So where do I start? The Airport? The housing? School? Medical? The Language? It's overwhelming right? WRONG!
Like anything worth doing, moving to and becoming accustomed to China is and was and will be HARD! It will be fun though too and really, really interesting. I like to think of it as living my own personal documentary film without the fade-outs when you have to go to the bathroom or you become totally lost. So where to start? It has to be with GETTING AROUND! And the first step to moving around is to have a CELL PHONE!
So how do you get from the USA to China and then from there to the Great Wall, to the Bund in Shanghai or to downtown Suzhou? Well vehicles, know-how and some technology are very helpful. Where do you start? You have to understand the transportation systems and figure them out. If you are not map-inclined or have a decent sense of direction you are at a distinct disadvantage. Like Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" I have a bit of an internal clock that I can set and sort of know the time all the time. I also pretty much need to and therefore DO know what direction I'm going all the time. Without an internal NORTH to point to you can get hopelessly lost. I have it, it helps a ton, but maybe you don't. Well if you don't you'll have to figure something out because you really need to be able to follow directions and read a map to get anywhere in China, or in life I'd say. If you have no internal north then buy a cheap compass and start using it before you get to China. If you can't get around in your home town you really have no chance in China, don't you think?
OK, enough rambling, where is this going? GETTING AROUND means getting a phone. First let me say that most of China speaks CHINESE and by CHINESE I mean MANDARIN. This is not Cantonese as spoken in SE China and Hong Kong, this is MANDARIN that is spoken by 70%+ of China and much more useful generally. I remember this old German guy I met once, he had been in China 3+ years and had learned a few of the buses and knew enough words in Chinese to get around, sort of. He wasn't really free to go where he wanted, when he wanted. To me he was surviving rather than living. So how do you get past just surviving? By either memorizing all the Chinese characters all at once and getting fluent, or by cheating on it. I choose cheating.
So how do you cheat in Chinese to get around? Well for me I can't go around copying down every little thing into a notebook, no that's not for me. So the very first thing I would highly recommend is to GET A CHINESE CELLPHONE! Yes you can then text yourself Chinese characters, addresses, bus stops, train times.. all kinds of useful stuff. If you want to get fancy you can even have your email delivered to your phone and keep even more stuff on there. OK, sounds great but how hard is it to get this to work?
It is extremely easy. You don't need to speak any Chinese at all and all you need is your passport and a China Mobile store, which are all over the place. No you don't even need an address to do this, just your passport, some money and a basic understanding of how cell phones work anywhere. So how do you do it?
Step 1: Go to China Mobile and notice how they all stare at you. Does the China Mobile store have phones in it for sale? If it does then good, you are in luck! If not go to another one or to any electronics or just about any other store and they will sell you a cell phone. You don't have to have a super nice one, my first one cost me about $15 USD and was a used phone. My daughter's first one as $8 USD and had no charger with it. Luckily we had a charger in our apartment that worked. Anyway, get any phone and buy it. Take it to China Mobile.
Step 2: Get to someone in China Mobile and look blankly at them. Say a few words in English like "I want to get a SIM CARD for my phone". This will accomplish 2 things, first they will be duly impressed that you speak English and 2nd it is the same thing as asking "Excuse me, does anyone in here speak Engliish?". Usually what happens is someone in the store has some English and would love to impress everyone else by using it on you. Be grateful, no matter how bad their English is, chances are your Chinese is worse. Just go with it. The other consequence is that they promote you to "VIP" status in the stores eyes and you will usually get pushed to the front of a line or offered a chair and possibly some very hot water. Just drink it and don't ask why its hot for now.... that will come later.
Step 3: OK so even if no one makes any indication that they speak any English at all, that's fine. No matter where you are or who you are talking to you can open up your phone in front of them and pull out the battery and point at the blank or non-functioning SIM CARD area and say "NEGA" Yes this is your first and possibly only word of Mandarin you will have to have. Nega means "That" while "Diga" means "this". This brings us to our first useful link and it is a good one. I'll post it as #1 on my useful links page. It is a simple link to GOOGLE TRANSLATE at: http://translate.google.cn/?hl=en So you can type in "This" or "That" in English there and it will bring up the Chinese character for it. What good is that? Well besides being cool, it also allows you to hit the speaker button in the corner and it will tell you how to pronounce the word. Hit it over and over really fast and it will start to sound like Max Headroom, but that's not really the point. Practice saying Nega and Diga, you can really use them interchangeably but you will hear them both a lot so use it!
