My first week in Shanghai

Dear all,

Now finally settled in my new

apartment in Xuhui District in Shanghai I can finally say I found my place. My Shanghai experience started off a little troubled. With me not knowing where to go from the airport, to getting a small double room with a disgusting bathroom, having to register in Chinese etc etc. So what happened?

As mentioned I was first issued a room on the Minhang Campus. This Campus is one of several Campuses Jiao Tong Univeristy has scattered around Shanghai. It is however situated almost 30km outside the city center. The air is clean, it is not crowded, no tall buildings and no one who speaks English off-campus. I was placed at the No. 8 Building of the campus. Which is a building especially for exchange students. Full of different nationalities from German to American and even a special floor for the NORTH-Korean students!!! Who all wear a pin of Kim Jong-il and do not talk a lot to other students. All these different students come here to study different things. Most at SJTU study Computer Science or Engineering or Biotechnological whatever haha. There were only 3 students who studied Economics who actually lived in that building and yes that included me!

The program offered to us international students is not very extensive. Almost 10 courses from which we can chose. And then they are offered at two different campuses. The Minhang Campus and the Fahua Campus. Fahua is situated in the city center near the Xuhui campus. It is mainly used for MBA studies yet they have decided to group all English courses given at Xuhui or Fahua and give them all at Fahua.

The Fahua Campus is very small, I think 6000 students.

The Xuhui Campus is a little larger, roughly 24000 students.

The Minhang Campus is the biggest, with over 50000 students!!!!

Just to put that into perspective, I come from Elst, we have 20000 inhabitants. I went to high school in Bemmel which has 12000 inhabitants. You do have to put it into perspective because Shanghai has over 22 million permanent residents!

So I arrived on Friday morning, went to a fancy hotel and told them I needed a translator and a driver to take me to the Minhang Campus. This cost me around 650 RMB which is roughly 80 euros depending on the exhange rate. You can get there with just a taxi for a third of that. But then you dont get the nice SUV with leather seats and a glass of champagne and a translator who speaks English.

After arrival I met my roommate and my previous post. So Saturday was the day I would go and find a better room. I got in contact with my estate agent who arranged for me to see a room. So we (my roommate and I) went to her at night and it turned out that the room was in her apartment. So after checking out the apartment we took the estate agent and another tenant to dinner at Sacha's. After this we went to party at Zatapas and finally Phebe. The club was very different than what I am used to. You pay 100RMB which is 12 euro's which is the entrance fee and then there is an open bar. The reason the club is so cheap is because the club is filled with female entertainers to put it sensibly. So dancers, strippers, 'lopers' etc and well they are more than happy to help you. So that is how the club makes money. You can also buy a table which is 1000 - 2000 RMB otherwise you just go to the bar and dancefloor. The clubs dont smell like beer because in China you can still smoke in public which brought back memories of the old days haha. Also because of the low wages there is a lot of security and cleaning personnel. So if you spill your drink on the floor within 2 minutes someone mops it up and the bars and toilets are extremely clean. This is however only the case in the clubs and not in the rest of china!

Sunday was a very slow day, which consisted of sleeping because we got home at 9:30...In shanghai the party never stops and you can party 24/7. Party nights are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. But any day of the week will do as I found out. The only thing I did on this head-achy Sunday was go to a conference which was for international students. Well that is what I was told. So we had a nobelprize winner, the best students of SJTU and the most famous teachers SJTU has to offer on a stand to speak to us and welcome us. Unfortunately it was all in Chinese so it was for the Chinese speaking exchange students. Luckily my Chinese friend came to my rescue and translated a lot. I met a few professors and some more students but quickly went back to my bed.

Monday I had to travel to Xuhui to get registered. I decided to take the school shuttle bus. Which travels roughly every hour. However you have to be there quick because there is only 1 bus. It seats 55 people so there is a line. I got there 20 minutes before and was the 51st person. No I am not kidding! In addition teachers can skip the line. So if 5 teachers were to come I would not be able to get on the bus...Luckily only 3 came and my seat and Laura's who was the 52nd were secured! The bus takes roughly 40 minutes.

Today we had to register and go to the orientation day. It turned out that I had to do this here. THEY SPOKE ENGLISH haha So when I came they were like...."Why are you in the system?"..."Have you studied here before?" Turned out that everything I did in Minhang was for the Chinese students, which makes sense because no one could speak English... The orientation was brief and we received some information on Shanghai and the university and finally got to meet other people from our class. We are with roughly 35 students all choosing different classes. After orientation we went for a drink and I met Bob. A language student who just arrived here to study Chinese for 30 hours a week. He will also stay here for 5 months and is Dutch and also in need of a room. So we looked together and that same night went to a viewing. It turned out again that we would stay at the agents house! So the exchange agent would be our house mate. We took her to dinner and clubbing! This time we went to Soho. Because it isnt weekend entrance is only 60RMB! We stayed at her house and after only a few hours of sleep I forced myself up to go to class.

