Flavor of the week

I forgot all about this weeks Flavor of the week!
It was a tough choice, but here it is, the Flavor of the week:
*Drum roll*
Kiwi flavored chips!

So how does it taste? Like normal salty chips but with a touch of kiwi. It is really not as bad as it seems. No worries Jonas, I will bring you a sample when I come home.

I must also publish a picture of my latest shampoo, recommended by the good people of Ningbo and Jackie Chan.

♪♫ Everybody bought Kung Fu shampoo! *Didilidi didi li di diii* ♪♫

The shampoo goes perfect with my new Chinese haircut I got today. Maybe it will be shown in a picture or two later.

Today we will hit the city center in order to consume alcohol and practice dancing. Well earned if you ask me. I am very much looking forward to it. Cheers!

The plans for today and more

Good morning Europe and good day China!

The afternoon's lecture was canceled and we do not complain. The weather is beautiful and it was a long time ago since I saw such a blue sky. To good to spend the afternoon inside a classroom. I must study really, but I will skip it at head down town for shopping clothes with Armin. We are also in the need of a tailor's skills because Armins pants has a couple of extra holes and my pair is too long. The tailor charges 3 RMB per pants so it is really cheap, but usually we pay her extra for the good work.

The tailor and Hong Wan Peng, a friendly local

If there is time enough we will try a local tea house along with some of the other foreigners, and after that we will most probably go to a club for some drinks. Andy, a new Chinese friend will show us some places. I have been  to a few bars for foreigners but I do not really like it. I can visit such places at home and I really do want to connect with the Chinese people.

The past week has been filled with studies, studies and studies. I had an examination this Wednesday in Statistical methods and I think it went OK. There will be another re-exam in one month if I fail this one, and it will not be a problem. Due to all studies I put the blog on low priority as you may understand.
I will dedicate this weekend to fun activities, I could really use that now. Just working makes me a bit dull.
And oh! I got a job offer  from the international student coordinator which I accepted. The job is about teaching English to the local police officers during evenings. That can be challenging and fun! I can also learn something from it and the pay is really good. A full time English teacher can earn about 10 000 RMB a month. Compare that with a normal salary of 3000 RMB/month. China lacks of such teachers and the demand is very high. Some classmates teaches English to kids and are payed 200 RMB/hour.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend! Hopefully I will update the blog with new happenings, but have lots of catching up to do as well about old events. More things happens than I have time to write about. No complaining here, I love it!

Interviewed by Chinese TV

Last Thursday my friend Armin and I were interviewed by a Chinese TV-channel and it were broad casted the same evening on the 18:00 news. Of course there is a story behind this;

About 2 months before I moved to Ningbo I was reading about the city in forums on the Internet. On ningboguide.com I found a post with the topic "Can you help this girl?". I started to read the post and was caught by the story. Short version; It was about a girl who worked as a nanny for a British/Chinese couple. The girl became very ill and was dying. The nice couple took her in but could not finance her treatment by themselves. They turned to the citizens for help in order to buy a dialysis machine. The whole story about Penny can be found here:  http://www.ningboguide.com/node/5613

Kath, our international student coordinator, told us about the story last Tuesday and I thought it seemed familiar. The Wanli university and the Ningbo group needed 2 foreign volunteers to represent the school in a meeting with the girl. Since I have been following the story for 3 months I saw an opportunity to meet the girl, so I gladly signed up along with Armin. We were suppose to hand over an envelope with money, flowers and a fruit basket. We added some money ourselves. The bouquet of flowers was huge! And the fruit basket as well, it was heavy to carry. I couldn't help my self thinking that it might have been better to give the girl money instead of spending it on flowers and fruit.

On Thursday morning a car picked us up an drove us to the family's apartment. After the 30min drive we stepped out of the car and became a bit surprised. We were met by a TV-team and a photographer from a newspaper along with other visitors such as 2 kids from an elementary school and Craig, the founder of Ningboguide.com. In the apartment we delivered the load of presents and had a nice chat with Terry, the husband, and we exchanged a few words with the girl, Penny (Yu Ping), over a cup of coffee. The news team interviewed most people in the room, including Armin and me. It was kind of lousy and very hard to understand the reporter. I had to "freestyle" a bit and surprisingly a clip with me in it appeared on the TV-screen later that evening. They said something about the American student "Han Sen", hehe. You can watch the clip at this adress:
http://www.nbtv.com.cn/video/index.asp?channel=1&contentid=120100319062000
Story starts at 08:08 minutes and the part with Armin and I starts at about 09:20 minutes. I had problems watching it in Chrome but IE works well. The site is Chinese so the connection might be a bit slow.

