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Sensodine toothpaste (if you use it)
Great suggestion. Wish I had this here.
Just went to Metro and they have Sensodyne there. Pretty sure it’s owned by Colgate and I’ve bought it at Hongqi as well.
Yeah, Ikea is the same pretty much everywhere I think. I couldn’t spot any difference between the one here and the one back in the US, if you just want kitchenwares you should be fine.
In terms of finding brand-name items, if they’re small I’d recommend buying them from home. I’ve never seen the 3M command hooks in stores, but you can get pretty much anything you need on Taobao; unfortunately it’s a little difficult to figure out how to connect your credit card/find stuff if you can’t read Chinese. Pretty much anything you could ever want/need however is on Taobao.
The problem is that I don’t graduate until November, so it looks like I’ll need a January job. Could I perhaps go a month or two early and just do some private tutoring and then apply get a Uni job in January?
Well, if you came over in November you’d also be facing the issue of everything winding down for the end of the year/spring festival; you might be able to find some work but around January the extra training gets pretty thin. Since you just graduated from college, I’d say your best bet would be getting a job “polishing” essays for students looking to study abroad. Lots of companies charge big money to help students get into foreign universities, and as a native speaker you help their essays sound more native and make more sense. A little ethically questionable, but its pretty common over here and you make about 30-40$ an essay, the peak season for that is Sept-Dec. Check out places like Echinacities and do a little googling and you should be able to dig something up, sometimes people post job offers on here as well.
That’s cool you speak fluent Mandarin and are into Chinese culture. Sichuan’s definitely different and there’s a lot to see, lots of history and Western Sichuan is like a whole different world. The food here is really excellent, what I really like is the slower pace of life people have here, even though it’s kind of a big city people are very laid-back and seem to want to enjoy life, rather than just making money. Nanjing’s cool as well, when I went there I spent a few days just touring the museums and didn’t run out of things to do.
Some common advice (for uni jobs) you’ll hear on ESL forums is to narrow down the places you’re interested in, and then head to the city’s wiki page. They tend to list most of the major universities in the city. From there you can jump to the uni website and look for contact people in the Foreign Language Dept and start blasting emails. It’s not the most efficient way obviously, but it’s a start if you’re not in a position to apply in person.
This is good advice, although I came over on a student’s visa and then transferred after a semester to a work visa at a university. But I was also certain that I wanted to live in Chengdu, and that I wanted a uni job, so it was pretty easy to narrow my search.
I’d suggest figuring out what you want out of a place to live first. If you want a large & established expat community, cosmopolitan lifestyle etc. then I’d suggest Beijing/Shanghai. Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou & Nanjing are like smaller cities with smallish expat communities, but they’re both close enough to Shanghai that they can almost feel suburban. That being said none of those cities expat communities are as large or vibrant as Chengdu’s in my opinion.
Not to rush you but your timing might be a little tight for a uni job; most of the unis do their hiring in late May early June and are on vacation now until August. Try what Mike said and get in touch with a hiring manager at a uni, sometimes they still have a last-minute position to fill esp. if somebody quits over the summer/doesn’t show up in fall. After Sept. 1st you’re pretty much stuck until January, and the open positions are way fewer then. Good luck job hunting!
OK, I like to cook and have some experience with this stuff. Some of these are easier than others.
1. Oregano and thyme you can get at Metro. Possibly basil too, I bought it there once but they don’t always have it. You can get an Italian spice mix but not sure you want that. Rosemary’s more difficult, I’ve not seen it but you can get a live plant of it from some of the plant vendors, it’s called Mi die xiang. Dill I’ve not seen. Parsley and mint they sometimes sell at the veggie markets, you just have to keep your eyes peeled. All this being said you can find almost any spice on Taobao.com for ~40 kuai (6 bucks).
2. Metro
3. Not sure, never seen it but never looked.
4. Taobao for 60 kuai.
5. Metro
6. Taobao probably
7. They sell these on the street, actually it’s harder to find the powder. Check in the spice bags at the streetside vendors.
8. Holy shit Tony’s! Bring this from home, although you can get giant bags of “Creole Seasoning” from Metro, haven’t tried it but can’t be that far off.
9. No Lawry’s at Metro but they have seasoning salt. Also Taobao has Lawry’s.So you’ll be able to find some of these but not all of them easily in Chengdu. But honestly you’d just be better off getting a Taobao account if you’re staying here long term and want Western food/spices; even at Metro you’re gonna pay more than you would online.
