Visiting Xian Yan

September 18, Sunday – Today was Chuseok. BJun went out for a walk early in the morning. She saw a lot of women wearing Hanbok(Korean’s traditional clothes) and men wearing coat. Many of them were holding some presents, such as food and wine on their hands. There were some stalls selling food and with the label “fu”, which means prosperity in Chinese. It is like their second Chinese New Year. Some families give some like angpows on this day as well. Public transports, such as bus and subway were operating as usual.

BJun, Ryan, Yushu and I departed to Xian Yan, a China girl’s new apartment at around 1.20pm. We saw some Korean students studying on the way there. Xian Yan used to stay in our dormitory before moving down. She is a teacher from a university in Shanghai, currently doing her Masters in Multimedia. Our university actually has a few hostels around. Her new place is the blue apartment located very near to UIT building. The place is very quiet. It has a few 5 storey blocks. Some families and local students stay there as well. The university only bought up several units of the apartment there as hostel. Her apartment is located on the 5th floor of the last building. There are 3 rooms there, 2 big rooms for twin sharing and 1 single room. She’s staying there with another 4 girls. She is taking the single room. It is quite small but very homely. There is no fridge, fan, air-condition, or heater in the apartment. The kitchen is very small and unable to cook. There is something special about the floor, it will be heathen up during winter and the whole house will be warm. According to her, using the heater is very dry. The heater in the toilet there is very weird. It can only be used after 6pm.

She had shared with us her experience and life in Shanghai as well. People in Shanghai have their own dialect. But, we never heard of it in Malaysia. She commented that most Shanghai people do not migrate to other places. Even if they go overseas for work or study, they will eventually return to Shanghai. Despite their dialect, everyone in China knows Mandarin. The standard of living in Shanghai is quite high compared to other regions, almost the same as in Malaysia. There is a huge difference between the prices in the small shops and bigger shops. The price of the bigger shops is almost the same as the price in Korea. For restaurants, the small shop and the bigger shop maybe selling the same menu, with the same ingredients and taste at a different price. The only difference is the environment and the plates used to serve. They can actually cheap imported stuff from small shops. There are many foreigners and small streets in Shanghai. Normally, foreigners from the same country will automatically stay together, forming in a mini town in Shanghai. It maybe something weird but, for areas populated by Koreans in Shanghai, the hawkers there maybe speaking in Korean instead of Chinese. Foreigners who want to study in Shanghai must pass their university’s Chinese language proficiency test. This is because the classes are conducted in Mandarin.

We took some photos with her on the top of the apartment and then departed back to the dormitory.