I must admit it was kind of cool to be subtitled in Chinese.

If you have any interest in the story about Penny please read the forumpost on Ningboguide.com, and don't hesitate to contact Penny's family on friendsxofxpenny@gmail.com if you can help in any way.

Just for the show

I am not going to write anything interesting, I just wanted to show you how things are looking on my balcony now(08:03 CET). We have 29°C at the moment and it feels just wonderful, but I must study. Then I got the brilliant idea of moving my job out to the balcony. Imagine sunny 29°C, the fragrance of newly cut grass and a cold drink... This is how it may look like:

Tomorrow is a good day for purchasing real furnitures for the balcony.

Also, Simon took this picture while we were having lunch earlier today.

Taxi ride down town

I don't have that much time to write today but I need to update the blog with something. Yesterday my friend Armin and I took a taxi to Tiyanyi square down town of Ningbo for shopping. The plan was to buy a camera support for my Nikon, but we ended up with lots of clothes instead after 6 hours of shopping. Armin filmed the ride with my camera, and here is a short sample:


It was good to have Armin as my wingman during the shopping. He showed me different styles and I bought clothes that I am not used to wear. I am very much enjoying my new style and I do not think that my friends in Sweden would recognize me if they saw me now. It is amazing how you can surprise yourself. I must  upload a few pictures later.

A very exciting thing happened today. Armin and I were interviewed by Chinese TV and newspaper and it was shown on the 18:00 news. I will post the whole story tomorrow when the TV-station uploads the clip on their website. I must say it was kind of cool to be subtitled on Chinese TV :-)

Flavor of the week

Last week I wrote about a bag of blueberry crisps that I bought. This week is dedicated to the flavor of cucumber. How does it taste? Not to bad really. Like ordinary potato crisps but with the fresh taste of cucumber. I give it 4/5 toasts. But then again, I like almost everything here. But I am becoming tired of tofu. I do not think I can ever get used to the smell when it is being cooked.

What else is new? Today is my first class in Taiji. I am not sure if it is the traditional 'Tai chi' or the Kung Fu. Does not matter how many times I've asked about the difference, the only answer I get is "yes". For this event and for other sport activities, I went to the mall on the lunch break to buy a pair of running shoes. I found a pair of very comfortable shoes for the humble price of 129 RMB. 

The day started at 08:00 with International Business. The professor of this course speaks excellent English, which is very rare for this country. She is also very effective. What she manages  to teach us in one days is about the same as we learned in 3 days back home, so it is quite intense. We also have this teacher in Chinese Economy and International Trade Operations. However, I will change the last mentioned course to International Management, since there isn't much new for me to learn. Management will hopefully be more valuable. On the schedule for the rest of the day was Chinese intensive writing and speaking/listening. Quite hard but we learned a lot today.

I was planning to write about the trip to Hangzhou but I am leaving that to another time. You will need to satisfy with the pictures for now. I will start to write about Chinese culture, girls, food etc, but there is so much to write about along with many activities besides that. Mingtien jìan! (See you tomorrow)

Slightly disappointed

During our trip to Hangzhou yesterday I received a call from a Swede called Robert. He asked me if I wanted to act guest speaker at some seminar today. It may seem like a short notice but we talked about it one week ago. The subject I was going to talk about is connected to my thesis, attitudes about safety and cultural awareness. The audience is a mix of Swedish students, Chinese professors and professionals from the logistic industry, a total amount of about 40 people. A presentation in English felt like a challenge and an opportunity to learn something, so I accepted. Of course I felt a bit nervous right after the call because I must prepare some material and find a way how to angle it so it would suite the listeners. For this I only had a limited amount of time. We still had a few hours before arrival back in Ningbo, and I was suppose to get ready by 8-9 in the morning next day. Not very much time for a presentation of 30-60 minutes + questions. For this they would compensate me with 500 RMB, an sum that some Chinese earns in a week.

