Many people (or maybe it is just me) float through their lives today without thinking about the little details that might make day-to-day life a little better (or worse). Such as funny names. Everybody likes a funny name, no? The other day, a friend and colleague of mine was discussing potential Christmas presents for family members, and I suggested a day out at an amusement park for one of their younger siblings. Then I mentioned that I hadn’t been to “Green Grove” – this is the direct translation of the name of an amusement park in a European capital city, gold star if you can figure out which one – for ages. Cue a procrastinatory half-an-hour of translating non-English proper nouns into English and amusing ourselves (…myself) over the effect. The consensus is that they are often (non-)descriptive, twee, or unflattering.
Exhibit A:
Beijing.
“Southern ditch mud river.”
Exhibit B:
Stockholm. (The sign is the white-on-black text. Don’t get distracted by the doodles.)
“(The) Raspberry mountains.”
Elephant and Castle? What’s that?
Any further contributions are most welcome in the comments!
Today’s post is actually a public service announcement.
If you, especially if you are an early career researcher who does not have huge budget freedoms, wish to travel to China for work or leisure, I say, excellent for you! The road, rail, and air networks are relatively expansive, and there should be a way to get to most places. However, if you wish to commence or visit a city that is not an international hub (most of these are situated on China’s enormous coast from east to south), but still a large enough city, air or rail may be your best bet.
Travel agents (or “ticket offices”) can be easily found in cities – there is one in the PKU campus – who will be able to provide both ticketing services, as well as general advice on travel and routes. The basics are as follows:
you will need ID, preferably passport, for buying any and all tickets and travelling.
Prices on flights will fluctuate depending on how long you buy them before the date of travel;
prices on trains will not.
The high-speed trains all have service codes beginning with G, and are the prime choice of many who want to travel between large cities and massive cities. They are air-conditioned.
Not all trains are air-conditioned.
Make sure you are headed for the right station, as most of the larger cities have multiple stations at different ends of town, and are commonly denoted by cardinal direction. (North 北 bei3; South 南 nan2; East 东 dong1; West西xi1. It’s also possible that there will be a “city station” 城 cheng2.)
A train station is a “火车站 （huo3che1zhan4）”, and an airport is a “机场 （i1chang3）”. A stop is “站 （zhan4）”.
N.B. The numbers in the romanised spellings of the Chinese characters indicate which of the four sounds the word should take.
Finally, remember your pot noodle for the train, and also that the hot (drinking) water is free, the cold (drinking) water is bottled, and you need to buy it.
Now, you may choose your destination…
Where do you want to go?
This is an example of how a ticket vendor may display the choice of destinations: the yellow titles are the names of provinces, followed by a list of cities within.
P.S. Of course, coaches are available to smaller places, but not always for the faint-of-heart, and, by my own experiences, you’re better off travelling on those only if you are confident in your Chinese.
P.P.S.Finally – driving. I would not go there myself unless I had time to take extra driving lessons specifically in Chinese traffic. So much for optimism!
The Prof: “[…] so that’s all good for planning; what do you want to do afterwards?”
Me: “Well, I was just going to actually get this PhD first, while keeping an eye out, taking contacts down along the way…”
The Prof: *disdained* “Don’t you have an idea as to where you want your career to go?”
Me: “Of course I do, I just don’t want to get distracted right now.”
The Prof: “But you still need to tell me where you want to go after this degree, so that I can introduce you to the right people.”
Is this commonplace in British doctoral supervision, or is this usually an implicit practice?
I was also much thanked for bringing gifts, then instructed not to “indulge in bad Chinese habits” (i.e. the gift-giving).
BONUS food pictures:
Some days you arrive at lunch already full with the disappointment of lacking hunger. This was not one of those days.The most decent coffee I’ve found on campus so far, accompanied by “Cheese Taste”.So where is my cheese? There is taro cream and red beans in here – delicious – but the cheese is notably absent.
Access to internet is still as undetermined as my cultural identity at this point, and I am writing to you in an internet café that smells a bit iffy depending on which corner of which you choose to sit in. (The background music is currently Russian pop.) So I hope you will accept this measly excuse for the lack of update thus far. Especially that take on Qatar Airways I promised some of you. Here’s a teaser: there was a lot of strong flavours, some of which did not entirely agree with my constitution. Furthermore, I had a G&T on my way out, to calm my nerves. As somebody who makes it a rule not to drink on flights due to a propensity of skin-dryness, this was a bad idea for a multitude of reasons.
Otherwise I overshot the de-jet lagging targets by quite a few hours, and woke up at 3 am last night. Not good. But I have re-started all the administrative parts of student life, and am trying to get used to not cooking – all students eat at the heavily subsidised canteens (with admittedly excellent home-cooked food) here, and I barely have a kitchen in my building.
My supervisor on the Chinese front is currently away on Japan, so I am taking this week as my settling-in-week, and re-greeting my friends, not to mention drafting up a big spreadsheet of skype dates and research-goals for each fortnight. Heh.
The Real World for Young People 