The Staton family is finally all together and settled in China. I (Rob) had some… err… visa issues to get through, so Alanna and the kiddos had to go to China all by themselves for a few weeks. Well all, eventually, took the same route though: Drive to Nashville àFly To San Francisco àFly to Hong Kong à Take a Ferry to Mainland China. Let me just tell you, the flight from the US to Hong Kong was sooooo long. It was overnight thankfully, but still… long way over there. The flight took off and headed northwest towards Alaska, then west, west, west, more west, the southwest over Japan and then finally down towards China. I could have watched Avengers:Endgame 3 or 4 times on the flight. I did watch it once though. Well OK, I watched the final fight scene about 5 times.
Arriving in Hong Kong, we were a little worried for me because there had been protests at the airport all week long. On the day of my arrival though, all seemed pretty quiet. I was also in the international terminal area, on the other side of security, so I don’t think the protesters would have been close to where I was anyway. I did forget to charge my phone on the plane though, so it took me a bit and a good amount of Alanna freaking out over WhatsApp until I found the one USB port I could plug into while I waited on the ferry ticket window to open. Fast forward 4 hours later, I’ve got my ticket and I’m aboard a lovely ferry across the South China Sea. I was worried about going through customs in China, because I was the one with all the electronics in my bags. TSA had hassled me about all my stuff in San Fran, and I was sure China would be more strict with my bags. Turns out I was wrong. I got off the ferry, collected my bags, showed them my passport, then ran my 4 bags through the security scanner with no problem at all. They didn’t need to check anything and even helped me put the luggage back on my rolling cart.
My new employer arranged for a driver to pick me up and take me to our new place. He also stopped by a local cell phone store to get me quickly hooked up with a Chinese sim card. Rolling into my complex, I saw Alanna and Abby waiting for me outside. Logan, well, he was upstairs playing on his tablet, per his usual way of life. We’re on the 17thfloor which, yes, seems pretty high up, but our tower has 31 floors in it, so we ain’t as high as we could be. Our place has lovely AC in every room though. This is a coastal area, so it’s HOT here during the summer, with August being the hottest.
This first week has been mostly settling in and getting our work visa process continued along the path of completion. Part of getting the work permit is getting a health physical. Both Alanna and I had to go to a local clinic, hospital, doctor… place. It was multiple floors and they just run you through a series a rooms. First they checked my height weight and blood pressure. The next room was a blood test and a urine test. Eventually they did some type of physical where a doctor groped me for a bit. There was also an EKG, or ECG, I dunno, and then finally an ultrasound. Thankfully, there were no babies in my belly. I think I got a clean bill of health.
You also have to go register at the local police station. I, of course, screwed that up the first day. You have to bring a rental contract from your place of residence, which I didn’t have, because Alanna had it for her police check. So I had to get that from the better half, then go back the next day. All done there.
The kiddos start school on Monday, so I’ve been playing stay-at-home dad this week while Alanna works. We also have an Ayi, which is kind of like a maid, a chef, and a childcare provider all rolled into one. Her name is Lien Yi. No, I don’t really know how to say that. She’s very nice though. But she doesn’t speak a lick of English. Nor do any of us dumb Americans speak Chinese, so conversations can be very interesting to say the least. Nice, hard working lady. No complaints there. I’ll start work next week, but for now, we’re just spending our days trying to master the terrible internet and exploring outside. We’ve found a Burger King within a 5 minute walk, so our kids can eat not so healthy food like they are used to for now.
We visited our first mall last night. There was another Burger King and a KFC, but we decided to try some of the local fare. There are plenty of Chinese style restaurants, but we tried to pick something that would have dishes for the kiddos as well. The spot is called JasonVI. No, not Friday the 13th Part 6. It had a large menu with a ton of selections. Of course there wasn’t much for the kids, but we figured they might like the French toast and French fries. And… they hated them. The French toast was amazing though! Had peanut butter inside it! The adults got some chicken wings, lamb, some lovely dessert cake thing as well. We didn’t have any napkins though. We asked for them, and they brought us a few tiny ones in plastic bags. I looked around and noticed no one else was using napkins. Were we just dumb Americans and didn’t understand? My best guess – Chinese use chopsticks for everything, so their fingers don’t get messy. So I ate my chicken wings with chopsticks. It worked, kind of. Halfway through our meal, Logan spilled water all over his lap. Something like this happens pretty much whenever we go out. If you have kids, you know. The staff quickly swarmed us and wanted to helped. Alanna pantomimed for a towel, but they shook their heads, went away and came back 10 seconds later with… a hair dryer. I kid you not. Is this something they just have on hand for times like this? They wanted to get up and blow dry Logan’s shorts dry. Which we did, to the best of our ability. Well, Alanna did. I just sat there and laughed the whole time. The food though… was the bomb. Alanna and I loved every single thing we put in our mouth. And there was a lot of it. How much did it cost? $20 bucks for all of it. And you do NOT tip in China, so it was just $20.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten half the stuff that has already happened, so I’ll end this first blog with some random thoughts in no particular order.
- We get stared at everywhere we go. Alanna thinks it’s my beard. But our kids get looks too. 99.9% of the peeps here are Chinese. So us crazy looking white folk stick out like sore thumbs. Even babies stare at us. One kid ran away from his Mom just to come to have a better look.
- We aren’t supposed to flush our toilet paper in our apartment. So… when we do our business, the spent TP goes into the trash can. Thankfully the Ayi cleans that up.
- China’s landscape is gorgeous. I mean GORGEOUS. We’re in a coastal area that also is surrounded by mountains. The forests are lush and green. And there are islands all over the sea.
- The internet is blocked by the great firewall. To get to anything remotely American, you need a VPN.
- Have you ever seen all those sites where there are badly translated English sayings on t-shirts? Those are real. They are hilarious. They are all over the place.
- Driving here is a little crazy. They just get so close, pull out in front of you, and generally don’t obey any laws known to mankind.
- We’re in the future here. We’re 12 hours ahead of east coast, USA. So when you’re awake, I’m usually sleeping.
Ok, that’s surely enough reading for now. Ya’ll take care out there.
A few more pics…
