It’s hard to believe, but month four of my race is complete, and I have officially spent a month in Asia! China was basically everything and nothing that I expected at the same time, and I absolutely loved it (way more than I expected to).
Because it is so difficult to summarize everything that I experienced this month into a short blog post, I’ve decided to post a recap of what it was like for me to live in China.
As you probably know, China is a communist country and with that comes some risk for foreigners, especially foreign Christians who live here. For the safety and respect of our contacts here, I have left out some details about where I was, but hopefully I’ll still be able to paint an accurate picture of what our month looked like.
1. As you may have read in my last blog, my team recently changed. My new, all-female team, Hidden Refuge, spent our first month together in one of China’s smaller cities, which is still pretty big.
2. While many other teams spent the month in hotels, my team was blessed to live in a two-bedroom flat or apartment complete with our own bathroom and kitchen. To my understanding, the family who normally lives in the flat was in their home country support raising and spending time with family.
3. Our team had the flat to ourselves, and for my first month on the race we were not partnered with any other team. This was such an incredible blessing because it facilitated an environment where we could get to know each other, be open and honest with each other, and be very silly too.
4. Although the house had three beds, I slept on one of the couches in the living room, which I found very comfortable. I kept my stuff in the living room too, so basically the living room was my bed room.
5. Having a house to ourselves also allowed us to have time and space to corporately spend time worshipping and seeking the Lord each morning. Each morning we took turns leading a time of worship and prayer together. I’m so glad we got to do this all month because it really set our hearts in a place where we were open to whatever God had for us, and His Spirit was with us all day long. It truly helped us keep Christ-like attitudes and love each other better. This was honestly one of my favorite aspects of our month.
6. To put it frankly, China is absolutely freezing in December. Actually it’s way below freezing. For the first time in my life, this little South Florida girl experienced temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. And it snowed twice too!
7. With weather that cold, it was basically very rare to ever feel warm. It seems as if China doesn’t believe in heaters, and our apartment’s heat didn’t really work at all. So basically you could find us in our sleeping bags and most of the clothes that we owned constantly, even when we were inside.
8. All month was basically a search for cheap things that would make us warmer. We bought sweaters, coats, boots, socks, hats, earmuffs, gloves, hot water bottles, and mittens from any random convenience store, market, or street vendor that we could find.
9. Speaking of street vendors, they’re everywhere. If you want something, chances are you can find it for cheap on the street. And although you would think most business transactions would be made during the day, more vendors come out at night. Actually the city comes alive at night.
10. Although we cooked for ourselves most of the time, we usually ate out once every couple days. No, it’s not like the Chinese food you think of in the states. And no, they don’t give you fortune cookies after you eat. But let me assure you – the food here is delicious as long as you don’t question what kind of meat you’re eating. I quickly learned to just eat it and hope for the best. But don’t worry – I never got sick from the food here. And despite the spice and weird flavors of chips and popcorn, it’s safe to say China has had the best food on the race yet.
11. Remember how I said we cooked for ourselves? That meant we had to go food shopping a few times per week. The grocery store we went to was about a 20-minute walk up hill, through an ancient Chinese alley. We bought most of our groceries upstairs, and then found our meat, vegetables and rice in a downstairs market.
12. Thankfully we had running water at our flat. However, we had to boil the water before drinking it, which was kind of frustrating at some points. I personally can only drink so much hot water. However, I was very thankful to have hot water in our bathroom for showering and washing hands. We didn’t have hot water in the kitchen sink though. The water was completely freezing, making dish washing a most unenjoyable task.
13. We also thankfully had an American-style toilet at our flat. You see basically almost every toilet in China is a squatty potty, which is basically exactly what it sounds like… a sanctioned hole in the ground where you squat instead of sit. Most have flushing capabilities, but you should never flush toilet paper in any kind of toilet in China apparently. Thankfully we didn’t have to learn that the hard way. Although this may be an overshare, I consider this a successful month because I have finally mastered the art (yes – art) of squatty pottying.
14. Moving on… Just in case it wasn’t evident, we did not have any Internet access during this month. And while it was difficult to not be able to have contact with friends and family at home, especially during the holiday season, it also was kind of refreshing to not worry about finding Internet connection and just focus on living in the moment.
15. Not only was Internet communication limited, but as you can guess our communication with the majority of the Chinese people was limited. I learned a few key Chinese words, but for the most part communicating with the Chinese looked like a lot of dramatic facial expressions, pointing, and other various sign language. All the signs were Chinese symbols too, so most of our food ordering was just guessing. Whenever we found someone who spoke English, it was basically the most exciting thing ever.
16. Kind of to my surprise, I felt very safe in China and with my team. While people stared at us all the time, I never felt threatened. I found the Chinese people to be very honest, extremely generous, helpful and kind-hearted.
17. Most of those stares we received were on our daily bus rides. We relied on public transportation all month to get us in between our flat and other parts of town. One bus ride only cost one yuan, which is like 17 cents. Bus rides were typically packed, making it standing room only. To get a seat, you had to aggressively grab it before anyone else did. And because of the absolutely insane Chinese driving, each bus ride felt like surfing and was considered successful if you didn’t topple over onto the Chinese people staring at you.
18. As I mentioned above, the currency in China is Yuan. People often collectively call it quay (pronounced kwa-eye). One USD = about 6 yuan. Also while they have coins too, I found it interesting that they have bills for both their 10 cent and 50 cent values. Also, the bills increase in size according to value, so a 10 cent bill is smaller than a 1 yuan bill.
19. I’ll discuss ministry in another post, but our schedule was actually very flexible and basically self-motivated. That allowed us to get the rest that we really desperately needed after 3 months of minimal rest. We spent time together as a team watching movies and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. during our down time.
20. Another great aspect of our schedule being flexible enough to give us rest was that I was able to recover after being sick with a cold for my first few days in China. Actually, it gave all of us time to recover because all of my team mates had a few days where they were sick too. But our ministry allowed for only a few people to go each day, so everyone got rest when they needed it.
21. Our first Sunday in China we had church of our own in our flat, but our second Sunday we actually got to go to a gathering of the underground church. Although some churches in China do gather in places like caves, the church meeting I went to was in someone’s apartment. At least 8 nationalities and all ages were represented in this one apartment, and we worshipped in different languages. We talked about the Christmas story and ate a huge meal with our new friends. At the end, the church members prayed and prophesied over us, and several of my squad mates received the gift of tongues.
22. Obviously, we spent our holidays in China. On Christmas Eve we had a Christmas movie marathon. On Christmas we spent time as a team at an incredible little coffee shop, and we treated ourselves to coffee and sweets. On New Year’s Eve we hiked the Great Wall of China, shopped at the Pearl Market and partied at our hostel until midnight. Both of the holidays were different than anything I’ve ever experienced, but still very enjoyable.
