China - living in Suzhou

China - living in Suzhou.

We landed in Shanghai after a very bumpy flight and met our guide/car to drive us the hour and a half to Suzhou. We had decided on Suzhou rather than Shanghai itself in order to experience a more Chinese life experience - as we had been told that living in Shanghai was like living in any other big city like London/New York. Suzhou was named "The little Venice of Asia" by Marco Polo but had changed just a little since then and looked nothing like Venice when we arrived!  Between Shanghai and Suzhou there was hardly a green field in between the 2 towns - Shanghai is just huge and has 18m people - Suzhou is smaller and has 5m - but with another town Suzhou has merged with next door it is claimed there are 10m - so between the 2 towns there 28m people - nearly half of the UK population in a much smaller area! We started to see why it is so densely populated with apartment blocks! 

As we drove into Suzhou we saw huge rows of apartment blocks with huge roads - very well built and quite spaciously laid out but almost like a Milton Keynes meet Hong Kong or Monaco! Our hopes of living in a little village with Venice features disappeared then and there. As we drove through miles of factories for companies like Apple, Black&Decker, Caterpillar & Samsung we realised we were in the hi-tech manufacturing area of China - not little Venice. As we turned down the road to our hotel/apartment blocks we were very disheartened and started to ask ourselves - What have we done?? And then we arrived at HoJo (short for Howard johnson) hotel and apartment all suites hotel to move into our serviced apartment. Our apartment was 170 sqm and on the 11th floor - it was a great little apartment and the view from the balconies was over the town and the JinJi lake - getting better all the time! But no washing machine! We could also see over the city for miles and see the generously laid out (for china) city before us with huge open roads/parks/smart tower blocks and factories all around the city. We arranged the apartment over the internet with Julia - the very helpful lady at Hojo and so we felt we had lucked out on the apartment and the block which had restaurants, a pool, a gym and a concierge, essential in china to help you get around!

We have since learnt that Suzhou is a new town that has been built over the last 5 years for the middle class of China in the area that will arrive over the next 5 years.  As a result Suzhou felt pretty empty with many apartment blocks only 30% full and the shops empty except at the weekends. There is also the huge 15km JinJi lake which is very beautiful and has a whole range of attractions/fountains/a birds nest like stadium/cinema/fair all around the lake - which you could cycle round on paths all the way. So pretty nice middle class living - even for westerners - and the shopping centres were brand new with all the major brand shops. All in all Suzhou was probably the best place to live in China - that is what we were told by the local chinese and the expats thought this was the best place to live in China for them as well. Plus all the roads had separate cycle lanes so we could cycle everywhere rather than get into the cheap taxis (£1.50 anywhere) whose drivers were a bit mad. Suzhou had undergone a massive change in only 5 years from a small village in the countryside with fields - to a new big city for the middle classes with all the facilities of modern living - all built and planned by the Government as though they saw that this is how the China of the future will live! And we liked it !!

On the first day - a Sunday - we found a Starbucks and Singha plaza which was a few kms from our base. It was the hangout place for the expats and we bumped into 2 families - both with links to the school that the kids were going to - A bit like our first outing in Rarotonga where we met the locals with links to the school - again the school got a great billing!! We were told we needed a few sports things and trotted off another few kms to find Decathlon - a sports shop. There we bought bikes for us all (£300 for 5 bikes/child seat/pump/locks/hats etc... !!) went to Auchan (the biggest supermarket we have ever seen - it takes 10 mins to walk from one end to the other when there are no Chinese in there!) to get some food and provisions and to search black shoes for school - which are impossible to buy in China! 

We cycled home in the cycle lane feeling very Chinese as all the chinese stared at us as if we were mad!! The hotel let us park our bikes in the staff cycle area. 