I fell asleep almost instantly when we got back home, around 22:30. The next morning, today, I woke up early and made lots of coffee. This is the 4:th night in a row without enough sleep.
They did not call me until 12:15 and I was told to get ready. Apparently some other speakers at the seminar talked a bit to long, but they had a spot for me at 15:00 at the latest. By now I had lots of time to prepare. I must say that I was very happy with my long power point presentation. It felt professional and I think it could deliver my message in a good way with interesting statistics and some minor humor. My approach was partly to compare culture of work in China with Sweden, since the audience was mainly presented by these two countries.
My nervosity began slowly to ease, because I was very satisfied with my preparations. I even had some time to rehearsal by myself. I was ready! Then the phone rang again, and the voice in the other end of the line told me that my presentation had to be canceled. Apparently, a Chinese professor changed his mind and were suppose to talk about something after all. I know that things changes fast in China so this did not come as a surprise. I totally understand that a Chinese professor is more interesting to listen at than me.

I am not that disappointed, I was just so prepared and felt very confident. This presentation would be a way to test my self in skills of performance. The plan was to film the event with my camera for later review and self improvement. They felt sorry and will compensate me for the time wasted. I told them that it was not wasted. I learned a lot from preparing the preparation so I am not left empty handed.

Enough whining. Today is a very nice day although it's a bit wet, but the fragrance of summer rain is nice. Simon took a sneaky picture of Viyaleta and me when we had lunch on the grass two days ago. I think the picture has a lot of summer in it so I will publish it here.

An oh, I will write some more information about the trip to Hangzhou later or tomorrow. Meanwhile you can have a look at the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=210411&id=692125169&l=4a9fac0529

Go out and play?

First I want to tell Susanne; no hard feelings, it is OK to call me at 01:40 as long as you have good news to share :-)
It may look like I am online on Skype but I am not. It just appears that way because incoming calls are forwarded to my cellphone if I don't answer within 10 seconds. But please, feel free to call me, just bare in mind that my local time is CET+7 or UTC+8.
Congratulations once again, honey! I hate to say it; but I told you so. We will be in the same business if everything works out well!

The weather outside is absolutely wonderful! People are extra happy today, the birds are singing and the campus is filled with gardeners who makes the beautiful surroundings ready for summer. You can really feel it!
So what am I doing? I am sitting in the apartment being a good student, and that makes me a bit dull. I do want to go out and play! My face could use some sunshine right now, although being a bit pale is considered to be attractive here.

Here are two photos of my living room view:

I must continue with my studies. At 19:00 (in 2.5h) I will most probably meet up with my friends for a dinner and then go bowling, depends on how the next 2 hours goes. I have never tried that before and I am really looking forward to it. The camera will be joining me for documentation. For the next 3 days I will bring it where ever I go because the weather allows it.

First sign of summer

It is finally here! I am talking about the summer. As I have mentioned in previous posts; Ningbo was very very cold the past week. But now that seems to be changing. Right now we have a radiating sun on the sky and it looks like it is 25°C outside, but it is really only 5°C and a bit windy. But, the good new is the weather forecast shows 16°C tomorrow and 24°C this weekend! We are going on a trip to the beautiful West Lake located in Hangzhou on Saturday, so the warm weather is mostly welcome. I am very happy about that, because it gives me a chance to use my camera in the beautiful surroundings. Tomorrow I will look for a nice and handy camera support.

Anyway, this post was meant to be about food, summer food. With the topic I did not mean the sun or the heat, I meant another sign of summer. Can you imagine anything more summer like than strawberries? We tried the first Chinese strawberry yesterday and it tasted wonderful! I have always been a big fan of Swedish strawberries, but the Chinese ones tastes as good or even better. Perhaps that is because it has been a while since we had them.

Simon with a Chinese strawberry

While shopping yesterday I noticed something in the shelves, something more usual than strawberries in March; blueberry flavored crisps. Because I promised myself to try new things I just had to give it a shot. Maybe this is the least weird thing that I have tried here, but still...

Surprisingly, the crisps tasted quite nice! I will get another bag next time I am in store, for sure.

Blueberry crisps

I just came home from a health examination. That was needed in order to extend my Visa. I will tell you all about that experience later. Now it is time for Chinese class, "Listening and speaking". Zai jian!

First day at school

The past week was some kind of introduction and yesterday the courses started for real. The exchange students began at 08:00 with "International Business" and we who only study Mandarin began at 09:50. A very nice surprise is that we can also choose up to 3 extra courses for free if there is enough space left in the classes. Of course, this is an opportunity I cannot miss, and I am amazed that the other Swedes don´t follow the same line. I applied for the following 3 courses:

• Chinese Economy
• International Trade Operation
• International Business

The only sacrifice is that I must go up 2 hours earlier every morning, 06:15 instead of 08:15, and that is nothing compare to what I will receive. Since I only could chose 3 extra courses I had to miss "International Finance" and "International Management". Hopefully I am still allowed to participate in Chinese Taiji (Tai Chi) on Monday evenings.

