Here are just a few of my observations and fascinations from my time living in China.

Taobao

One of the things that I will miss most will be the online shopping app, Taobao where you can get pretty much ANYTHING you want at very reasonable if not downright cheap prices. In fact, Taobao shopping can become a little addictive. I use the mandarin version because the same items on the English version are a bit more expensive. It is not without its pitfalls though as being unable to read the small print I have on occasion ordered the wrong size. You can return things like the time when I ordered 5 Taiji balls instead of 1! But that is complicated and requires good mandarin.

In actual fact delivery is big business here. Many restaurants, coffee shops and food outlets probably do more delivery business than on the premises. Often the delivery drivers are the working classes from the countryside and they get paid commission for the number of deliveries made so they drive like maniacs on their scooters then run through compounds with their food bags.

Taobao parcels can be seen at the roadside waiting to be sorted and numbered by the compound guards. It’s absolutely fine. Parcels here do not get stolen. Crime is exceptionally low. Probably the all pervasive cameras are a deterrent plus the inhumane prison conditions.

Holidays

For a country of 1.4 billion, to have state holidays where EVERYONE is off at the same time seems crazy. Scenic attractions, restaurants and transportation networks are overwhelmed at certain times of the year and are best avoided. But when else can people go since they don’t have other holidays? Only the unemployed, the retired or foreign tourists can travel freely outside of the major holiday periods.

Make up days

These have confused me for a long time but I think that I have cracked it now. Many holidays follow the lunar calendar such as the mid-autumn festival, Chinese New Year or spring break. When that happens the government likes to give extra days to allow people a long weekend or a week. So for instance, if the public holiday falls on a Wednesday then the government makes the Monday and Tuesday days off BUT you have to work extra to get them. These make up days tend to be Saturday or Sunday in the weekends before or after the festival. At first though, it felt like people were having to work extra to get a day off!!!

Fortunately, the International Schools don’t have to do this practice and it does mean that there are some weekends when Disney or other attractions are very quiet! So swings and roundabouts.

Overloading

In common with many Asian countries the bikes are often overloaded

Health and safety

Not up to UK standards by any means but not as precarious as Thailand!! This was at the intersection near us one evening.

Crossing the road

Convention here is that traffic can turn right at an intersection even when the lights are red as long as they do it carefully and avoid pedestrians crossing. What happens in reality is that cars and bikes often think that they have right of way. It was quite scary to step out onto a crossing when you have a green man only to be bombarded by scooters, bikes and cars all weaving around you!!! We have friends who have been knocked off their bikes in these situations. Fortunately they were not badly injured.

Siestas

University accommodation

Apparently accommodation fees are extremely low at Chinese universities, something like £45 a year (or at least they were not so long ago) but you didn’t get your own room or any en suite facilities like UK institutions. No, here 8-10 people share a dormitory and sleep in bunk beds with minimal storage provision. Studying is done round a central table and there is no air conditioning. This means that because the stifling summer heat rises, the bottom bunks are the most sought after.

Food

I LOVE the circular table with the lazy Susan’s in the centre. It makes for a much more collegiate atmosphere of sharing and you all get to sample all the dishes. Brilliant.

Crime

Crime probably does exist but we saw very little evidence. I have felt incredibly safe living here. This is one of the benefits of living under a ‘strong government’. I even cycled back from a party alone after midnight on one occasion and thought nothing of it. We did hear about one case of a mentally disturbed person attacking 7 people outside a shopping mall with a pair of scissors. The police were on the scene within 2 minutes! That’s fast! The perp was taken away but locals have no idea what happens to the mentally ill in these cases. Probably incarcerated somewhere. The downside of the ‘strong government’.

Cars

Interestingly, the government dictates (to a certain degree) which cars you can have. They discontinue certain makes and models over a given age and you receive a notification that your car will no longer be licensed to drive on the roads of the city. In Shanghai the threshold is quite high so we see loads of new/newish cars around. At first I thought it was just that we lived in an affluent area but then I heard about the rules. It is all to do with the air quality and fuel emissions from the older cars. Once no longer licensed, your car could be sold to someone in another city where the age limits/pollution levels are not so high. So more rural areas do have older cars but here in Shanghai we just don’t see them at all.

Cycling

There are, of course lots of scooters and bicycles. Shanghai is MASSIVE and mostly flat so it is a great place to cycle. The city also has very good infrastructure for cyclists with special bike lanes pretty much everywhere.