On Monday we were to go to the school and meet the Headmaster and the teachers. Again we had arranged everything by email and the internet so we had no idea what to expect. It was a Dulwich school - an international school housed in the same grounds as Suzhou high school, who shared facilities. We wanted the kids to get an international and chinese experience for the 6 weeks they were here. Immediately we arrived at the school we felt at home - the headmaster was very nice and the other teachers we met were all very welcoming. We saw round the kids classrooms and met the teachers (who were on a training day at the school) and then had an hour long fitting to buy their school uniforms and games kit. Again only £300 for all of their school gear - which seemed incredibly good value. The school felt homely and that the kids would settle in well. We bought their lunch smartcards and school bus passes (the school collected/dropped them from our apartment building each day - even Meggie went on the bus on her own! The first day of school arrived and the kids had a ball and loved the school from the first day. Sam had a small class of Koreans, Americans, HK - 12 in total - no more than 25% of any nationality in each class. Toby had 20 again with a mix of many nationalities and Megan had 4 - with a full-time American teacher and a chinese teacher just for their class! Suffice to say the kids all really learnt alot over the time they were at Dulwich - Sam got 98% in his Maths and was commended for an English essay written on Shakespeares Julius Caesar - and played for the Rugby team against Shanghai - winning the praise of the PE teacher for being a crunch tackler! Tobys English and Maths improved well - partly driven by his challenge to do well so he could go on a school outward bounds course at the end of the 6 weeks - which he passed to go on! And Megan with her almost private tuition learnt to write her name, her numbers, her letters, her shapes and her left from her right - incredible progress in such a short period - All the kids were very sad to leave as they had a great experience at Dulwich. They worked hard, played hard, learnt alot and made a load of friends from a range of nationalities. I think we can say mission accomplished in terms of a learning experience - and our huge thanks goes to Dulwich college and all the teachers who made a real effort with all of our kids despite only being there for 6 weeks - it is a real up and coming school that has only been going for 3 or 4 years - and anyone in the area should consider it as the best option around. Many of the expats we met said that one reason they did not want to go home was because the schooling at home was no where near as good as the education their kids got at Dulwich Suzhou!! Dulwich did so many things well - like Megan got a school report everyday on what she had achieved - the parents got a school manual with every teachers email and school schedule and activities at the school - including all the afternoon activities after school - all in one brochure. And the teachers were all really enthusiastic and immediately seemed to connect with the kids. The kids played in Rugby tournaments which they both enjoyed. We went to visit a school in Shanghai for the tournament which had some good quality rugby players. It was good to meet a few of the other parents who had lived in China for 2-14 years and all had interesting views on China and their experiences. I met a Dane, a Swede and a number of Americans from all over the US. One company was moving their manufacturing operations from China to Thailand which was an interesting move.

The kids made friends and had sleepovers within a few weeks of arriving at school. We felt very safe in Suzhou and the kids generally spent their times with friends in a secure living compound - which sounds horrible but actually they were nice expat housing where all the kids could play safely together. The kids were very sad to leave China and their friends - and did not want to leave - they had a really great time. Sam could not go on his school trip as he could only have gone for a few days before we left and it was a flight away but Toby's outward bounds course was only 2 hours drive away so he was able to go for 3 days and Ian was able to pick him and take him straight to Shanghai airport for our flight our of China. When Ian arrived Toby was being given 3 cheers by 50 kids, given a goodbye book which everyone had signed and he left with tears in his eyes! Sam was also given a goodbye card which his mates/friends had signed and Megan was thrown an English tea party by her friend Kate's mum at school on her last day. We were very pleased Dulwich worked out so well for all of the kids and that it really was a positive school experience. Maybe the home schooling had driven them to really appreciate the benefits of proper schooling again!!

Sheena and Ian cycled everywhere - Suzhou and the lake was made for cycling so it was biking heaven - flat, open roads with your own cycle lane - although the danger of cars turning right whenever they liked was a bit dangerous - or blue construction lorries that seemed to think they could drive through whatever colour light they want!!  made it slightly dangerous to cycle around. The lake was really nice to cycle around and cycling made us feel much more part of chinese life - especially when we cycled into the old town of Suzhou - inside the old city walls - where it was very crowded and only chinese people around. Again people looked at us as if we were really odd - which I guess we were.

Sheena and Ian set about organising the 10,000 photos and settled on creating albums via iphotos albums - we created 8 Albums - one each for each of the kids with photos of them and each of the places we visited and relevant text put in with each of them and country facts etc... and 5 other albums for each of the areas we had visited - USA/Canada; South America/South Pacific; New Zealand; Southern Asia; and China. Each album took ages to do but we managed to finish them before we left - quite an achievement we thought as there were 500-700 photos per album over 100 pages - so hopefully some of them will be at home delivered in the UK when we return!

We also had a load to prepare for returning home such as renting a house as the building work on our london house was not going to be finished as expected. Sorting out our return to the UK took up quite a bit of time. But we also enjoyed Suzhou when the weather was good - we cycled round the lake, saw how chinese lived, shopped for food which was a real experience in it s own right! and we both learnt chinese with Mary, our very patient teacher. We started very enthusiastically, 3 lessons a week from as soon as we arrived and Sheena in particular did well. But we quickly realised it was incredibly hard and in 6 weeks we would not really make a dent on the language. So we concentrated on key phrases and words that would help us shop, order food/drinks, talk to taxi drivers, staff at the hotel/Apartment block and generally getting around Suzhou where people generally spoke no English. We made progress and started to feel more comfortable that we could actually get around without staring blankly at each other when asking a chinese person where to go - but yet again we thanked our lucky stars that we are English and our forefathers had gone out to conquer the world and spread the word of English - and so many people we have met around the world speak English as their second or third language which has made it so much easier for us!! We realised in Mandarin that it is so hard to learn that unless the Chinese start to learn English (which they now are - all school kids from a young age have full-on English lessons and more Chinese speak English than Americans!)  China will find it hard to become the dominant world super-power because Mandarin is just so hard to learn more than the real basics of the language. Sheena and Ian also tried to get less unfit before returning to the UK. It is harder than we thought to keep fit whilst on the move touring around, especially if home schooling as well. So it was good we could stay in one place, use the gym each day and the swimming pool and generally get back to a reasonable level of fitness.