As I wrote before we began at 09:50 with Chinese "Intensive reading". Basically the goal is to learn how to read and write Chinese characters. It was easier than I thought, but then I have a technique that works very well for me. The class started with pronouncing the vocals and we were suppose to repeat the sounds after the teacher. I must admit I felt a bit silly at first but then started to enjoy it. We all felt like 1:st graders again, haha.
Because of the cold a 2 hour long lunch break was very welcome. The heating inside the classrooms is very under-dimensioned. Today it's only +2 degrees Celsius outside and windy. On Friday there will be +18. Weird, right?

After the lunch break we had a class in "Listening and speaking". Sadly, this lecture was a bit confusing and I am not sure if we learned that much. The teacher jumped from one thing to another before we really understood the previous. She spent some time writing characters on the border and quickly asked us to forget it, since the class is about listening and speaking, not writing. This procedure was repeated a couple of times until we decided to throw some questions in her direction.
I understand is she was nervous so I do not judge her. Teaching a class full of foreigners the same age as herself cannot be easy. I am sure that the next lecture will be much better.

Vincent and Veta

Celine, Emilie and Marisol chatting during a break

Lunch break is almost over. It is time for my first class in Chinese Economy. One thing I love about China is; nothing is impossible. I applied for the course 2 hours ago and can start directly. I am really looking forward towards the lecture but try not to have any expectations.
I am tempted to spend the evening with my friends but I really must stay at home to study Chinese characters and the distance course of statistics.

Early Saturday morning

Every day I wake up to the sound of birds and enjoy it most times, but today it was a little bit to much. Usually they are just a few birds but today they sounded like an army so I could not sleep past 06:50.
Maybe I am getting superstitious or the Chinese are right about Wakening of Insects. Actually, yesterday was the first time I saw an insect here, spooky.


I think it is time to write some about the food here in the province of Zhejiang.
Let me start like this;
I did not come to China to start a new life, but maybe a new chapter. In order to do that I need a open and positive state of mind about everything, including new food. I used to be very conservative about food, not willing to try new dishes. This has not been the case the recent week in Ningbo and I enjoy it a lot!


The evening of the arrival we went to a traditional restaurant famous for spicy food. Excellent start for me, I need spicy food. We gathered around a table and ordered several dished that we shared. This is a very common way of dining in China and personally I think this is just wonderful. Anyway, I decided to throw myself into the new culture so I ordered pig feet with chili, and I must say they were delicious. The pig feet is the dish with lots of red chili in the picture.

I already made up my mind, Chinese food is great! I love it! It tasted nothing like home, not even close to the food in Swedish/Chinese restaurants.


Next day we had lunch at a new shopping mall called Wanda. The restaurant was famous for meet with big bones. We ordered a pork with the bones along with 7-8 other dishes. It looked like a piece of a leg from a pig with meat, fat and ligament still attached. For a reason we received a short sucking straw from a waitress and surprisingly we were suppose to use it for sucking out the bone marrow. Did I try it? Of course I did! It did not taste that much, really, but it was not bad.

A get-together on Tuesday evening. Shot was taken with Simons Iphpone

Vegetables in China always looks perfect. Even the smallest food stand on the street serves vegetables that looks good enough to be in commercial. If they spot anything bad in the food it will be thrown away immediately. Bad food is bad for business, and lots of people are making their living out of it. My favorite vegetable dish is haricots verts with chili. Delicious!


More about Chinese food to come, but enough for now or this post will be enormous. Yet I have not tasted anything bad. It is the other way around, I love the food here. In Sweden I had some stomach aches for the past 2 years or so due to something, That has completely disappeared!

Dinner. All food on the table costs less than 20 RMB (~20 SEK)

Afternoon at Ningbo Museum

Today the class got together for the first time for a trip to the Ningbo Museum. There were people from different parts of the world, such as France, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Japan, Korea and Sweden.

The bus took of at 14:20 and headed for the museum. We were supposed to leave at 14:00, but of course we had to wait for the Mexicans and the French. The museum was only a 3 min drive away from campus so the bus felt unnecessary.

