China Life #11

 

January 17 2026

Hi again,

This update will (hopefully) be shorter than the last.

It's been a regular week in China, if there is such a thing. The weather has been fabulous; about 20-24 degrees every day and sunny. School has been very quiet because we have not yet set up this term's EAL (English as an Additional Language) schedule so I've had a lot of free time in my teaching schedule.

Last weekend I had a lovely evening out with my friend Tali; we found a cute little Italian restaurant where we had dinner before we went to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial hall (a beautiful theatre in full Chinese architectural style) to see the One Voice Children’s Choir perform. It was a great show and fun to get out.

I decided last week that I want to have the option of driving here, so I started looking into how to get a Chinese driving permit. They do not accept international driving licenses here (not that I have one), and they will not accept licenses that are not in Chinese characters. Turns out that the only documents I needed to source, however, to get a Chinese temporary (one-year) license, were a translation of my Canadian license and some one-inch passport photos. I was given the contact of an official translator by a friend. I sent out a message to this contact number, who asked for a picture of my Canadian license and about $30. I sent that off, and 12 hours later there was a knock on my door. There stood a courier, who handed me an envelope with a certified, stamped translation of my Canadian driving license. Well that was easy! On Tuesday I went to a passport photographer and had my photos done, and I was ready!

I had to wait until Thursday to go to the driving licensing bureau because of clashes with my schedule and their opening hours. And thankfully my colleague Ian had not only sent me a map with a pin of the correct office on it, but also a series of photos with arrows showing exactly how to enter the huge government office. I needed that, because there were a bunch of official looking gates, staircases, turnstiles and hallways to navigate. Once I found the right place, I was given a number and told to sit in the waiting room. When my number was called I went up to the officer behind booth #25 (rather comical because there were 35 booths, only about 3 of which had anyone working behind them, and hardly anyone waiting to be seen-- but it was a HUUUUGGEE room full of seating as though they expected hundreds of people to be there all at once). I put my papers, photos and passport on the desk and pointed to my phone where I had typed "I would like a temporary driving permit please" into my translator. He looked at it, kind of grunted and nodded, and then spent the next 20 minutes scrutinizing my passport, license, photos, visa, and copies of it all. He went over it all with a blue light. Took multiple photos of it all, took a photo of me (with no warning so I'm not even looking at the camera), and then said, "FO-OH-ONE!" before shoving all of the documents at me and pointing at the elevators at the far side of the room.

Uh, ok... so I went to the elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor. 

When I stepped out of the elevator, I was in a rather empty hallway with a turnstile that I had to pass through. I was concerned because I had no code or card to activate it, but fortunately I could just push through the gate and look for room 401, which I found quickly. There was an older female officer in there who shoved a notebook and a pen at me and jabbed her finger at the page. She was saying something loudly in Chinese but of course I had no idea what she was saying and I could not read what it was she wanted me to write... but I could see that others had filled out information and some of it was in English so I deduced where I needed to put my name, passport number and phone number. That seemed to satisfy her. She then pulled out a laminated paper that said, "STUDY FOR 30 MINUTES. NO PHONE. NO SLEEPING." pointed at it, and then pointed at a desk in front of a large TV screen which was playing a loud Chinese show. There were 2 other men in the room staring intently at the screen. I suddenly understood why, because the officer then took a desktop camera and aimed it at me. Behind her desk was a series of smaller screens where she was watching us watch the show. 

OK. So. I guessed that I’d have to watch the show very intently too. It was in the middle of a gas-truck scene when I got there-- a gas truck was moving down a highway and intense action-movie music was playing. The music ramped up just in time for the gas truck to hit a bridge and then there was an enormous explosion that filled most of the screen: flames, smoke, debris, more flames... then a scene of some kind of post-apocalyptic world. Just pure devastation. No truck, no road, no buildings... just rubble. All the while, some guy is narrating in Chinese and it was even subtitled (in flaming Chinese characters). Scenes similar to this played for about 5 minutes, then it switched to police officers talking. Lots of different officers in different places talking in Chinese. I watched that for about 10 minutes. Then it switched to dashcam footage of pedestrians getting hit. (That part was rather disturbing). Then I saw a variety of scenes where people in cars opened their doors and scooters, motorcyclists and bikers all smashed into the doors. At the very second my 30 minutes was up, the lady behind the counter unplugged the camera that was focused on my face, picked up a microphone and started yelling into it while looking at me. I took that as my cue to end my study session, so I picked up my paperwork and walked over to her. She pointed at a sign that said, "Floor 1, desk 35" and gestured towards some doors.

I went through the doors, which led to the stairs, and I went back down to the first floor where I ended up back in the first huge room I had been in before. No one was behind desk 35, but I went over to it and sat down, hoping I was doing the right thing. Suddenly out of nowhere some lady popped up, handed me a license, and waved at me. I was done!

On Friday night I had a lovely dinner at a fancy middle eastern restaurant with my friend Amy. Yesterday was a rather dull day of trying to get Kieran orthotics for his shoes, followed by far too long registering a group insurance card at a bank downtown. Today I took Kieran to a big indoor climbing centre, where I met a guy named Andrew who teaches at a different international school here in town. He has connections both to a hockey team and a place to mountain bike, so that was an exciting encounter. 

This evening I had my first Chinese lesson with a new teacher. Technically I can count to five, introduce myself, tell people that I am a teacher from Canada and respond to a few basic greetings. (I have yet to actually put it into practice though!)

That’s about it for now. I’ll attach a couple of grocery list pics, because those are always entertaining.

xo

Shannon