a fare back to the city. Just like cabs in Chicago.....most city cabs won't take you out to the burbs. If you hire a driver (and there are some the school has used that speak some English and give you a fair deal) you are guaranteed to get there and then be picked up at a time you designate, but of course, it costs a bit more.

It can be hard, though, to tell the driver where you want to go. Since most of the cab drivers don't speak English at all, you are never really sure if they've understood where you've tried to tell them to go.....so each cab ride into/out of the city so far has been slightly nerve wrecking. I don't really know the roads yet, so I can't exactly tell, visually, if we're going the right way.....and I can't really tell aurally if the driver has understood. There is really no word for "yes" in Chinese, and their mannerisms and such are so different than ours, I can barely tell if there has been any comprehension. But they didn't visibly say "No" or kick me out of the cab.....so I assume we're good to go. So far, it's been ok, and I haven't been horribly lost or taken far afield.

                                                  The Taxi Book

We got a taxi book when getting here, with addresses and phone numbers for a bunch of shops, hospitals, schools, night life locations, ect....that we may want to visit, and it has the address in English and in Chinese characters, so you just whip this puppy out and show it to the driver as you hail the cap. This is great!

Except....of course, the places in town I've wanted to go (aside from IKEA)....are not in this book.

                        When where you want to go isn't listed in the Taxi Book

So I've taken to google mapping them, and taking a picture of the directions screen, because it shows the name of the place in Chinese. Sometimes, this is a really easy fix.

                     

Sometimes, as was the case this morning, as I tried to figure out where Ultimate was......it is tricky....because when I google mapped the location....google maps pulled up like 8 possible locations, all over the city- and it took me a good 30-40 minutes of different googling and problem solving to figure out which location was the right one......but I finally did it! (Dear Ultimate Beijing....you should update your website with current information....just saying).

I've got the pictures of the Chinese names and/or maps of all of the places I want to go today lined up on my phone. I also asked the people on my dance team to send me the address to the place we're practicing in Chinese, so that's cued up in my email.

The only other problem now, will be getting home. Because, even though I have the address of my compound written down in Chinese, as well as 2 sentences in Chinese about which airport express way to take to get close....a number of people (even the local ones in Shunyi) don't really know where I live.

                         Short anecdote about how no one knows where I live

Like, the first few days I was here, after quite the adventure getting to and from IKEA, I was starving, and could not handle any more interactions with people I couldn't understand/who couldn't understand me. I was done...I needed to curl up in a ball and cuddle puppies or something. But I was starving. Upon moving in, we had been given some take out menus. The first one on the pile was "Annie's". It was very Western, and served pizza, pasta, salads, etc. They spoke English! Perfect. I called (from my landline, because I still don't have a cell phone here) and ordered,and was getting really excited to get my food....and then I tried to tell them where I lived. We cycled through 3 different people on the phone, and I tried the name of my complex, the name of the HUGE Air China building across the street, the bank and supermarket downstairs, the fact that it was close to another complex....nothing. Then they said I should go talk to my building guard and call them back. So, with nothing but the severe desire for comfort food giving me energy, I walked downstairs to find my guard. Who speaks exactly 0 English. I somehow managed to get him to let me use his phone to call Annie's back.....hoping that they'd answer and I could tell them, "hey, here's my guard, he can tell you where I live", and, of course, as luck would have it....the phone just rang and rang and no one answered. The guard wouldn't let me call back. And then he and his friend just seemed to laugh at me. Tired, starving, and even more dejected than before, I went back upstairs to my place, plopped on my couch, and attempted to recollect myself, to, from somewhere deep within, find enough mental energy to figure out a new plan for dinner, and enough social courage to brave the "no one understands what I want and I do know how to communicate anymore" feeling. I'll tell you the IKEA story later. I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but being totally unable to communicate can be extremely emotionally exhausting and frustrating, and at this point in the day, I didn't have anything left.

Anyway, as I tried to think aobut braving the market and trying to figure out how to buy something I didn't really need to cook, but seemed edible.....I couldn't figure that out....and I just ended up falling asleep on my couch and skipping dinner altogether.

                                              A week later

A week later, I've gotten much more used to how things work here, and how to communicate more effectively. Knowing just the slightest bit of Chinese has been helpful, and not being completely overwhelmed helps too.

I feel rested and ready to tackle today, exploring the big city. We'll see what happens.