Chinese cuisine…

Well, everybody I guess, tried ‘so-called‘ Chinese cuisine in his home country before. But believe me, this what you get in Germany, USA or elsewhere, has nothing to do with Chinese cooking.

1. a traditional Chinese meal is never served with a softdrink or any other juice, but only with tea or somem kind of drinking soup.
2. most ‘Chinese’ restaurants in western world are often run by Vietnamese, Mongolians or Thais, so no wonder you don’t get real Chinese food.
3. Eating sweet snacks at the beginning is no problem here.
4. Some Chinese use western knife and fork but not like western people

AND:

Some stuff looks a bit weird….

New country, new cellphone

Because sending SMS home is very expensive, I bought a new (second) cellphone in China.
‘My weapon of choice’ was a Nokia 2630 with China Unicom SIM-card. 150Yuan (15Eur) were included and the total price was ca. 80Eur.
Nice side effect: SMS to Germany only cost 1Yuan (10 Cent) BUT it only works in Beijing… 😦
So I need a new SIM when I’m heading for Shanghai tomorrow… Tamade (Shit)

PS: Of course you can switch between Chinese and English language on your cellphone 😉

Some news about Beijng

Long time no see because of 2 reasons:
1. Walking 10 hours a day make you somewhat fainted and
2. the Internet in the hotel is not as stable as in Guangzhou.
OK, but after some stress I finally arrived in Beijing on Monday evening.

UPDATE:
Seems like the hotel intern network is really a pain in the ass and some websites that usually work in China are blocked. Suprisingly koteshi.com is one of them…

Well stay tuned for some updates when I go to Shanghai on October 1st.

Guangzhou to Beijing

The day before yesterday I went from hot and sticky Guangzhou to Bejing.
The whole day started with a nightmare: I overslept 😦
So I had to pack my lugguage, take a shower and have some breakfast within 35 minutes.
“Quite” stressy 😉
During breakfast I noticed that most Chinese try to eat with fork and knife and most westerners tried chopsticks. BTW:Cantonese dumpling and Dim Sum are very delicious.
While cleaning my teeth I noticed, LG (from Korea) does not only produce electric stuff like TV, radios or microwave ovens but also toothpaste.

Well yesterday I also felt bored, so I made some business cards for iucon in English and Chinese. They weren’t very expensive 250 cards with double side four color printing for only 100Yuan (8,50Eur) and the quality seems to be ok for this price.

But enough about the trip to Beijing. More news about Beijing roast duck will follow tomorrow.

And before I forget: Happy mid autumn festival 🙂
On this day people usually met with their families, they give little moon cakes as presents and I have to admit they really taste good^^

Happy birthday to me ;-)

Today is/was my birthday. It was a very stressy day, so I only post two links to picture galleries because it is already 2:22 AM here and in about 10 hours my flight will depart to Beijing…

BTW: Thank you for all the happy-birthday-messages ^^

Pics:

• Day 1: Flight to China + first impressions
• Day 2: First ‘real’ day walking through Guangzhou

Further descriptions will follow 🙂

Finally arrived in Guangzhou

After just 10 hours of flight from Paris Charles de Gaule airport to Guangzhou Baiyun International airport I am finally sitting in room and copy the last 106 pictures on my laptop while searching the internet for useful info.
BTW: Here a pic of the sleeping room of my suite ^^ It is a Japanese tatami style suite and really comfortable. Some minutes ago I had breakfast and saw MANY British people with Chinese children… I am no sure but seems like many western couples adopt children here in Guangzhou…

Another funny thing: I heard some Chinese talking with a Lao Wai (foreign person) and the Chinese advised him not to forget his jacket because todayÄs only 29°C in Guangzhou 😀
More info will come this evening, so stay tuned.

PS: Thank you for all your birthday wishes 🙂

Tschuess Deutschland!

Good bye friends. See you in two weeks 🙂

Nihao China, here I come

Tomorrow, after so many week or even months of planning, at 5:45PM my plane will lift off to bring me to China 🙂
But there are still some questions: Is Koteshi China compatible AND is China Koteshi compatible?
It will be a total new experience to live in country so different from the western world not only in language but also in culture.
Another interesting thing will be the houses, restaurants etc. Because beside the cuisine I really want to know if there are most elevators only 1.8meter high and if there are no 4th floors 😉
Yeah I know typical western question, but interesting though.

For those interested in it, here’s my little schedule:

Guangzhou 09/22 – 09/24
Beijing 09/24 – 10/01
Shanghai 10/01 – 10/06

I will try to post some pictures during the next two weeks, so stay tuned.

Some thoughts…

WOW. Yeah wow is the only word to describe my current mood. Geeks would maybe prefer to say ‘WTF’ or ‘w00t’ but I don’t count myself as one so ‘wow’ will do it 😉
For almost a year I dream about a trip to China. Even when I was still employed at Schwing in Herne I never really thought about this idea. It was saved somewhere in my brain as a weird dream that might or might be not come true. SO I originally thought about celebrating ‘New year’s eve’ in Shanghai or Hong Kong but I had to cancel it for some reasons.
But things have changed. I am not longer employee of the Schwing IT staff, neither I am as good paid as I was there 😉 So, I thought this trip would never come true.
Until I started a part time job and the German Autumn vacationsdate come nearer and researched for some info on the internet. Very soon I saw that booking a complete trip can cost from a range of 2000-3000€ (2700-4000$). Well, with the help of some very kind people I planned my trip for the time of the holidays.
See, from tomorrow 09/21 until 10/08 will be free for most students.
So what could be better to go there during October 1st, Chinese nationalholiday?

EVERYTHING!!! Was the quick response Shen yi gave me. ‘Chinese golden week is so crowded’.

Well, let’s see if she was right 😉

Will Chinese become the next French/Spanish/Latin at school

To be honest I never liked Latin even though I am some kind of history fan because it is a dead language. French was never an option for me because whenever I wanted to choose French, there was no French language course at school because too less students registered.
And this August I started with Spanish, BUT maybe it would be a wise decision for the politicians to think about this twice. China as the upcoming super power and global player in all parts of society is already now at the start in my opinion more important than other countries would like to be (no offense guys).
Of course you learn English at school as the first foreign language, cause it is THE world dominatin language but why not learn Chinese language as the second foreign language.
Of course there should be still the choice to choose between other alternatives, but some people seem to forget that languages learnt during school time are way easier to master than it is when the student is already 30.
I also started to learn Chinese language at an education center because I really like the language and someday I hope to use it like my own language.

But suprise, suprise: It is not that hard!

OK, you have to learn new characters, but new vocables have to be learnt for all new languages.
And maybe this way, Germans or western employees in general, are way better prepared for the competition on the global market.