At the Tianjin hotel

10/08/02
Today I moved to Tianjin天津, approximately half an hour down the road from Beijing by super-new-train, about 3 hours in the car~ The road was packed with bulk trucks carrying everything from watermelons to toxic chemicals (all in trucks that looked half eroded), there were about 2 serious accidents along the way (one involved a truck and Volkswagen going headlong in to each other) and a load of road works. Apparently in China it is completely acceptable to use the fresh, cordoned-off tarmac as a road if you can’t be bothered queuing (Being English, this nearly killed me). There is also no concept of indicating, undertaking is perfectly allowed and ramming your car in to the side of another is a perfectly reasonable way of shifting lanes
Having said that, I like Tianjin more than Beijing on the face of it: Beijing is very modernist (shiny and silver), whereas Tianjin seems to combine European and Chinese architecture, as a result everything’s pretty decorative and colourful (but TOTALLY Chinese -> Nowhere in Europe looks remotely like this ). All the sky-scrapers are spaced out more, as well, so you feel less like an insignificant ant that has no hope of ever reaching the huge shopping centre at the end of the road *weekend trauma* Will charge my camera up and finally take some pictures as well tomorrow~
At the hotel the porter (zomg, yeah, there are, like, porters here :o) attempted to avoid my 29kg bag but Peter forced him to take it *frail-white-woman* Felt sorry for the guy, he did cart it up to floor 36~ The hotel staff all look like they’ve been shot whenever I try to speak in Chinese as well… apparently my pronunciation is that bad *sob*
HOWEVER! This shall all change, as Claire (Yanjie?), one of the girls in charge of Railway shipment at the office, has taken it upon herself to chat to me solely in Chinese… This can only be good They’re all really nice in the office and gave me chocolate when it hit 6pm <3 The work is actually a lot more interesting when you’re on a Chinese computer and my vocab has probably increased by about 50 characters today – mainly words I should know already *bad Becka* I was a bit bored because (and this is what also happened in the UK office) they all assumed I know nothing so I spent the afternoon observing Claire work. She did chat to me quite a bit though and I asked a few questions in Chinese, which made it more interesting than the UK~ I’ve asked to maybe do something productive though, ‘cos a month of watching others fill out forms and explain their purpose will kill me~ As it is, apparently they’re bringing in a new computer system soon, so they’ll need someone to fill out the client database *ZING*
Hmmm, probably going to bed now – Since yesterday I’ve been taking a few bites of each meal and feeling completely stuffed, either my stomach is queasily adjusting or Chinese food is really filling *pot-belly*