Nathaniel and Sheree back in Australia

We arrived at church today expecting a fairly normal service but a choir from Hong Kong was visiting. They sang really well but what impressed me the most of the ensemble they played using only bells. The ensemble consisted of 10 people with each person having 2 to 4 bells. They rang the bells in unison but each bell was slightly different and had it’s own sweet and gentle sound. It was truly amazing.

After church went to IKEA to check it out. Sheree was really looking forward to checking out IKEA because I’d banned her from it in Australia. IKEA was massive and in a way I’m glad we didn’t have much money. I don’t know if you’ve been to IKEA before but it’s not like any other store I’ve been to. There is a food area on each flow and each floor is like a maze so that if you just follow the path you’ll see the whole level. There are virtually no aisles to be seen anywhere. We ended up having a cafeteria style lunch at IKEA which was great value and it was nice to not have Chinese food.

Over the last couple of weeks one of the things that has stood out the most is the Chinese work ethic. It’s absolutely phenomenal. I’ve been to Vanuatu, America, Malaysia, South Africa, the Solomon Islands and I’ve lived in Australia but I’ve never seen a work ethic that even approached the work ethic over here. It’s really hard to explain it but I’ll do my best. Here are some examples that I think illustrate what I’m talking about:

• There is a guy at the end of our block that just sits there and fixes bicycles. He also pumps tires and sells various bike parts.
• There is also another guy about four blocks away that fixes shoes. He sits there with about three friends and two old people in the shade and people bring their broken shoes to him and he fixes them while they go shopping.
• There are wagons on every street where people congregate setting locally grown food and locally cooked food.

None of these goods or services cost more than 10 Yuan (~$1.5). In Australia people seem to abuse the welfare system when ever they can instead of even trying to find work. In South Africa and the Islands people just did nothing and stayed in there villages till they needed money and then they tried to get a job that would make them money with the least amount of work.

Working seems to be part of Chinese society. It doesn’t just seem to be something you do to earn money. Instead of having the right to get a job where it’s the responsibility of the employer to get as much value out of you as they can. It more like you have the responsibility to society to work and it’s up to you to add enough value to make money. It’s really hard to explain but the difference smacks you in the face when you live here.

We made the most of the Saturday morning and slept in which felt refreshing after our late night last night. Today was a fairly lazy day with Sheree watching Gilmore Girls and me playing around on the Computer. For dinner we went to a dumpling restaurant that one of the teachers pointed out in the orientation tour. The dumpling tasted great and we both eat our fill for $1.5 which is the cheapest meal we’ve had so far. I’m fairly certain that we’ll going back there again in the near future. After dinner we decided to try out the Baskin and Robins ice-cream in the bakery across the street. After a minor misunderstanding, we left the store hungrily eating our authentic Baskin and Robins ice-cream and laughing at the misunderstanding. Instead of being $2 for the tub, which we though she said, it was $2 per scoop so we ended up paying $6 each for dessert, which doesn’t sounds like a lot of money but that was 4 times what we paid for dinner.

Today Sheree went into school and I stayed at home and caught up on some on some reading and house cleaning. Just before lunch Sheree called up and asked me to come in and help with setup her room so I jumped on the express bus  and then tried to catch a taxi after from China World Trade. I had to try three taxis before I found one that knew where Yew Chung. After school they took us all out for dinner at a nice restaurant next to a lake. After dinner they had one more surprise for us. They paid for us to go out on the lake on these little motor boats which was lots of fun. The shore of the lake was lite up by the neon lights from the bars and restaurants around it which looked really nice.

The day was really great and by the time we got home we were ready to go to bed but one of the other teachers lost their house keys. We let them stay in our apartment while they tried to track down the spare set over the phone. It was fun hanging out but it was a really long day and by the time we were able to go to bed we were really tired.