The public bikes are numerous and extremely cheap to use. I find them very handy for short trips around our neighborhood and I am really going to miss them once I leave.

Some are new, in good condition and a pleasure to ride. They are pretty basic with no gears, the seats can be adjusted up and down and it’s great when the brakes actually work! I was disappointed to learn what happens to the ones that have outlived their usefulness.

Scooters

Obviously there are loads of these around with the preponderance of delivery drivers in Shanghai but I do get a little bit annoyed when they use the pavements to drive on.

Especially the times when they have a perfectly good bike lane for themselves. China cracks down very hard on some minor infractions but not this!

Plastic

Another thing that can get me annoyed is the amount of plastic packaging on food. I thought Thailand was bad but here is also ridiculous! Grapes inside a plastic carton are then in a plastic bag! I mean why for heavens sake!!! I feel so guilty but have no choice but to buy. I don’t know where to get plastic free food.

Insults

Calling someone 250 is an insult. This dates back to the time of old money which were boat shaped gold ingots and the largest was valued as 500. Half of that is 250 so this number is used to castigate someone as a halfwit!

Sustainability

Civilization

Translations

I just hate senseless payments! I much prefer them to make perfect sense.

Marriage

Unlike many other countries where the family of the bride are required to stump up all the costs of a wedding and/or a significant dowry making girl babies a financial burden and in some cases leading to infanticide (I’m thinking of India here), in China it is the opposite.

Here the custom is that the boy’s family provide the young couple with an apartment and a car. In fact as real estate is so costly in Shanghai some of my colleagues live in apartments purchased for this very reason and rented out to bring in some income until nuptials are agreed!

Now that the one child policy has been done away with, this puts financial pressure on those families with multiple boys! My Ayi, for example has two sons. Both now have girlfriends and she and her husband have not managed to save enough money to buy them apartments even back in their home towns where property is cheaper. My Ayi feels very stressed about this.

Toilet paper

Unless you are in a high end shopping mall or a hotel you are unlikely to find toilet paper available in the toilets. It’s a take your own society. You ALWAYS carry these

One child policy

The current generation of 30 year olds were single children, during the one child policy. They grew up with all the attention from their parents. Now they are being dubbed the ‘selfish’ generation because many of them don’t want to get married and if they do marry they want only one child. Partly this is because educating a child here is very competitive and expensive and only half of all children can go to a decent high school, but I suspect that it is also because this generation is used to being a single child so they are repeating what they know.

The current 60 year olds were the ones who suffered most in the Cultural Revolution. They were middle school age (early teens) and they were the ones who were forcibly removed and sent to work in the countryside. As a result many have had only a very rudimentary education and a tough life. These people are often quite brusque and rude and now I understand why.

Chicken feet and beauty

Many women eat chicken feet here because the collagen is good for the skin.

Local language

Shanghainese is a local language which has its own expressions some of which come from English. They say ‘ensae’ to mean an awkward social situation. This derives from the English phrase, ‘on sale’ and therefor is of inferior quality.

Puzzles

We were very surprised to find that jigsaw puzzles have these cheat sheets on the back. Each puzzle is divided into sections. We don’t use it as we prefer to solve the puzzle from the picture. It takes longer but is more satisfying.

Porsches

Our part of Shanghai, Jinqiao has the highest concentration of Porsches outside of Stuttgart. .

Hotel Sundries

Gunpowder

It is well known that the Chinese invented gunpowder but what I didn’t realize was how it came about. Apparently in the Tang Dynasty the Emperor at the time wanted longevity and he employed a number of alchemists whose sole job was to come up with a way of making him immortal. They didn’t, but in the process of trying they invented gunpowder which initially was used for fun making firecrackers and only later converted to weapons.

Retirement

In traditional Chinese families parents do not retire until all their children are married!!! If this applied to me then I would have to continue working for a long time!

HuKou

This is the Chinese system of registration. Your Hukou is registered where you are born and it permits you to enroll in school, own a property, buy a car or apply for a passport in that area only. Because it is based on social benefits the Hukou is sometimes likened to a caste system. It is becasue of this system that migrant workers who flock to the major cities for employment opportunities have to leave their children behind in the care of grandparents. This creates split families and happens very frequently. The parents all return to their children on the major festivals of Chinese New Year, Golden Week and Spring Break. This helps to explain why these holidays have as many days as possible to allow for travel.

