Creative Group

After about a week of waiting to be placed in a working environment I was called by one of the first students I had met and he chaperoned me to my work place. I talked though the nature of the group and a short while later it was lunch. After lunch, the guy I already knew had some stuff to do so I returned to the lab to finish up the day with the rest of its members.

The group I was to be part of was a team of about 10 students all working to win as many competitions as possible. Although there was no full time management, a member of staff would occassionally come in to offer a hand. The rest of the time 1 or 2 of the students would keep the team moving although most of the members were also working on their own projects in their spare time. They had a great track record!

We participated in a multitude of competitions and I was given a key. My colleagues were also interested in my work and when I showed them they asked me to give a few talks about a some of the things I had done.

Pizza Hut Celebrity

After a short time in China, some of the Westerners I knew yearned for pizza. There was a Pizza Hut in a shopping center near our campus so we set a time to eat there. When we arrived, we found that there was quite a queue and that it would take 20 minutes to be seated. One of us stayed in the queue while a few others, including me, walked off to do various things. I was about 100 meters away at an ATM when one of the employees ran out to talk to the lone Westerner in line. They were interested in getting me, the tall white guy, to come back the next day and take part in a "party" concerning a new product.

We eventually entered and ate and at the end of the meal they came by to ensure my presence the next day. They were also interested in my one other Westerner of our group, but they had no interest in the rest as they were all ABC or something similar. They wanted white people.

I came back the next day with a couple of friends and they swept me and my white friend aside and explained the evening's activities to us. They wanted us to help introduce the product by sitting on display and eating a new pizza in a "western" way. There were three of us all together and they had each of us pretend to be from different countries. They asked me to eat the pizza from the crust first and then work back towards the center. Another person had to fold the pizza and eat it like that. My friend was asked to roll it into a cylinder and eat it in this way. We were also asked to say a few Chinese words which I could not do well at the time which just added to the mayhem.

After the oddities of pizza were over with, we were ushered to sit with our other friends. Oddly, all the other spectators had been given free pizzas and salads and other things. Our friends however had not been given much at all. The one of us who spoke the best Chinese argued with the manager and eventually got us some free pizza but certainly not enough.

Eventually they started playing games. One in particular included putting a balloon connected to a pump under someone's shirt and pumping it up until it popped. It was all quite strange and amusing.

The pizza we were advertising was stuffed crust. Sadly all their pizzas were quite bad so we tried to avoid Pizza Hut in the future.

Here are a few more pictures from the event.

Pizza Hut Celebrity

Waiting for Appointment

After having met with Ying Fantian I was told that I could move into a lab soon. However, I did not have a good way to contact people at ZJU so for a week or so I had no appointment. This was not a problem as I had only just arrived and was happy to look around Hangzhou more, settle in a little more and make some more friends. And that is what I did. I visited many of the attraction around Hangzhou and started getting a hang of the eating and shopping scene. I also made a lot more friends from all over the world, especially Korea. At this point I was not meeting a lot of Chinese people however that would change a lot in the weeks to come.

Buying a Camera

This photo was one of the first shot with my new camera. Note the exesive noise in dark areas.

After being in China for a week I realised that not having a digital camera on such a trip would be really lame. So I went out and bought one.

Usually when I do things like spending money, I set aside a short while - perhaps a matter of weeks - to decide which product to buy. I care quite a lot about this sort of thing so it was a surprise to me that when it came to buying a digital camera I would not think about it at all and just go shopping.

I told a few of the guys from the lab that I needed to buy a camera and asked if they would show me where cameras could be found. They took me to a digital supermarket which had quite a selection of products and vendors and we strolled around for a while. Realizing these people may be busy next time I could get a camera, I decided to buy one on the spot. My budget was about 6000 RMB and the products I was interested in were prosumers or something close. We looked for quite some time and in the end I decided to buy a little Panasonic.

The next day I was a little sad because it was far too noisy in most situations. After some time I worked out how to take photos that are not bad with it.

Registered Student

As a result of Ying Fantian's return to China I was able to complete my registration and formally become part of ZJU. Although I was registered as an Industrial Design student, the nature of my work there was not really clear. What happened was that I went to the office where registration would occur and they asked me questions like who are you, why are you here, why should we let you study here, who is paying for you to study etc. Of course I did not have all the answers as it was a virtually informal exchange. Ying Fantian had advised me that he could be contacted if there were problems so I presented the registration officer with Ying's phone number and a short conversation between them ensued. After about 2.5 minutes of talking the officer hung up and said, "It will be no problem" and gave me a student card which resembled a small passport. My fees would be payed by the university and I would pay the international student accommodation fee. Still no information on what I would do for the year but that was going to be sorted out later.

