There are some things I need to say about Wuxi before I leave:
- No heating in the apartments, actually this phenomenon is evident across the whole of Southern China (Southern China is everything below Beijing, *not joking*).
- The "no- heating situation" also means no heating in the classroom. Hence, all students attend classes with gloves, heads and thick winter jackets.
- The campus is about 50 minutes away from Wuxi city centre (by bus) and looks a bit like a scene from Romero's "Land of the Living tead" (please find some photos attached).
- The convenient store "lady" does not like foreigners, as she always spies on me and tries to rip me off for a few Yuan.
- The amount of bikes on campus is of similar greatness as the total amount of bikes in the whole city of Leiden (for those who don’t know Leiden…. That’s a whole lot of bikes).
- The bikes are even crappier than the bikes you'd buy from a junkie in 0031. They fall apart as soon as you sit on them!
- I used to go for dinner in a nearby *village*. However, all the street vendors and their stalls have mysteriously disappeared.... I am betting that new skyscrapers will replace them within a year (as happens to so many traditional houses in urban China).
- Pollution, pollution…. everywhere…
- Wuxi is called "Little Shanghai", as the city is swiftly becoming a major business centre for (especially German) foreign direct investment. However, the city is also famous for its computer engineering industry.
- The Southern Yangtze University (where I teach) is world famous for its food science department.
- All first- years have to do military training on campus prior to the start of their first academic semester.
Of course there is much more to the story, but I'll leave that for later!
Bacio!
Marijn
One of the three student cafeterias
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