The Shanghai Metro

Currently the world’s second largest metro system at 831km and 508 stations, (it vies with Beijing for this title and swaps places as new lines open) the Shanghai Metro came into existence in 1993 and has grown from one line into a system of 19 lines and has over 7000 trains in operation. It is used by approx 10 million people daily. In 2019 the system had 3.8 billion riders, the highest annual ridership in the world. Trains on some lines can arrive as often as every 110 seconds. It is clean, cheap and very easy to use, with directions and signage in mandarin and English in most stations.

Just when I thought that things were settling and getting sorted out. Just when I had relaxed and caught up on some sleep. Just when I thought that my life and plans were back on track, fate had a different idea!

I collected my Emergency passport with no problems.

I stayed at my friend Alet’s apartment for 4 nights.

I set off for the airport and the first leg of my journey. Shanghai to Helsinki.

Kevin and I had a long chat to make sure that everything was in order with the emergency passport to avoid problems at check -in. I contacted the Finn Air customer chat line and they said everything would be fine. Ok, it was a bot but the answers seemed to indicate that there wouldn’t be a problem. But we didn’t anticipate what actually happened…

When I applied for my emergency passport I filled in all my travel plans, including going to Geneva when I was scheduled to meet up with Shifu and help to teach at the Taiji workshop. I would then complete my return home with EasyJet to Manchester some 6 days later. I put all the flight dates into my application form. The FCO reassured me that this was possible when I had the phone call with the member of staff in Madrid. She said I could do the journey as long as I didn’t transit in the same airport twice. BUT the check-in staff and the Finnish border control thought otherwise.

My emergency document contained the sentence ‘valid for a single journey’ and they interpreted that to be all on the same day. They told me that I could not exit in Geneva. I explained that my government said I could but they disagreed and I had no choice.

I had to cancel the Helsinki- Geneva leg and very quickly rebook a Helsinki- Manchester flight. Well, when I say I, what I mean is Kevin. He was a hero and did all the booking from the UK while I stood by the check-in desk waiting anxiously.

He managed it in time, fortunately, but I was bitterly disappointed that I will now have to miss the Taiji workshop. I had been so looking forwards to it as an antidote to all the stress of my delayed departure.

But it is now not to be.

The other problem is that today I have a LONG wait in Helsinki for my new connecting flight. 11 hours! Well, actually only 10 because we were delayed by an hour leaving Shanghai.

Kevin, in a stroke of genius, booked me into the Business Class Lounge. I now have comfortable seats, free flowing food and drink, a charging point for my phone and free wi-fi.

It’s very nice here and if you ever find yourself stranded in Helsinki airport for many hours I do recommend it.

Although I am disappointed not to be going to Geneva and very sad to miss the workshop, I am trying not to be too upset. All this palava was outside my control and not something that I could have foreseen.

I have to just go with the flow, even when the flow takes me in a completely different direction from the one that I thought I was going in. I need to conserve my energy and not waste it on things that I cannot change.

As many of you no doubt realize, leaving China at this time has been a bitter-sweet experience for me. So many beautiful people, friends, colleagues and students who have wished me well. Some good-byes have been harder than others and some very hard indeed. There have been cards, flowers gifts and blessings. If truth be told I didn’t really really want to leave. But needs must. It is time to pack up, distribute belongings to those who are staying or to new arrivals and declutter our stuff ready for shipping. It has been a busy time but arranging for the extra two weeks in Shanghai after school finished has helped. We have been able to do all our chores in a leisurely manner interspersed with final coffees, drinks and dinners with friends.

One of the things that school helps us with is getting a criminal background check from the police. This is necessary for teachers taking up a new position in another country but as I am retiring I didn’t give it much thought but as I turn my attention towards my new Taiji venture, it occurred to me that having the document might be beneficial if I ever wanted to work in care homes doing seated Taiji sessions for the elderly. It would mean that there would be no gaps in any DBS checks. So with one week to departure we visited the Bureau of Entry & Exit to begin the process.

All went smoothly at first and I returned after 4 days to collect my certificate which being all in Mandarin needed to be translated. This is a service which you can pay for so I found the desk and showed my passport along with the certificate. I completed a receipt, paid the 16 pounds and stuffed all my various bits of paper back into the plastic wallet that I have used to keep everything together. Being A4 it didn’t fit too well in my backpack so I folded it in half (as usual) and stuffed it in. Now, we can only assume that at that point the passport fell out, although neither of us saw or heard or felt it at the time. By the time we reached home the passport was not there. It was however, 24 hours later when I actually noticed that it was missing, after I had collected my English translation.