Step 4: OK, so now they probably guess you want a SIM card, that isn't enough. You need to show them what their part of the job is. Pull out your passport and open it up to your picture in the front, point at it, then at the SIM card, then at their computer screen and say "Nega" a few more times. They will get the picture. If that doesn't clue them in pull 200 RMB out of your wallet ($30-35 USD) and it will get them going. The SIM CARD costs about 50 RMB and the rest of the 200 can go on your phone for minutes and texts, etc. Also be sure and have them change your phone to ENGLISH menus before you leave the store, they can do it in Chinese way better than you can. Just say English and point at the phone text a few times and someone will know what you mean. Don't leave the store until you verify the phone is on and working. Also be sure you know what phone # you have.. it will be be on the contract they make you sign three times before giving you the SIM card. I would put yourself in as a contact on your phone under "me" so you can find your phone # again easily.
Step 5: Walk away! That's it!
OK, so now that you have a cell phone in China I should tell you they are NOT like the USA where you get the phone for "free" in exchange for a required monthly service plan of $50 per month for 3 years. You pay the full fair value of the phone and have NO commitments. You pay only for your usage and there is no such thing as an unlimited plan, at least as far as I can tell. You can pay 50-100 RMB for a phone or several thousand if you want the latest and greatest. If you do have a phone already that has a spot for international SIM cards then you can use that too. Your normal small phone usage and texts will probably cost you about $15 USD per month or less though, but just be aware that your phone will eventually just stop working all at once and that is when you know you need to go to any China Mobile place and give them some more money. Just pull out your SIM card, 100 RMB and hand them both like you know what you're doing and they will take care of the rest.
OK, so what was the point of the phone? TEXT MESSAGES! Get a SKYPE account if you don't have one already, add your Chinese Cell Phone as a contact on Skype and then right click on your Chinese Cell # from Skype and select "Send SMS" or text message. It will cost you $0.05 USD per message but it is worth every nickel (literally) Why? So you can get around.
Any place you need to go in all of China you can find out about on the Internet right? Well Chinese taxi drivers and buses do NOT operate in English and almost none of the older generation even reads Pinying, the phonetic alphabet that looks like ours. You must have Chinese Characters written somewhere to get to/from anywhere. That is for the next post though. Let me preview it by saying if you use Google Maps and have any clue where you are at all in China and where you want to go you can find directions either for walking, car or PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. Yes it will tell you what stop to get off at and where to transfer and how long it will take you. You can text yourself directions how to get anywhere in China this way if you can put in an address or point at a spot on the map and right click on it to "Get Directions to Here". That is for tomorrow though. Great stuff though right? I have found it really useful myself!
Like anything worth doing, moving to and becoming accustomed to China is and was and will be HARD! It will be fun though too and really, really interesting. I like to think of it as living my own personal documentary film without the fade-outs when you have to go to the bathroom or you become totally lost. So where to start? It has to be with GETTING AROUND! And the first step to moving around is to have a CELL PHONE!
So how do you get from the USA to China and then from there to the Great Wall, to the Bund in Shanghai or to downtown Suzhou? Well vehicles, know-how and some technology are very helpful. Where do you start? You have to understand the transportation systems and figure them out. If you are not map-inclined or have a decent sense of direction you are at a distinct disadvantage. Like Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" I have a bit of an internal clock that I can set and sort of know the time all the time. I also pretty much need to and therefore DO know what direction I'm going all the time. Without an internal NORTH to point to you can get hopelessly lost. I have it, it helps a ton, but maybe you don't. Well if you don't you'll have to figure something out because you really need to be able to follow directions and read a map to get anywhere in China, or in life I'd say. If you have no internal north then buy a cheap compass and start using it before you get to China. If you can't get around in your home town you really have no chance in China, don't you think?
OK, enough rambling, where is this going? GETTING AROUND means getting a phone. First let me say that most of China speaks CHINESE and by CHINESE I mean MANDARIN. This is not Cantonese as spoken in SE China and Hong Kong, this is MANDARIN that is spoken by 70%+ of China and much more useful generally. I remember this old German guy I met once, he had been in China 3+ years and had learned a few of the buses and knew enough words in Chinese to get around, sort of. He wasn't really free to go where he wanted, when he wanted. To me he was surviving rather than living. So how do you get past just surviving? By either memorizing all the Chinese characters all at once and getting fluent, or by cheating on it. I choose cheating.
So how do you cheat in Chinese to get around? Well for me I can't go around copying down every little thing into a notebook, no that's not for me. So the very first thing I would highly recommend is to GET A CHINESE CELLPHONE! Yes you can then text yourself Chinese characters, addresses, bus stops, train times.. all kinds of useful stuff. If you want to get fancy you can even have your email delivered to your phone and keep even more stuff on there. OK, sounds great but how hard is it to get this to work?
It is extremely easy. You don't need to speak any Chinese at all and all you need is your passport and a China Mobile store, which are all over the place. No you don't even need an address to do this, just your passport, some money and a basic understanding of how cell phones work anywhere. So how do you do it?