Luckily cameras were allowed inside the museum so I could play with my friend Mr. D5000. Even flashes were allowed. The museum showed Chinese history and culture. The building itself is very impressive, but this day were under heavy rain so I did not want to risk the health of my camera for a picture.
We had a tour on 3 levels inside the museum. We saw items like ancient bamboo jeweleries, swords, cannons and pieces of old ships. Since ancient times, Ningbo has been a valuable port and still is today. They even had a section of dinosaurs which was impressive.

The tour took about 1.5 hour and afterwards we went to meet some Chinese students for introduction and some conversation. It felt weird when the students applauded while we entered the assembly hall. The conversations were a nice exchange and I met some new friends. The Chinese students seems to be very eager of making new friends, so I got a few extra numbers in my cellphone and contacts through MSN and Skype. My Guanxi is growing. It's a Chinese expression for personal network of influence.

This day has been very intense; meeting new friends and receiving a large culture injection. Even if it's Friday evening I will most probably read a book and fall asleep early. I am exhausted.

For more pictures from the museum, please follow the link to the album on Facebook.com:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=208160&id=692125169&l=cc49c600ed

New camera!

I am sorry for not updating the blog this week. Blogspot.com is blocked for some reason here in China and my VPN-connection has not been working for the last couple of days. I am trying a new one and hope fully this one is more stable.
Another thing before I get to the subject. Calls to my Skype account (hanfre79) are forwarded to my cellphone if I don't answer within 7 seconds or if I am offline. It is free of charge for you but costs me 0.2 öre/min or 0.02 Euro/min so it is very cheap. Feel free to call me but please have in mind that I am in a different time zone. (CET+7)

I wanted a camera for quite some time now and pictures is something I really want to bring back home. Since I forgot my fathers camera in Göteborg I decided to buy a new one. My first choice was Nikon D3000 and noticed the price was about the same as in Sweden. But for some reason the Nikon D5000 is much cheaper so I started to reconsider, because you can film in HD with that one. The prices differed a few hundred Yuan between the stores, but 2 Chinese friends showed me a pure camera store that was about 600:- cheaper. After a good night sleep I went to buy it. For some reason they gave me discount so it became 1000:- cheaper  than the others. Along with the camera I bought a lens, 4GB memory card, UV-filter, anti back light and very practical bag. All in all for the price of ~5500:-

Can't want until the weather is good enough for some pictures. Not it is about 10°C and rain. Last night we had quite a show outside. The thunder was so intense that we thought a war was going on. Flashes every 5:th seconds. Beautiful to watch but messed up my sleep. They say that this happens every year at this night to wake up the hibernating insects. Today is known as "The Awakening of Insects".

Later tonight I will update the blog with pictures and stories about food, shopping ect. I wanted to do that all week. See you soon!

Dutchmen, soured milk and smoked almonds

We gained Internet access earlier today, that's why I am writing so late. I think I will begin to write about the trip to Ningbo. Even though I landed less than 3 days ago I have experienced enough to write a book. Things as shopping, food, culture etc will come in other posts soon enough.

My start in Gothenburg almost ended up as a disaster. I have done some really stupid things in my life, but this really takes the biscuit. Before the departure I had tons of stuff to deal with, that stressed me up to the limit. I have been on the edge of being burnt out before and I could feel some of the symptoms. I am sorry for all the things I did not manage to do before the trip. I will deal with them later this week.
The day of the departure I woke up early, quite alert, but my body refused due to stress. I really had to kick my self started to arrange everything in less than 3 hours. Somehow I got the time of departure wrong. In the car on my way to the airport I checked the new printed tickets, and they said 12:25 and not 12:55! After a bunch of calls and 140km/h ride to the airport I managed to check in with 1min marginal....phew!

The flight to Shanghai via Amsterdam was quite nice. First time in a jumbo jet. I tried 2 new things that I very much enjoyed. The first thing was smoked almonds. Wow, fantastic! I had them along with a nice bottle of wine on the plane. Smoked almonds are new on my list but pushes popcorn down to number 2. The other one was soured milk with cherries that we had for breakfast. I tasted soured milk as a kid but did not like it. Now 25 years later I must admit it is quite good, but it does not beat the almonds. The food in general was superb and the staff were wonderful. Although the stewardess on the flight to Amsterdam was understandable. We did not understand a single word she said about the safety instructions. She sounded Jiminy Cricket on crack.

I have so much to write about but I must start somewhere. Since I promised pictures I must provide some. The picture here is from the bus to Shanghai City. More to come, although I forgot the camera in the car at Landvetter, Gothenburg due to panic and lack of time.
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