After a somewhat panicky search of our apartment, my bag and all the places that we normally keep such important documents we hightailed it back to the police station in the vain hope that the passport had been found and handed in. It hadn’t. The lady on Customer Service was a bit officious and didnt actually look, or ask anyone else if a passport had been handed in. She just said no and moved on to the next person. So that was that.

Then the real panic began to set in. I was directed to another window where I filled in a ‘Lost Passport’ form and was asked to come and collect the receipt on Monday, 2 hours before I was due to depart for the airport. “You will not be flying then” I was told. So with a heavy heart we returned home to begin the process of rescheduling my flight. This is quite an expensive process so we decided that Kevin should fly as planned and I stay here to get not only an Emergency Passport but also an Exit Visa which would allow me to leave China. The problem was that the Exit Visa would take up to 7 working days to produce and that I couldn’t even apply for it without the Emergency Passport.

Our original plan had been to fly home, unpack etc, then on 13th for me to take an EasyJet flight to Geneva to join Shifu and Leping for my first European Taiji Workshop. Now it looked as though I would only have time to fly to Geneva and given the 7 working day rule, even that was tight! Slightly more panicking as there were only 2 Finn Air flights per week that didn’t stop everywhere and take 30+ hours for my trip.

I contacted School to appraise them of the situation and they were great. HR said that they would put together supporting documentation for my Exit Visa and Operations agreed that I could stay in the apartment, until 8th July. A friend from my Taiji class works in a bank so doesn’t have school holidays. She has very kindly offered to put me up for the last few nights. What a godsend!

It was Friday evening and we spent the time filling in an electronic form which would cancel my passport and start the process of obtaining an emergency travel document to allow me to leave China. You can make a return journey and then hand in your temporary document on arrival then apply for a proper passport. As part of the process you have to list the countries you will be visiting on your return. So I said China, Switzerland and then UK. I paid 100 pounds and an hour later I was informed by email that the document had been approved and I could book an appointment at the Shanghai Consulate to collect it. The earliest available slot was on Tueday lunchtime. God Bless the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for their prompt response (they were obviously working as it was their Friday afternoon). We went to bed feeling a little easier.

At 3:30 am Kevin work up realizing that in the list of countries on the application, we hadn’t inclued Finland. I was booked on FinnAir with a transit in Helsinki. Yikes! Maybe they wouldn’t let me even board a plane at Shanghai to somewhere that I hadn’t declared on the form! Double Yikes!! More panic. Kevin spent the wee small hours surfing the internet trying find out. When I got up at 6am we decided to bite the bullet and apply again, this time with all the correct countries listed. Another 100 pounds but we felt better. This time, as it was Saturday there was no prompt response from the FCO and we realized that everyone in the UK was probably at home enjoying the tennis or football.

We continued with our packing and sorting (with still no sign of the elusive passport in the apartment) because the shipping people were coming on Sunday to take ALL our stuff. I should point out at this juncture that all this was taking place against a back drop of very intense, heavy rain. It is the Shanghai rainy season and by that I mean it was very, very wet. Borderline floody. It had been raining like that consistantly for over 3 weeks. It was also humid so nothing was dry and it did nothing for our mood.

In the midst of all this Kevin received an email which sent the stress levels even higher. His flight with Finn Air, scheduled for the Monday evening had been cancelled. He needed to rebook (fortunately at their expense) and they were suggesting a SAS flight which departed 2 hours after the one he was supposed to be on. The problem? This was the second time Finn Air had done this. Last time he was bumped to a Lufthansa flight and they charged three times the price of Finn Air for the extra bags (so he hadn’t taken them!) This time we would have no choice but to pay the exorbitant rates if SAS did the same thing. The good deal on the extra bags was one of the reasons that we had chosen Finn Air when booking all those many months ago.

Anyway, after an online chat with their Customer service rep, he was able to rebook for the following Monday. This was perfect because it meant that he could be with me to sort out all the red tape and bureaucracy and to keep me company for the first of the extra weeks.

Later that afternoon, when I was grocery shopping I received a phone call. I do get scam calls consisting of streams of Mandarin obviously trying to sell me something (I have no idea what) but on this occasion, my screen said Madrid, Spain. I do have a Spanish friend here, Javi who we were due to meet up with for dinner that evening. My first thought was that someone was trying to reach him and had somehow got my number. So I answered. A voice asked if it was Lisa Toner and then informed me that they were dealing with my emergency document request (2nd one). I can only assume that the FCO have teams around the word who share the weekend jobs of dealing with idiots like me who don’t really know what they are doing with the online forms. Anyway, standing beside the deli counter I got the wonderful news that I didn’t in fact need the second document as I could transit anywhere on the emergency passport, as long as I didn’t go to the same place twice. I promised not to. She said that they would refund the second payment so I was not only relieved but very happy that the FCO were doing the decent thing. God Bless them. I was very proud to be British at that point. We could enjoy the farewell dinner with our Taiji friends as some of the stress had been lifted.

