Tuesday 10 March 2009

The Shiz


We call it the Shiz because it took us a good five months of living here to learn how to pronounce Shijiazhuang in a way that Chinese people could understand. And it’s stuck because frankly Shijiazhaung is just too many syllables for everyday use.

It’s a modern city, barely more than a village fifty years ago, so there’s not much in the way of interesting relics. This is real China, but just not the one that people want to visit. It’s brand new supermarkets and street markets where things are sold from a rug on the ground, it’s gated communities and people living in tents under bridges, it’s a luxury car dealership and motorbike carts being mended on the street just down the road, it’s internet cafes and mah-jong played on street corners, it’s where seven people can eat like kings for sixty kuai (six pounds) and where businessmen will knock back several eight hundred kuai (eighty pounds) bottles of baijiu at a sitting.

motorbike carts being mended on the road where I live

We live out in the north west, fifteen minutes in a cab from downtown, in an area that is slightly ‘ghetto’. The street paving is somewhat sporadic, and is used as somewhere to set up a small business, to unload furniture, to practice ballroom dancing, to play badminton, to eat noodles or skewers, to park cars and as a children’s toilet and a general spittoon.

a scruffy looking housing estate near where I live: the apartments inside are probably very nice

I live in one of the scruffy, stereotypically post Communist looking apartment buildings, although my apartment inside is positively luxurious. When things aren’t breaking. Or being broken further by the people that were sent to mend the thing that broke in the first place.


pollution on a bad day, overlooking the school football pitch and track; after this we had four days of skies so clear you could see stars

Oh, and it’s also one of the most polluted cities in China. Meaning it’s one of the most polluted cities in the world. I’m convinced that I’m probably going to go home and develop some weird lung ailment that hasn’t been seen in the UK since 1860. On bad days, it’s worthy of Mrs Gaskell’s Manchester: you can see black smoke pumping out of factory chimneys, but not the apartment buildings in the next block. The constant layer of black dust that settles on everything means that only a few days after I’ve swept and mopped my apartment until it’s spotless, the floor will again be grey.


taxi company stamps and postboxes inside my apartment building

Despite this, I’ve come to be strangely fond of the place. It is fascinating to watch what China’s rise actually means in everyday terms: new pavements, freshly painted walls and smarter shop signs being installed as the area improves, building sites of new apartment blocks for the upwardly mobile middle classes on all sides, supermarkets selling exotica like coffee and biscuits, and fashionable young couples on dates at KFC or McDonalds. Most of all though, it is the people of Shijiazhuang that I will remember: people who are, in general, kind and helpful to a group of confused foreigners with extremely limited Chinese.

To have fun exploring other worlds, go here.



outside a downtown restaurant

14 comments:

  1. Interesting insights into a chinese community, J. I've heard pollution in China was bad, but it sounds awful on the bad days. Hope they don't happen often.

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  2. What an interesting post. It must be quite an adventure to live in China, I've always found their culture and traditions fascinating (somewhat mind-boggling too, especially the superstitions they follow). Thanks for dropping by my world earlier and for sharing this with us.

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  3. Interesting...but do take care to save yourself from the pollution. I am glad they are helpful to you.

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  4. Too bad about the pollution. I´ve lived by a busy road and the windows were dirty soon and the windows had to be kept shut. It wasn´t that bad though.

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  5. Hi J! I really appreciated this post, not because the place is so beautiful, but because it was "your place". Being a horizon kind of girl, I'm not sure I would be able to live in such a densely populated area, which makes me enjoy my virtual visit even more!

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  6. This is fascinating and that pollution alone is another world to me.

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  7. Janie, Indrani, chrome3d and Babooshka regarding the pollution: apparently it has got significantly better in the last few years which is pretty mind boggling! It certainly makes me appreciate the clear days more. It is also why, if I was going to stay in China for another year, I wouldn't stay here and would perhaps go somewhere in the southwest where it is less polluted.
    Ishtar - I have never lived in a city before, let alone one this densely populated, and sometimes I do long for the open expanses of sea and countryside that I am used to in the UK. Luckily I can live vicariously through other people's blogs!

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  8. haha.. this looks like the other side of China. hei, where is it located ? I must look out in the map. Are you teaching here and are they paying you sufficiently ?

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  9. Very interesting post. The pollution concerns me, though. I hope you have some breathing protection!

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  10. Interesting post especially so that I've been to China several times already. I do hope the Chinese govt will do something about the pollution.

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  11. kbguy - Shijiazhuang is in Hebei province, about 200km southwest of Beijing. Yes I am teaching, and I have a pretty good deal here. :)
    Louise and Marites - the local population are not happy with how dirty the city is, and hopefully this is motivating the local government to clean it up, and also make it a more attractive proposition for international business.

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  12. Love this post and i really think that the first one is fabulous with the snow. Hope people click on the photo and enlarge it

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  13. A great post the smog is amazing. Keep your lungs safe.

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  14. An excellent post, very informative. What an exciting experience. Thanks for sharing.

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