Step 1: Go to China Mobile and notice how they all stare at you. Does the China Mobile store have phones in it for sale? If it does then good, you are in luck! If not go to another one or to any electronics or just about any other store and they will sell you a cell phone. You don't have to have a super nice one, my first one cost me about $15 USD and was a used phone. My daughter's first one as $8 USD and had no charger with it. Luckily we had a charger in our apartment that worked. Anyway, get any phone and buy it. Take it to China Mobile.
Step 2: Get to someone in China Mobile and look blankly at them. Say a few words in English like "I want to get a SIM CARD for my phone". This will accomplish 2 things, first they will be duly impressed that you speak English and 2nd it is the same thing as asking "Excuse me, does anyone in here speak Engliish?". Usually what happens is someone in the store has some English and would love to impress everyone else by using it on you. Be grateful, no matter how bad their English is, chances are your Chinese is worse. Just go with it. The other consequence is that they promote you to "VIP" status in the stores eyes and you will usually get pushed to the front of a line or offered a chair and possibly some very hot water. Just drink it and don't ask why its hot for now.... that will come later.
Step 3: OK so even if no one makes any indication that they speak any English at all, that's fine. No matter where you are or who you are talking to you can open up your phone in front of them and pull out the battery and point at the blank or non-functioning SIM CARD area and say "NEGA" Yes this is your first and possibly only word of Mandarin you will have to have. Nega means "That" while "Diga" means "this". This brings us to our first useful link and it is a good one. I'll post it as #1 on my useful links page. It is a simple link to GOOGLE TRANSLATE at: http://translate.google.cn/?hl=en So you can type in "This" or "That" in English there and it will bring up the Chinese character for it. What good is that? Well besides being cool, it also allows you to hit the speaker button in the corner and it will tell you how to pronounce the word. Hit it over and over really fast and it will start to sound like Max Headroom, but that's not really the point. Practice saying Nega and Diga, you can really use them interchangeably but you will hear them both a lot so use it!
Step 4: OK, so now they probably guess you want a SIM card, that isn't enough. You need to show them what their part of the job is. Pull out your passport and open it up to your picture in the front, point at it, then at the SIM card, then at their computer screen and say "Nega" a few more times. They will get the picture. If that doesn't clue them in pull 200 RMB out of your wallet ($30-35 USD) and it will get them going. The SIM CARD costs about 50 RMB and the rest of the 200 can go on your phone for minutes and texts, etc. Also be sure and have them change your phone to ENGLISH menus before you leave the store, they can do it in Chinese way better than you can. Just say English and point at the phone text a few times and someone will know what you mean. Don't leave the store until you verify the phone is on and working. Also be sure you know what phone # you have.. it will be be on the contract they make you sign three times before giving you the SIM card. I would put yourself in as a contact on your phone under "me" so you can find your phone # again easily.
Step 5: Walk away! That's it!
OK, so now that you have a cell phone in China I should tell you they are NOT like the USA where you get the phone for "free" in exchange for a required monthly service plan of $50 per month for 3 years. You pay the full fair value of the phone and have NO commitments. You pay only for your usage and there is no such thing as an unlimited plan, at least as far as I can tell. You can pay 50-100 RMB for a phone or several thousand if you want the latest and greatest. If you do have a phone already that has a spot for international SIM cards then you can use that too. Your normal small phone usage and texts will probably cost you about $15 USD per month or less though, but just be aware that your phone will eventually just stop working all at once and that is when you know you need to go to any China Mobile place and give them some more money. Just pull out your SIM card, 100 RMB and hand them both like you know what you're doing and they will take care of the rest.
OK, so what was the point of the phone? TEXT MESSAGES! Get a SKYPE account if you don't have one already, add your Chinese Cell Phone as a contact on Skype and then right click on your Chinese Cell # from Skype and select "Send SMS" or text message. It will cost you $0.05 USD per message but it is worth every nickel (literally) Why? So you can get around.
Any place you need to go in all of China you can find out about on the Internet right? Well Chinese taxi drivers and buses do NOT operate in English and almost none of the older generation even reads Pinying, the phonetic alphabet that looks like ours. You must have Chinese Characters written somewhere to get to/from anywhere. That is for the next post though. Let me preview it by saying if you use Google Maps and have any clue where you are at all in China and where you want to go you can find directions either for walking, car or PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. Yes it will tell you what stop to get off at and where to transfer and how long it will take you. You can text yourself directions how to get anywhere in China this way if you can put in an address or point at a spot on the map and right click on it to "Get Directions to Here". That is for tomorrow though. Great stuff though right? I have found it really useful myself!