First month

Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never.

It certainly took me a bit long to write my first post but here it is. It seems much longer but I arrived only one month ago. My Chinese experience in Beijing at Tsinghua University began exactly one month ago. It’s been a month full of new things and surprises but the adaptation was quicker than one can expect. It’s easy when you find yourself surrounded by other people in your same situation and by local people willing to help you with anything you need.

During the first days (and later on too) there were many administrative stuff to settle: registration process, dinning card, course registration, student ID, residence permit… The information provided by the university was basically none at most of the moments, so we had to figure out by ourselves how things work out in here. Actually there was a welcome meeting where we got all that useful information we needed… only that it came a bit later, when everything was already done.

Military training (for freshmen, not us)

Apart from that, there are some other basics that you need to take care of during the first days: getting a bike, a Chinese SIM card and a water dispenser.

The campus is HUGE and you can’t manage to move around just walking, it takes too long. There are many shops in campus where you can buy a relatively not-bad-quality bike at a very reasonable price. I paid 230yuan (around 30€) for this beauty, including the locker.

我的自行车 – Wǒ de zìxíngchē

Besides, it’s really fun go riding anywhere, especially off campus. Traffic lights don’t mean too much here, so enjoy the journey but be careful.

If it’s difficult to get offline at home, it’s not different in China. Once you get your Chinese card, first app you download is WeChat and all of you know about the group chats and the annoying notifications, right? Anyway, it’s the price to pay if you don’t wanna be isolated from human civilization (and group chats are even fun some times, don’t you think?).

The water dispenser is not essential, but it’s pretty handy. Cheaper than buying water at the supermarket and delivered at home, plus hot water. What else?

Running out of water? Call the waterman!

Dorms

“Tsinghua University Asian Youth Center”, that’s the name of our dorm building, better known as “Building 6”.  The building looks very new and the rooms are quite ok and big enough. We got shared AB rooms, what means we share a kind of living room and the bathroom but we have individual bedrooms.

No complain at all… except for the hot water supply. Hot water hours are between 6:30 – 9:30 and 19:00 – 00:00. Which means, cold shower if you get up late or no shower til the evening. Oh wait, one more complain: no kitchen. Well, there is technically a “kitchen”. An empty one. So yeah, if you wanna cook, get all the kitchen stuff by yourself, including the electric stove or the oven.

This is a new residence program started by Tsinghua this year which offers the possibility to international and Chinese students to live together. So that’s it. Each one of us, foreign students, have a Chinese roommate. The coexistence in the building is wonderful. Always someone to hang around with, always people in some room (let’s say for example 610?), hotpots, fruits, movies, mahjong… kind of home.

Family hotpot

Food

The lack of kitchen is compensated with the large amount of canteens in the campus and with their extremely affordable prices. A typical meal costs around 8-12 yuan (yes, 1 – 1,5€) and it can be something like this:

Lunch/dinner

Every meal is a surprise, cause you don’t get to find out what are you eating, but as long as you like it it’s okay. Just one thing: if you don’t like rice, you’ve come to the wrong place my friend. Chinese food is… different. As I said, it’s a surprise. But I like it. Some dishes are very spicy, but I like spicy so not really a problem (even if I feel hot to death I really enjoy it). I’ve already tried many good things but so far, my favorite one is the málà xiāng guō –  麻辣香锅. It’s a hot pot, with the ingredients that you choose, cooked somehow and served with rice (of course). This is the first one I tried:

麻辣香锅 – Málà xiāng guō

I will definitely keep on showing food pictures in the future.

School

I’ve been thinking and making some changes in my courses til the last day available. I’ve tried to manage as well as I could to attend to some Chinese courses even without getting the credits.

I’ve got some problems with my Final Year Project/Dissertation/Thesis/whatever. Apparently, I can’t present it here and I’m not getting credits nor official grade for it. Solution? Find a tutor back home, find a coordinator here, work on it here and get my mark back in Spain. Not a big difference if I manage to find the teachers to help me out.

经济管理学院 – Jīngjì Guǎnlǐ Xuéyuàn

Places

Tsinghua University is located in northwest Beijing, in the Haidina district, nexto Beijing University, very near to Wǔdàokǒu – 五道口, a popular neighborhood among students. Plenty of restaurants (local, Korean, western…), pubs, clubs and… KTVs! A must-go in China.I don’t unverstand why karaokes aren’t so popular in Europe. When you go to a KTV you find out that there are some people who can really sing and who really know the lyrics. Such a pity that you are not one of them… Anyway, it’s always a great time there.

Haven’t seen that much of the city yet, but I found the time to visit some of the most popular places: Tiān’ānmén – 天安门, the Forbidden City – 故宫 and to do some other interesting things, like eating scorpions in Wángfǔjǐng – 王府井 or camping at the Great Wall.

So, after this first month, I can say I’m happy here. Except from the pollution ( air is becoming unbreathable last days) I like Beijing, I like its chaos, I like the campus, the food, the dorm and I love the people. Even if it’s too soon to tell, I have a very good feeling about this year.

Warm hugs guys,

Zàijiàn! -再见!