An acting teacher once told me that people stop changing at twenty-five, that after that time your character is pretty much set in stone. When I moved to China to teach at the ripe old age of 27, I realized just how wrong he was. These are five life lessons that I learned in my time living abroad that I will take with me for the rest of my life:
Travel days can often be long and boring. That’s why having to return to Dalian after an amazing week in Hong Kong ON MY BIRTHDAY wasn’t an ideal situation. But that’s just how the cards fell.
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We finally got to do what we were brought to China to do: TEACH DRAMA! We were commissioned by a primary school in Dalian to produce two shows with a handful of its brightest and most dramatic students and to chose these students, we put them through an audition. China style.
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With an unexpected weekend free, we hopped on a bullet train to Dandong, one hour North of Dalian, to explore this river-facing town bordering North Korea.
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We couldn’t quite believe our ears when we heard the news that the iconic Canadian cliché had arrived in Dalian. A co-worker had excitedly called it “Team House” and said we must love it because we’re Canadian. We were slow on the uptake but after she showed us a picture we couldn’t help but smile. A very surprising and unexpected arrival in our small(ish) city but welcome nonetheless. We just had to try it the first opportunity we got!
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Okay, you may think we’re being dramatic here. A ‘how-to’ article about crossing the street? Really!? But after more than a couple close calls trying to make it to the other side of the road, we can confidently say that the traffic here is not a joke. Since we’ve mastered the art of Chinese street-crossing, we’d like to share with you the top tips you didn’t even know you needed for safely navigating the treacherous Chinese roads.
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Fun fact: Dalian is big. And not just population big (6.7 million people), but area big–over 13 000 square kilometers. That’s double the size of New York City. Like all five boroughs. So needless to say when we arrived here without a car, figuring out how to get around became a necessity. And once we did, the whole city opened up to us.
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