Monday afternoon saw us back at the Beaureau of Entry & Exit to collect my lost passport receipt. I was advised to bring it back with my emergency passport AND a passport photo. This we did not have, remember our shipping had gone the day before and any spare copies of my ID photo were packed deeply in boxes. We did, however know where to get a copy so first thing Tuesday morning we cycled to the Photomi shop that we had used to get our ID for the Thai visa 4 months previously. Fortunately Kevin remembered where it was (!). We were there before the booth opened so being British I waited patiently outside while the guy woke up his computer etc only to have a Chinese family barge straight past me and up to the counter to be served first! No concept of a queue! I will be glad to get back to proper queuing I can tell you! Eventually we got copies of the photos and sped off to school where I met with HR who gave my supporting documentation and a helpful list of what I needed to do at the police station.

Then it was time to jump into a Didi for the drive across Shanghai to the British Consulate. We were dropped outside the address that I had been given but there were NO SIGNS. We walked all the way around the building to no avail. Even when we went inside there was a controlled gate to the elevators and a reception desk, again unmarked. I wonder now if it is a deliberate diplomatic thing to hide your location. Fortunately at the Reception desk the lady had a sheet with my name on and I was escorted to the lifts. On the 17th Floor the doors opened to a security guard with a bag scanning machine. He asked if I had an appointment then told me to wait. We did. We hung around in front of the elevator doors while he went to fetch a receptionist who came trotting out to us. We could see the Union Jacks and ‘British Centre’ to our left but we not allowed in. Very strange. The receptionist took my name, trotted back to her desk and phoned someone. A few minutes later a member of staff appeared with my emergency passport and reassurances that I could use it to transit in Helsinki.

If you have never seen one before, and I hadn’t, the Emergency Travel Document is a rather fetching shade of blue which is a great improvement on the standard red that we all carry. I shall be quite sorry to have to relinquish it at Manchester.

Next it was back to the now very familiar destination of the Bureau of Entry & Exit to hand everything in and to start the Exit Visa process. Here they didn’t actually need the photo that we had dashed to get that morning. Instead they sat me in a photo booth and snapped a head shot which then printed out onto the correct form. Fortunately someone was there to help with all that. Finally I came face to face with a very nice young policewoman who spoke excellent English. She looked at all my papers and pronounced that I would be better off replacing my residence visa. I told her that I was retiring and leaving China and to my surprise this caused some consternation! Apparently the school had not included a ‘release’ letter. I was getting a little bit fed up by this point.

In amongst my papers I had an ‘Employment Verification’ letter from my original visit to get the criminal background check. After some more back and forth with her superiors I was told that if I wrote a statement saying that I was retiring and definately not coming back to China and would never again apply for a residence permit, then they would give me the Exit Visa. So that is what I did. They don’t make it easy do they! The Emergency passport complete with Exit Visa will be ready for me to collect on Tuesday which is within the time for me to catch my flight out on the Friday evening. That is, if FinnAir don’t cancel it!

We have the rest of this week in our (empty) apartment. Pretty much all of our friends and acquaintances have departed so there is no one left to see or hang out with. Time for a rest I think. The rain has stopped and the ‘stupidly hot’ season has started.

As you can see not only is it hot but the humidity is curently about 70% which means that it ‘feels like’ 40 degrees. Its the sort of heat that saps your strength and it’s going to last unti I leave.

Now that the panic is over, I have had time to write this blog. I have been reflecting that part of being an intrepid traveller is taking the rough with the smooth. Things don’t always go according to plan (even the best laid ones!) You need to be flexible and be prepared to change, amend and adapt. Hopefully any readers who are also travellers will be reassured to know, that even when a crisis happens, the government will be there for you and will help. The process to replace a lost passport is actually very quick. And I know that not all countries then require an Exit Visa.

Now i want to share some of the wonderful memories of the beautiful people that i have lived and worked with over the past 5 years. I am very sad to say good bye and some good-byes were harder than others. We have been blessed to know so many good people here. They have all enriched our lives.