Meeting Ying Fantian In China

I had met Ying Fantian a few times by the time I got to China but at no point had we spoken at great length. This is because he can not formally speak English though his is seemingly quite capable of communicating with it. He drove to my dorm in his Jeep Cherokee and Jiang Hao came to get me from my room. We drove around for a while looking for a restaurant and eventually went to a small place that served nice stuff. During our drive we had had a look at another restaurant and, when parking to go in, Ying Fantian decided that the parking garage was inconvenient so we just jumped the curb and parked on the foot path in front of a police person.

During diner we talked about the work that I would do and decided that I should be involved in a few parts of their program starting with a lab of some sort. We decided that for the time being it was impractical for me to go into normal classes because they would all be in Chinese. We also decided that I should be involved with other aspects of their industrial design course and do things like workshops and competitions.

Snow in Hangzhou and West Lake

One morning I woke up, played with my computer and talked to my family online. After a little while I decided to look out the window for fun and found that the ground was lightly covered with snow. I like snow so I called Eugene and we went for a walk.

This time with a map in hand we managed to walk to West Lake, a famous lake in the west of Hangzhou. It was gorgeous. We walked around for a while before realizing it was cold outside. We then returned to the dormitories and had lunch.

My clothes and feet were made completely wet by the snow. A quite upsetting experience.

First (Illness and Australians)

I am a sickly person so after a few days of not eating and changing flavours of air I fell ill to something like a cold. I spent the day in bed and rejected an offer for lunch with Jiang Hao and some unknown girl.

Later that afternoon I got another invitation by Eugene to dinner and because I was feeling a bit better and hungry I went along. At dinner I met some of his new friends, a group of Australians from UTS. They were all there studying Chinese, although a few of them were already quite proficient. At that point I did not know much about people in Sydney so I was a little skeptical.

At the end of the meal they asked me to join them all in drinking but I was still not that well so I went back to bed.

My First Interaction with ZJU Students

Though I met someone and had started eating I was still worried that my involvement with the actual school might be flawed. I spoke no Chinese and I had no contacts in the design faculty at ZJU at that point. I was still thinking about moving to Foshan (where Fan Ginsong worked). Contacting Australia was futile as there were numerous problems with email and phones at that point. Eventually my father contacted Simon Curlis directly, who asked some of the people in one of the labs at ZJU to contact me. They did later that afternoon and took me to see a lab (later to be known to me as Lab 318) which at that point was in a state of change. I looked at the work of a few of the lab members in particular Dr. Yao and Jiang Hao. They both work with Maya and Jiang and I discussed this at length. Later he and I went do dinner back at the Liu She Shan Shetang. Life was good.

That afternoon I was informed I would meet Ying Fantian the coming weekend and we could discuss my work for the year.

First Contact

A few days after landing I met the first person I could effectively communicate with. I met him during a lunch time meal in the dinning hall at the base of the building I was living in. I was placed at a table with one other person by a waitress. At the time he seemed to be Chinese so I just sat and waited for food. After a few moments he asked if I spoke English and we stuck together for the next few months.

His name is Eugene. H is from the Philippines and was at ZJU to study Chinese and carry on some business, which at this point was undisclosed.

Comunication Confusion

After "settling in" and eventually starting to eat again, I remembered that I used to talk to people sometimes. At that time I could not remember who but I know that I did talk to people and for some reason I almost missed the feeling. My parents would call me on a daily basis as I had no way to call them because I did not know how the phone system worked. I could talk to them, but the inkling I had, had reminded me of a time when I would talk to other people as well.

After a few days I thought language might cause a problem. I had mutually communicated with about 3 people since landing, including ones in other countries. The two people in China that I knew at that point were Ying Fantian and Fan Ginsong. Ying, my to-be director was in Australia on holiday and Fan lives in another province. Ying was to come to town a week later and sort everything out then.

I could not talk to people. I wanted to find a solution that would let me talk to people, so I started thinking about switching to Fan's university where he told me there were a number of master students who would speak some English. Obviously I did not end up doing this, as eventually I got a response from a few more of my contacts.

Liu Xue Sheng Shitang

The dining hall at the base of my dormitory, which I eventually learnt was called the Liu Xue Sheng Shitang in Chinese (literally, "International Students' Dining Hall") was a rather good example of Chinese methodology. Eating there involved first going to a desk and ordering. For those who did not speak Chinese, this meant pointing at some pictures or a list of dishes they would hand you when noticed. As you ordered they would write the dishes you wanted on a piece of paper then add the prices up and total it. You would pay them and be handed a receipt with three layers. You then need to sit which can happen by handing your receipt to a serving person and letting them chose your spot or just sitting down. Either way the serving person for your part of the dinning hall would write the table number on the receipt then take one of the layers. After a short time the first of your dishes would arrive at a local hub with a counter and some plates and chopsticks and other supplies. When plates arrived at these hubs they would have clothes pins labeling the destination table clipped to the rim. Another serving person would then pick it up and deliver it to your table at this point they would take another of the layers of the receipt. Eventually all your food would arrive and the final receipt would be taken.

To get a drink you could either by a bottle of something from the other end of the ordering counter or just pay for a paper cup which you could then fill from a cola machine. If you got a bottle they would bring you plastic cups when you sat down.

