Skip to main content

Convenience

 Life doesn't exist in the East of China until 10am, with shopping malls and gyms opening on the hour, and closing at the same time at night, 10pm. I was shocked to observe this since it was always thought that Chinese people worked hard long hours. It's normal for shops to open anytime between 9 and 9.30am in the UK, closing between 4 to 5:30pm, though more recently larger supermarkets open between 7am to 11pm if not midnight. The concept of convenience is important in China, with everything being able to be delivered as quickly as possible through the use of an APP. However, Supermarket 'culture' doesn't exist here to the same extent as the West. With it is more common to go to different shops for groceries, meat, fish, and confectionary, to the Western mind, or especially the British expat, this is far from the concept of 'convenience' as supermarkets provide all these products under one roof, and all household related shopping tasks can be done under one roof. Though, I was fairly happy with the supermarket Carrefour as I had no idea how to order anything online yet. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A visit to the Chinese Embassy

In the interview I was asked where I would like to be based, and I had been looking up places and learning about Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities in China. While looking I saw Nanjing was a pretty vibrant place, filled with many expats, but wasn't really 'international' on the same level as 'Shanghai', with the prospect of having a more fully immersive experience in China of learning about the culture and the language. I was told that Nanjing was 'competitive' and was already full, and then the lady suggested Hangzhou because the Olympics in 2015 had meant that many expats had left due to the increase in security and police interference. I looked this up and did some research and saw that it had been nicknamed 'Heaven on Earth', with Westlake as the main attraction....on that I was pretty much sold.  The process had started, and I was getting my online free TEFL certificate as part of the visa requirement that I had to finish before flying to Shanghai. I don...
Post a Comment
Read more

Exploring Hangzhou's Westlake, food and culture: the beginning curiosities

 YoYo took me to the bank because I wanted to see if I would be able to draw money out of my British bank account to at least pay Andy back. I only had 300RMB and I had no idea where to go to buy food, or how, or what anything was. Even though there was an English option I asked YoYo about on the small computer screen, she seemed to dismiss this and was shocked that I had the equivalent of 10 000RMB waiting in my British account. Andy also told me that we had been paid, and that I could submit my expenses from the Uk, including train tickets and visa fees, so I had also already submitted them.  Since this was my first 'real' job, I had only just clicked that companies also pay for the time spent training new employees, which I thought was generous. I checked my Chinese account and noticed 4000RMB, so this, together with the 6000RMB from my British account would be enough to pay Andy in full, and drew a further 2000RMB to tie me over until the next payday.  During the firs...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Training Centre

 YoYo was downstairs in the hotel waiting for me, and she kindly bought me breakfast, though I really wasn't sure what it was and whether I liked it, but she made me eat all of it. It included two tea eggs, that is, eggs marinated in soy sauce and bay leaves for around two days, again with another vegetable baozi, and soy milk, a very traditional Chinese breakfast. I was beginning to understand that Chinese cuisine didn't really have 'breakfast' in the same sense as the West where we generally have different types of food according to the type of day, for example, cereal or eggs on toast in the morning, while fish and chips, lasagne or pies would be served for dinner. From my limited experience in China, they would eat the same food for breakfast as what they would during the rest of the day.  She walked me over to a 'secret' passage in the shopping mall underground, and got the lift to floor 4F on the way to the centre. She introduced me to Andy, who was a rath...
Post a Comment
Read more