China kept being a fascinating place each experience we had. We have only scratched the surface in the 8 weeks we were here but there is so much more to learn about the country. We learnt alot about China during our tour around and that was the basics about the history and modern day China. Living in one place showed us more what modern China will be (or hopes to be) in the future. Suzhou is one of Chinas oldest and wealthiest towns and the new extensions around the old city to house millions of the new middle classes was an incredible sight to see - especially as many of them had not arrived yet.... We really had lucked out by selecting Suzhou out of the all of China!! So many times we were told by Chinese and expats that we had probably chosen one of the best 2 places to live in China - and we had such a great time there that we really agree with them. The time came to leave and despite this part being the last part of a trip of 9 months we still felt that we did not want to leave - we were all enjoying it - which after 9 months is a tribute in itself!

There are also a whole range of items which are incredibly interesting in themselves about China - in no particular order: The single child policy from 1980 means that there have been a whole generation and a bit of single children growing up with their parents and grandparents doting on them - I am not sure whether this will be an issue having 300m single children running the country in a few years time or not but i am pretty sure it  would be if this happened in the UK! The food we heard was eaten included baby rats as a speciality and dog, cat and rat as regular dishes - we don't think we ever had any of them! The chinese are just starting to live more normal (western) lives over the last 5-10 years - with cars and apartments - there is still a party when they buy their first car as it is a novel situation and a real achievement - so although in many ways China has caught up and is catching up - there is still some time to change the mentality of the people to their new lifestyle; The chinese don't commute generally - they live where they work. Although some people are moving to towns from farm areas to find work - general movement is less normal currently; Many drivers still drive their cars like mopeds - as they are still learning to drive! Chinese are very pragmatic people. It is a country where not everything works like most countries but generally they just get on with whatever they want to get done in a pragmatic way with the tools they have. Democracy would not work in this country - it would be a disaster. There seems to be a push on the government to change in areas where they will become unpopular and probably the thought of a mass protest or mass unhappiness in a large group of many millions drives the government to try to stay one step ahead. You hear of corruption but we never saw any - Is buying the right to have a second child for £5k corrupt or a fine. I don't know. Does having a successful shop license in Shanghai mean you have to keep open a less successful shop in Suzhou - as negotiated by the government - it is hearsay but who knows if it is true - there is usually fire where there is smoke but generally the system seems to work - people know their roles and they get on with it. The government seem to do their best and fight hard to ensure the 1.5bn people are fed with jobs where possible - China seem to have managed the financial crisis better than other countries - certainly than the UK! We felt safer in China than the US or the UK. We were told if the police found a gun they would probably use it on the owner which is a great deterrent. The chinese seemed to be a lovely race of people - very kind and helpful and smiley. The toilets were a bit of a shock, as was the spitting and the noisy eating of noodles and rice. But generally we felt China was a happening place with lots of drive to make things happen and to make money. And a country that has a range of things to change and improve but were charging off in the right direction. And that all made it a very interesting place to have been and to watch/return to in the future.

But now we were all ready to start the trip home, via an Easter holiday with friends in Borneo/Malaysia, before landing in the good old UK. There had been times when each of us had wanted to go home but we all went through to the end - and had enjoyed each part of it as each place brought exciting and interesting new experiences and challenges. Many of the people who we had met who had done alot of travelling told us before we left - you should start with cultures close to your own and gradually move away to cultures furthest from yours - that is really brilliant advice that we luckily followed. We planned Asia and lastly China as a result and really enjoyed them all. If we had landed in China straight from London I am not sure we would have had the same positive and interesting experiences!! 

Goodbye China - you were a real thrill and interesting experience for us. There is no doubt you will be the strongest power in the world in the near future - no doubt with a few more bumps along the way - but having visited we are sure you will get there. The driving force that you see in people in the country shows a hunger that we did not often see around the world - and this momentum seems as though it will drive China to the top of the world. We all want to come back - but we are not sure when or where - but we will be back.........