The dinning hall seated about 250 people and was often quite crowded. It had many serving staff and they would often shout things to one another. Occasionally people would argue about this and that but usually it was a more uniform roar of everyone talking. A great place for meetings.

The food was edible and very cheap so I went there quite a bit at the start of my stay.

Settling In

For the first few days in China I had still not eaten for some reason. It was not that I was sick or anything, I was just too busy not eating and walking or sleeping or laying on my bed looking at the ceiling, to actually eat. This may seem strange but in fact I did not realize that I had not had a meal until a few days later. I had bought a few little pieces of food, like a piece of bread, or some yogurt but that was it.

Apart from not eating, I spent my time as might be imagined. The first day I thought it would be nice to see West Lake and, having a relatively good natural sense of direction, I set out to walk there. I walked in a large square that I thought should intersect the lake early on. I found out later that the stadium near the school was actually round and I had walked around it a little too far. So my square of walking that afternoon completely avoided the lake and instead took to some parts of Hangzhou that I would frequent later in my stay.

The rest of these days was spent on the internet or, as I said, sleeping and laying on my bed.

Arriving at Zhejiang University

At first the taxi driver did not know where the International College was. This caused only minor problems as he asked a student inside the campus and soon found the right place to go. When we arrived, I walked down a slope with my luggage and entered the building I would live in for the next year.

So far, so good.

I then had find out if there were any rooms. Not speaking any Chinese proved to make this more difficult but I managed (by way of an administrator who had given me his mobile phone number) to get a temporary room for the next few days until things were sorted out.

After putting my stuff down I remembered that humans are meant to eat and looked for some food. By this time it was about 10 pm so the restaurants nearby were already closed. There was a shop nearby but for some reason I did not go there and found an internet connection location instead. Using this I emailed my family saying I had arrived and gave them my room's phone number so they could call me. They did so a few hours later and my life in China started.

Arriving in Hangzhou

The bus from Shanghai Pu Dong Airport took about 3 hours and by the time we got to Hangzhou it was dark. We had made a few stops along the way, one of which I had thought may be mine but someone convinced me otherwise. When we reached our actual destination I proceeded to de-bus and found myself in front of a large stadium which I later discovered was just walking distance from my school. I caught a taxi and presented the driver with a piece of paper in Chinese about what to do with me. This was effective enough and I was taken in through the back gate of Zhejiang University.

Ariving in China

My trip took me from Gainesville FL, my home town, to Charlot NC then LA CA where I had an all night layover. I then flew to Vancouver Canada and finally to Shanghai China. When I landed it was mid afternoon and after getting though customs I found a way to get to Hangzhou. I was aware of a bus service that would take me there but I was also aware that it stopped early in the afternoon. Luckily I was ready to go before this time and managed to catch the last one out.

My first impression was quite good. Everything was going pretty well. I was happy to see a new place and content in most other ways. On the bus ride to Hangzhou, I found that China seemed like a nice environment and that the people were quite friendly. I did not understand anything of the Chinese language at this point.

Leaving for China

When I left Australia at the end of second year, I was not sure where I would live for the following year. There were a number of options and I had a number of opinions on what I would like but there was truly no concrete preference of what should actually happen. Basically, the options available to me were as follows:

1. Go on exchange to China for the whole of 2006
2. Go on exchange for one semester and then return to Australia or decide to stay on for another one in China
3. Go on exchange to South America
4. Go back to Australia for the first semester and then go to China in the second
5. Just go back to Australia.

The options go on...

After being in Gainesville Fl for a few weeks I started emailing Simon Curlis and other involved people in Australia and things were still equally as vague. Things continued this way until communication stopped all together, which I later found out was due to Simon having been involved in a motorcycle accident. It was quite serious so I started interacting more with Soumitri Varadarajan, the RMIT Industrial Design Course director at the time.

Eventually I found out some details about the people in China that I would need to contact and got together with a Chinese speaking colleague of my father's to communicate with them. We tried to call them but, unfortunately, it was Spring Festival (the major Chinese holiday of the year) so no one was at the school. Ying Fantian, the course director at ZJU, who we tracked down to Australia, was able to be contacted and he suggested I just come to China and we would sort things out later.

In the last week before I would have to leave America to go to either RMIT or ZJU I started to worry a little. No tickets had be bought and I did not have a visa for China, nor did I have the required medical documents and so forth. I decided it would be worthwhile to try to go to China so I bought the cheapest ticket I could find, a week before my departure date. As a backup I also bought a ticket to Australia for the same day so if I could not get the visa in time I could at least get to RMIT on time for the start of term. I sent off my passport 4 days before my flights to try to get a fast visa. In the meantime, I worked to find some sort of lodging in China and fix other requirements of the trip. I sorted out the medical stuff but accommodation was still uncertain. My visa returned and I decided that I would go to China. I packed some things and that was that. I made a lot of phone calls that week.