I thought it was the same artist, but evidently there’s another Chinese artist, Chen Wenling, who did something similar during the 2008 financial crisis. It’s a statue of Bernie Madoff with devil horns getting smashed against the wall by a farting bull.
It seems like a lot of Chinese artists are really into sculpture, but unfortunately I can’t print those without a 3D printer.
Final four games are on April 4th, which would 7 and 9:40 AM be our time on the morning of April 5th. Final game would be April 7th.
I just had a friend recently show me a nice-ish jacket that he paid several hundred renminbi at a “vintage store” on taobao for. Think he mighta missed the point of thrift shopping…
Well, I tried talking to Strong’s live help, but the line the last few days is about 60 during the day, 30 or so at night. Long wait when I’m sure all I’ll hear is “yeah it’s a problem, sorry”. Not like it’s their fault.
I’m not sure if the current crackdown is related to 2015 beginning (Uber was “officially” banned in China on January 1st also) but the internet crackdown has been a long-standing and perpetually degenerating situation.
Yeah, it sounds like this is all a new step-up to better protect the local Chinese internet market. I mean, a lot of Asian countries censor or edit “unfavorable” content, but China’s unique in that it targets specific overseas companies’ products. In that techcrunch article it said they’re only newly targeting the top 3 VPN’s, and also google’s POP and IMAP services, and even Microsoft Outlook. Which means that they want to force people to use 163 or QQmail, since those are Chinese companies. As are Renren, WeChat, Weibo, etc etc, whose foreign competitors are all “harmonized”. It’s all about the money.
From the techcrunch article, ““Censorship has suddenly become a serious business issue. When domestic and foreign companies cannot use the internet for basic business operations, it presents a real economic hurdle.”
Thanks a lot, these are great.
There’s also a 73.16gb backup of all the shooter.cn subtitles at http://www.ed2000.com/ShowFile.asp?FileID=566162
Holy shit, thats a lot of subtitles! I wonder if anybody has just posted these on one of the other websites, seems remarkably inefficient to have to download everything just for one movie’s subtitles.
I shipped a package ground mail once, it took a little over a month. I think the shipping estimate gives you something ridiculous, like 4-12 weeks or something, but it really depends on what happens after it gets put into the Chinese system, which is fairly unsafe and inefficient.
This is in the TV tower? I had no idea there was a restaurant in there. The view must be cool from up there.
Yeah, they just opened it early this year. I’ve been told it was part of the original plan for the building but for some reason it just never got finished, although I have no proof this is true.
I just saw a Xiaomi store in Tongzilin, across the street and North a bit from the Carrefour there. You could go there and check it out, although from prior experience trying to buy the 3 they probably won’t have the 4 for a few months at least.
So your best option might be smurfing it…
Afghan Whig’s cover of Frank Ocean’s “lovecrimes”
Also, kind of in the same vein, Diplo remixes Lorde’s Tennis Court:
Yep, actually it’s under new ownership now and they’ve done a lot of renovations. New wall, a slackline, and a 5-6 meter high outdoor wall with ropes. The new guy seems pretty serious and does a fair deal of outdoor climbing as well, sounds like he’s got some pretty cool plans for the place in the future.
Yeah, I’m not sure what Rawleycat said, but he did mention the Alliance Francaise- they’re up near the UESTC, on Jianshe lu in the NW. Lots of French speakers and Chinese people learning French out that way (although I think they’re currently moving).
I did that switch a while back; according to the visa regulations at that time, I had to leave the country and go to Hong Kong in order to get a “foreign” stamp on my visa. YMMV
The harder part will probably be getting through the summer; if you’re here on a student visa then it probably expires in June, so you’ll have to find some way to stick around until August or else leave for July and August.
Can you please share where can I get a genuine and cheap XiaoMi 2 phone in Chengdu?
You can buy them on the Xiaomi Website, there’s no registration needed or wait time right now on the 2, and the phone is 1800 Yuan. Only problem is that everything’s in Chinese so you’ll probably want to get a Chinese buddy to help you. Taobao is also an option, although there are fakes out there I’m told as well, buyer beware.
I bought a Xiaomi 2 a few months ago, and I’ve been really happy with it. I only really use it for stuff like games and directions, but I haven’t found anything that won’t run on it. I think the only real difference between the 2 and the 3 is processing power, so it really depends what you want to do with it.
The only thing that sucks is you’ve gotta register to get one (in Chinese), then once you register you’ve got about a 2 minute window at a specific time on a specific day of the week, and even then they sometimes sell out after 10 seconds or less. Small production line I guess, plus it seems like everyone in China has one these days.