My class did not start until 14:00 but I went to uni at 11:00 because the classroom was 'pending' which meant I did not know where to go. So I looked for the exchange office. Which was closed until 13:30... So I found some Chinese students who spoke a little English and joined them for my breakfast/lunch. At 13:30 I went to the office and no one could tell me what was happening. We received an excel document which had the course names, teacher names and classrooms. Yet half of them did not have room numbers and the Campuses where they were taught were sometimes wrong and no room numbers. I was pretty disappointed because this is university, I would expect to have a little better guidance or organization. So I spoke to someone in charge who offered his sincere apologies and told me that in fact I did not even have class today. The class was actually on Monday... So I am there trying to figure everything out and in the back of my mind i'm like, where are the other students. So I walked out of campus and ran into the rest!!! They had asked someone else and got other information. In the end that was also wrong so we had no class. So they took the Tourist Bus and I went to look at the apartment again. Then my journey home began. Not a good idea to try to take the subway out of the city at 16:15... If you are in Shanghai just go and have a look. It is pretty crowded and that is quite the understatement. Arriving at Minhang I went to dinner with my room mate and at night I took a fake taxi called a CuCu into the city and with Bob moved into our new apartment! To celebrate the estate agent/room mate/cook/cleaning lady/landlord/taxi driver/translator/Chinese Tutor and friend took us to a bar. Which is located at the top of a skyscraper overlooking Shanghai! Beautiful!

Wednesday I went to my first class! Internet Marketing. The teacher speaks perfect English and the course is extremely interesting. How 'we' as customers and companies can use the internet to its fullest. Because your grade is also based on class attendance and participation you have to be very active in class. If the teacher does not remember you, you get an average grade. If he remembers you but it is because you were late or did not study you get an insufficient. But if the memories are positive you get a good grade. In my case it will be the latter because i'm a little bit of a suck up and my name sounds like DJ who doesn't remember that, well that is what the teacher actually said!! haha The most interesting thing about the course is that Google and Facebook are openly discussed during the lecture. During class I asked the teacher why this was. He informed me that at University they teach students following the business courses to be international and therefore we need to know about these things even though in China it might be banned. The university has rules but these can be bend. And he joked that in China we have programs to get around the firewall which resulted in a lot of laughter!

The rest of the day consisted of visiting a temple and the financial center. The food here in China is very different to what we are used to. For example here you eat the fat of a pig which we cut of. You must also not think about hygiene because you simply don't want to know. I try to eat a balanced meal but it proves difficult every time because of the lack of vegetables. Or when they are there they are cooked to death so not very nutritious. So everyday I take vitamin tablets to try to keep my levels up. And it was Wednesday so we went clubbing again! This time to Club 88 then the Appartment and we ended in True Love.

On Thursday after again an all-nighter and no sleep I went to Introduction to Technology Innovation. Which is very high tech stuff and quite difficult but interesting at the same time. I must say that I was pretty satisfied with myself for being able to attend because I had not slept and only gotten home with time for a quick shower and a fresh set of cloths. In the class there were only 2 other international students who made it. The rest was still fast asleep from the night before. We met them later because we had to register for the courses. You had to do this to get some sort of schedule in the system so see whether you can follow a language course. It turned out I was taking too many courses for them to fit in a fitting language course. So I will be taking private lessons from a tutor at different times during the week to learn my Chinese. It is a little more expensive but now I do get private attention and do not have to go sit in an overfull classroom! After this which took ridiculously long, almost 4 hours I went home for some well deserved sleep.

Friday was a good day, no class so lots of time to clean the apartment, go to the Bank get a back account and register at the police station. Getting the shopping and cleaning the room and washing.

So this first week mainly consisted of parties and looking for a room and getting things organized at the uni. You notice that the registration process at SJTU is not yet well organized. They do not have a central desk and everything is scattered plotted around the different campuses. Especially for exchange students it is difficult because you don't receive a booklet which gives you clear instructions on what to do and where to go. We don't speak the language, we cannot access the site (it is Chinese) and don't know exactly what is needed here to have it all figured out. In addition classes started on Monday which is the same day as the registration and orientation. So we missed a few classes, why not organize this 1 week before? You tell me, I ques that that will be China. A little weird, a little confusing, at some moments a pain in the ass but it has been extremely exciting and so much fun and I would not want to miss it for the world. You get the feeling that once I have conquered a semester in Shanghai I can do anything!

Well thats all i'v done I can tell you other things that happen here but that would ruin the fun. We (all the exhange students) agree that you cannot describe in words what China is like. The traffic, the smell, the people, the prices, the cars, the buildings, the city, the food....on and on. I have seen things I hope to never see again and I have experience things I would like everyone to enjoy.

Shanghai it truly is the Pearl of the Orient!

Didier