I have only been in China for 2 weeks, but it feels like a lifetime. So much has happened over the past week or so. Therefore, in the interest of time – and because I know all of you, my 8 followers (a demographic entirely made up of blood relatives), have much better things to do than read my blog –  I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Arriving in Beijing on Saturday morning hit me slapbang in the face. I was in China. Not the China that you read about in every newspaper and magazine (dragons and fortune cookies), but China. The place where if you don’t knock over the sweet little granny getting off the train, she’ll beat you to it. The smoggy skyline and strange smell was just how I remembered it. Great, I thought to myself. Here we go China.

First on the agenda was finding a place to live. This was a process that proved tiresome and, at times/all the time, infuriating. The level of incompetence at estate agents in Beijing is, quite frankly, staggering. Once you have been welcomed into their overstaffed offices, cups of water are forced into your hands – under the assumption that if you are drinking their water, you won’t leave – whilst employees hopelessly rush around pretending to know what houses are available to rent. After a couple of days of house hunting, we decided on two things: 1) don’t take the water 2) they haven’t got a clue. My first piece of advice to anyone searching for an apartment in China is: Do not leave the estate agents’ office until somebody actually physically produces the key to the apartment. The number of times we sat outside locked apartments waiting for a key that supposedly was “mashang lai” (‘coming immediately’) makes me feel quite ill. Secondly, do not go anywhere until you see a floor plan of the apartment. We soon found out that the Chinese estate agents’ interpretation of a 4-bedroom apartment required some imagination. “Sorry, where is the 4th bedroom?”. “Ah, no problem, we build you wall in living room”. Great. The list of mishaps goes on and on. And on. I came closest to losing it when we were locked inside an apartment for half an hour. Not fun. One particularly entertaining encounter in one estate agents, Homelink, ended in us taking the house hunting process into our own hands. Quite literally. Having pushed the clueless employees aside, we took control of their own computer system. I can safely say that by the end of our week-long search, we were far more capable using the system than the half-witted employees who, believe it or not, use it everyday. After countless trips to houses that were either too far from the university, or simply uninhabitable, the joke became that whenever a estate agent called to say a house had become available, it was definitely going to be ‘The One’. On arrival at the house, the same old cliches were pointed out: “Oh, we’d be really happy here…”, or “This area has got cracking fengshui!“.

Six days passed. We had seen roughly 25-30 apartments. We were still homeless. Having decided that 4-bedroom apartments did not exist in Beijing (perhaps because of the one-child policy), we decided to change tack, and look for two 2-bedroom apartments in close proximity. Ironically, it was only when we had reached the lowest of low ebbs (Nick had been taken ill at the local hospital and Laurence, who had become somewhat the leader and apartment-vocab extraordinaire of the group, had abandoned us to pick-up his girlfriend from the airport), that Will and I stumbled upon the two lovely 2-bedroom apartments. It was too good to be true. Before anyone could tell us otherwise, we signed the contracts and, like that, we moved in the same day. The search had FINALLY come to an end.

When given an empty apartment to fill, there really is only ever one option. Take a trip to 宜家, or if you like, Ikea. We scurried around the store filling up our shopping kart like children at a sweet shop. I played the voice of reason, Nick, the sweet-toothed child. “Nick, do we really need a sexy pink clock?”. “Errr, YESSSSSS!”  The trip to Ikea was memorable, not least because I got myself into a slightly embarrassing situation trying to explain what a beanbag is in my distinctly ‘make-do’ Chinese. Attempting a literal translation, I confused the word ‘bean’ for ‘potato’, hence asking for a ‘potato bag’ (I only realised this once we had left the store). Unsurprisingly, the woman was very confused. Even less surprisingly, she told me ‘meiyou‘ (we have none). With pink clock in hand – yet nothing to store our potatoes in – Nick and I headed back to our empty apartment for a late night DIY sesh. Yes, I know exactly how that sounds…

Before we knew it, our first day of class at Peking University arrived. We were quite excited.

Perhaps slightly too excited.

Having gone back for our passports, we arrived at the Peking University campus. In the sunshine, we had to remind ourselves we were in ‘smoggy’ BJ. The campus itself is stunning, especially the lake which has a huge pagoda towering over it. The first day included an orientation session that gave zero ‘orientation’, yet provided us with some top tips on how to cross the road in China. Given that most of us had already been in China for a week or so, it seemed rather nonsensical. Since then, we have started class and as it stands I have zero demerits to my name. (Peking Uni uses the American system where everything counts…including attendance.) How long that will last remains to be seen…

The very latest is I have applied to play the role of Adolf Hitler in a film. The man said he would be ‘in contact ASAP’. It seems that in China, absolutely anything is possible…